New Open Source French Textbook

COERLL is pleased to announce the beta version of Le littéraire dans le quotidien, by Joanna Luks, Cornell University. This open textbook breaks new ground in foreign language teaching and learning. Published as an open educational resource (OER) with an open copyright license, Le littéraire dans le quotidien (LLDQ) gives teachers full rights to edit and customize the content.

In addition to its innovative open methods of publication and dissemination, LLDQ is characterized by innovative content. Inspired by the 2007 MLA Report "Foreign Language and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" and recent AAUSC volumes, the book is based on a simple but radical premise--literary language can be found in everyday language (il suffit de regarder!).

According to Luks, the key is to understand the metaphorical nature of all language--literary or quotidian. With carefully conceived activities that integrate communicative language teaching with literary analysis, Luks shows students how to play with conventional meanings in order to create new literary meanings. The concept of the literary in the everyday draws from several disciplines in an effort to help students develop "the deductive skills of a linguist, the honed intuitions of an anthropologist and the playful bent of a poet."

LLDQ's reading and writing activities are sophisticated, playful and fun. Use an activity "as is" or edit it to suit your classroom. It's free! It's open! It's OER!

 LLDQ is published on Google docs with a Creative Commons license and thus, shareable, editable, easily adaptable for your own students.
 LLDQ is printable immediately in different formats: PDF, DOC, DOCX, TXT.
 LLDQ is in final stages of copy-editing (beta); a print-on-demand textbook from lulu.com will be available by December 2013.

Link to textbook files (Google docs): http://goo.gl/VurRFE
(Best viewed in Google Chrome and once signed into Google Docs)

Link to textbook files (PDFs): http://goo.gl/r05Odt

COERLL. Le Littéraire dans le quotidien (BETA) soft launch. COERLL newsletter (info@coerll.utexas.edu, 22 Aug 2013).