The Use of Radio Canada and Radio France Recordings in the Teaching of Language and Culture.

Abstract

language courses certain information and techniques acquired from experience in my own classes, which is in turn partially the fruit of my reading of other teachers' published studies. The emphasis here will be on making known the rich resources available through Radio Canada and Radio France and on suggestions concerning the implementation of these materials. In general, the activities in question would be appropriate for a fourth-year high school course or a university-level composition and conversation class, as well as more advanced courses. They would be especially valuable to students preparing for a summer or a year in France or who have just returned from there and are anxious to maintain the language proficiency they have gained. It is also feasible to design an entire course based on these recordings. A number of articles in recent years have been devoted to the use of shortwave broadcasts in the classroom, either listened to live or recorded for subsequent use. The emphasis in many of these studies has been on news broadcasts. While I by no means wish to deny the value of such oral documents, they do have a few shortcomings that render recorded programs furnished directly by Radio Canada and Radio France more pedagogically productive. First, the quality of the recordings is excellent, whereas short-wave broadcasts recorded by the distant listener are often of less than optimum quality because of static, signal drift, or inadequate recording or receiving equipment. Second, news reports, although they are certainly topical and up-to-date at the outset, become by the same token rapidly stale and even obsolete. The Radio Canada and Radio France recordings to which I refer, however, remain usable for a much longer time, for years in many instances. They deal with contemporary issues and phenomena while avoiding strictly ephemeral topics likely to lose their appeal quickly. The third advantage is that there is no need for equipment other than that readily available in just about every school. For the Radio Canada records, a simple monaural player would suffice, although it is desirable to transfer them to cassettes if the proper facilities are at one's disposal. For the Radio France material, a cassette player is the minimum requirement, although more sophisticated equipment, while not essential, can allow more flexibility in the manner of profiting from the recordings. 402

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