Portes Overtes: An Interactive Multimedia Approach to First-Year French [Hardcover]

Margaret Haggstrom (Author), Judith Frommer (Author), Christopher M. Jones (Author), Marie-France Bunting (Author), Laurent Patenotte (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2000

Portes Ouvertes is a unique new introductory French program that takes a fresh approach to learning the French language and the culture of the Francophone world. The textbook and related multimedia components are completely integrated through interlinkage with videos which draw students in the lives of several French families, creating a virtual environment approximating as closely as possible the experience of living in France and communicating with real people. Students get to know people from varied backgrounds while learning and practicing the four language skills within genuine contexts inseparable from the culture itself.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, French --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Christopher M. Jones is associate professor and chair within the Department of Political Science at Northern Illinois University (NIU). He has also served as assistant chair and director of undergraduate studies. He received his doctorate from The Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Syracuse University, where he received university-wide awards in research and teaching. He has published more than twenty journal articles and book chapters related to American foreign and defense policy, and co-edited The Future of American Foreign Policy (1999) with Eugene R. Wittkopf. Professor Jones has been recognized for teaching excellence by student organizations, the American Political Science Association, The National Political Science Honor Society, Who's Who among America's Teachers, and three universities. In 2002 he became the youngest recipient of Northern Illinois University's Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award, the institution's longest-standing faculty honor. Professor Jones currently serves as vice-president (and president elect) of the Foreign Policy Analysis Section of the International Studies Association. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Harcourt College Pub (January 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 003031819X
• ISBN-13: 978-0030318191
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 8.8 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,299,740 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Hypertrophy of Big Buck Textbook Publishing, May 26, 2000

By 

Willem Vandenbroek (Ann Arbor, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Portes Ouvertes: An Interactive Multimedia Approach to First Year French (French Edition) (Hardcover)

This text is French instruction gone berserk. Students will have to go through so much visual junk and marginally relevant contextualizing that they may be exhausted by the time they actually get to any substance. There are dozens of typefaces and colors, formats, sections, subsections, boxes, icons, references to tapes, to videos, to CD's, differently colored backgrounds and edge shadings, ad infinitum, to say nothing of pages of full color pictures of smiling multicultural young people and so on which intellectually impoverished American students are presumed to require in order to "relate" to the material. The book is supposed to be a totally integrated multimedia approach to teaching French, based on people in a city (Besancon) in France. I wonder how many French instructors succumb to handing over classroom hours to passively sitting and looking at the videos around which so much of the text is based rather than stressing needed drill and interactive instruction? Why couldn't the video-based sections have been broken out as a separate text for teachers who want it, so that students wouldn't have to sprain their wrists and pocketbooks lugging around so much irrelevant material? But it is clear that all this packaging isn't really intended to benefit students anyway; rather, it is aimed at textbook selection committees. Look at the very first page of the book: a flow chart, in extra thick paper, showing how carefully edited the manuscript is. Is this useful to the students who had to purchase this flowchart? Where is the table of contents? If the student wants to look up where something is discussed, he or she will have to leaf through pages of flow charts, prefaces, maps, dedications and so on to an indeterminate section about an eighth of an inch into this massive hunk of marketing to find it. Want the index? Well, you have to ignore the four pages of credits in big type at the back of the book (how else inflate the page count and price heft of the product?). In my opinion, a French text ought to contain grammar and exercises to learn it. All the rest can be brought in optionally. Maybe it's time to start going back in that direction. One can only hope that this dinosaur is the end point of a trend destined for extinction.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Why not include GRAMMAR?, February 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Portes Ouvertes: An Interactive Multimedia Approach to First Year French (French Edition) (Hardcover)

I've attempted to use this book to teach first year French, and ended up spending obscene amounts of time supplementing it with personal materials so my students will have SOME idea of what things like relative pronouns, compound tenses, and locutions triggering the subjunctive are. The students HATED the daher exercises, the CD crashed all computers at the language lab, and the kids ended up frustrated, linguitically stunted, and angry about the monumental amount of money they had to spend on a worthless textbook. The book is a travesty, and is sure to damage any students subjected to it in place of real language instruction. Multimedia for multimedia's sake is just damned stupid, and has no place in a thinking, caring faculty: as a teacher and someone who wants the best for my students, I would NEVER touch this book again.

2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy to use and great to review, April 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Portes Ouvertes: An Interactive Multimedia Approach to First Year French (French Edition) (Hardcover)

I have used this book througout college and I have found it to be the easiest to use out of all of the books I have looked at and tried using. Vocabulary they present is useful in real life settings, and the grammer explinations are complete and easy to comprehend.