The ESPACES Video Program

The two-part video program accompanying ESPACES includes dramatic video episodes integrated with the textbook's Espace roman-photo sections and cultural segments integrated with the Savoir-faire sections.

• The Roman-photo Video

  The ESPACES Roman-photo video episodes offer approximately five minutes of dramatic footage for each textbook lesson, that is, two modules per unit. Each module tells the continuing story of four college students studying in Aix-en-Provence, a small city in southern France. They each have an apartment above the café Le P'tit Bistrot, where they frequently meet and interact with the owner, their landlady, and her teenage son. The video, shot in a variety of locations in and around Aix-en-Provence, tells their story.

  The video modules contain two distinct elements. First, students see a dramatic episode that brings the themes, vocabulary, grammar, and language functions of the corresponding textbook lesson alive. These vignettes are expanded versions of the ones featured in the Espace roman-photo sections of the textbook. Each dramatic episode then ends with a Reprise segment in which a narrator calls out key active language from the video episode, highlighting functional vocabulary and grammatical structures in the context of their use by the video characters.

• The Flash culture Video

  Specially shot for ESPACES, the Flash culture footage is correlated to the textbook in the Flash culture box on the Écriture page of each unit's Savoir-faire section. Hosted by the ESPACES narrators, Csilla and Benjamin, these segments provide montages of scenes directly related to the cultural theme of each unit in the textbook, focusing on varied aspects of "c" and "C" culture. The footage was carefully shot for relevance and interest level, while the narrations and conversations, which gradually build into French, were written with attention to reusing the grammar and vocabulary covered in the text.

  As students watch the video segments, they will experience a diversity of images and topics: parks, schools, outdoor markets, day-to-day activities, cities, monuments, traditions, festivals, geographic wonders, conversations and interviews with native French speakers, and more. They will be transported to France and get a taste of the French-speaking world, all while expanding their cultural perspectives with information directly related to the content of the textbook.

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