Comme on dit

This first-year French textbook program allows students to examine, compare, and contrast authentic discourse to discover individual and shared language use and cultural perspectives. Students also acquire the sounds and rhythmic patterns necessary to develop pronunciation and conversational fluency, as well as listening comprehension skills.

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E-Textbooks are now available to purchase or rent through VitalSource.com! Please visit VitalSource for more information on pricing and availability.

As of January 1, 2021, the Smart Sparrow Companion Websites are no longer available. Soon, we will announce a new set of companion websites. Demos for the new companion websites will be available for instructors to sample beginning in spring 2021. The complete websites will be ready in time for students to use them during the fall 2021 semester.

Until the new companion websites become available, eBook Workbooks with exercises from the Smart Sparrow Electronic Workbook are available for purchase on the GUP website and VitalSource.com, as are Workbook Answer Keys. They will both be sold in eBook format only.

Comme on dit, a comprehensive first-year French textbook program, engages students in the learning process from day one using an inductive methodology centered on guided observation and rule discovery. Together with students’ communicative needs and an analysis of their most pervasive transfer errors from English, the everyday speech patterns of 100 native speakers—culled from 150 hours of unscripted recordings—form the linguistic backbone of the method. Using a workbook format, students examine, compare, and contrast this wide variety of authentic discourse to discover both individual and shared language use and cultural perspectives. Additionally, students systematically and progressively acquire the fundamental sounds and rhythmic patterns of spoken French, which leads them to develop solid pronunciation and conversational fluency as well as notable listening comprehension skills. To aid instructors in effectively implementing this distinctive approach, the Teacher’s Edition textbook comes with answers for all activities, plus teaching notes in the margins and extensive ancillary resources online. By the end of one academic year, students with no prior French instruction can expect to achieve Intermediate-Mid to Intermediate-High proficiency on the ACTFL scale.

Features of Comme on dit:

• Emphasis on providing students with the tools and skills to help them communicate early on about topics relevant to them and their daily lives• Equal focus on all four major skill areas—reading, writing, listening, and speaking—and on the establishment of a solid grammatical and lexical foundation• Over 1,000 audio and video files, giving students ample material to practice listening to French as it is spoken by native speakers• Over 250 snippets of written authentic discourse, ranging from book titles to proverbs• Teacher’s Edition textbook with answers for all activities, plus teaching notes in the margins• Extensive ancillary instructor’s resources, including an instructor’s manual, quizzes, sample midterm and final exams, available at CommeOnDitTextbook.com

For Instructors: To sample the eTextbook, please visit VitalSource.com to create an account. After you login, you may request a free copy by clicking on "Faculty Sampling" in the upper right-hand corner, searching for the "Digital Exam Copy," and selecting "Request Sample".