Entertaining Language Course : ‘Soap Opera’ Plots Path to French

Romance blooms when a bumbling American in Paris meets a young French woman. As the lovers roam through France, they are tailed by a mysterious stranger.

It sounds like a plot for a soap opera. It is. But it’s also the basis for a 52-part public television series designed to teach the French language.

The series’ creator, Pierre J. Capretz of Yale University, said the program, “French in Action,” represents a totally different method of teaching languages.

“We can bring to the students not only the words but what those words correspond to, what they represent,” he said, “so the student can see the words in action.”

The $3-million series will consist of 52 half-hour video segments produced by Yale and Boston’s WGBH Educational Foundation in association with Wellesley College. It is backed by a $2.4-million grant from the Annenberg Corporation for Public Broadcasting Project as well as support from other groups, including the French ministries of foreign affairs and culture.

May Air This Fall

Capretz, a senior lecturer in French who has taught at Yale since 1956, said the series may begin airing on PBS stations this fall.

“It should have a good bit of viewer appeal, partly because it’s a soap opera and it’s in French,” said Hilda Moskowitz, executive assistant to the director of the Annenberg-CPB Project in Washington.

The first portion of each segment deals with the adventures of the young lovers. The second portion reinforces the language used in the first part, with Capretz as the teacher using many visual aids such as scene replays and French movie clips. No English is spoken.

“I think we could guarantee that by the end of the series, you would be able to go to France and have no problem understanding what is being said to you,” Capretz said. “You probably would be able to make yourself understood.”

Besides offering television viewers an informal way to learn or review French, the series will be available to colleges through the Annenberg-CPB Project. Colleges can issue credit for the series viewed at home or in class. Besides the videotapes, accompanying audio tapes, texts, slides and filmstrips will be available.

The materials can make up either a four-semester or intensive two-semester beginning French course, Capretz said.

Beats Traditional Method

He believes the series is an improvement over traditional language teaching methods that rely primarily on texts and audio tape exercises. Those methods require a lot of work from student and teacher, often without a corresponding amount of success, Capretz said.

“You may work very hard at it, but after those two years, sometimes you are not able to say 10 sentences together,” he said.

Languages are often taught as an “abstract code,” where students in effect decode the language they are learning in terms of their first language, he said.

Capretz likened the series to taking a tour of France. But learning the language is enhanced by manipulating scenes to reinforce new words and concepts.

The series was shot with mostly professional actors over the last two years. The lovers travel through Paris, the French Riviera and the vineyards of Champagne. In one episode, they commandeer a small plane while the stranger follows them in a French jet fighter.

Capretz has taught a less-sophisticated prototype of the course at Yale.

“Ninety-nine percent of the students thought it was really entertaining,” he said. “They got tremendous results because they thought it was fun. . . . They were coming every morning to French class to live a different life for an hour.”

Rose L. Hayden, president of the New York-based National Council on Foreign Language and International Studies, calls the series “a terribly useful tool” for language teachers.

But the series and its methods will not supplant other methods of teaching languages, she said.

“Different people learn differently,” said Hayden, who is on the series’ advisory committee.