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ReCALL 9:2 (1997) 26-32

The Web for French grammar:a tool, a resource or a waste of time?

Marie-Noelle LamyThe Open University

The paper reviews selected Web sites for French grammar, from the student's point of view. The investi-gation looks at the content of sites and their potential for learning. The conclusion is that the Web forFrench is both underused and chaotic but there is evidence that, with imagination, it could become auseful resource.

Learners, Grammar, and the Web

This paper stems from the two following ques-tions: If I were a language student trying tolearn grammar in my L2, and I wanted to usethe Web exclusively to do so, what would I beliable to find there? What more would I beentitled to expect from a Web-based approachto French grammar than is already available intraditional form?

Before answering these questions, I need tosay a little about 'exclusively', 'Web' and'grammar'. By 'exclusively', I mean that Ihave ruled out formal Web-based courses ofstudy, as these are fee-paying and restricted-access. Instead, I have in mind a constituencyof learners using public-access presentationalWeb-sites and Web courses, as well as otherInternet tools, such as Usenet newsgroups andMOOs. Such learners are any age, and they

can also be teachers looking for resources fortheir learners, or using the Web as L2improvers for themselves. They may want tofind particular grammar-related topics, gram-mar clinics, exercises, tool kits, on-line maga-zines or journals specialising in grammar, orthey may just want to browse. Finally, theword 'grammar' is being used here as a conve-nient form of shorthand for 'grammatical com-petence and accuracy in the use of the L2',including in its spoken form.

French is the L2 chosen for the purposes ofthis review. Those teaching French on the Webgenerally use French as the medium for teach-ing. Mostly, Web addresses (UniformResource Locators or URLs) relevant to thisstudy are from North America, the highestnumber being Canadian, with English-Frenchbilingual sites.

There are hundreds of sites dealing with

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The web for French grammar: M-N Lamy

French grammar. They are signposted andreviewed in dozens of gateway sites. Sitenames and reviews can be mouth-watering:"Les meilleurs exercices proposes sur le Webjusqu'a ce jour!" ('The best exercises avail-able on the Web to date', a daring promise) or"Ce site est tout designe pour les etudiantsdont la langue maternelle est Vanglais" ('Thissite is ideal for students with English mothertongue', a claim about a dense, black andwhite Web page listing French nouns, butempty of any guidance on how to learn them,let alone any links, and hardly 'ideal' for anystudent, 'with English mother tongue' or not).In reality, promises are frequently not kept,and many of these sites are disappointing inthe quantity and quality of their contents; orelse they are vestiges of vanished sites.Because it is not possible to guarantee system-atic coverage of all Web sites concerned, thisstudy is of necessity selective, and its findingscouched in terms of general tendencies.

A Double Set of Criteria forEvaluation

A good educational Web site satisfies two setsof criteria: a winning formula would be onewhich combined excellent use of the mediumwith excellent content. In fact, we find differ-ent configurations: enthusiastic use of themedium but poor pedagogical quality, soundpedagogy making little use of the potential ofthe medium, and variations along the way.

When examining sites, I have borne inmind the methodological requirements ofgood grammar teaching, and related them tothe aims of the site-designers, wherever theyare declared. For instance, is the site a self-standing course, a taster for a fee-payingcourse, a placement test, a teaching resourceor a bit of fun? If the product is presented as a'course', does it have pacing built in, in a care-fully balanced mix of form-focused inputssuch as graded practise exercises involvingexamples of language in use and self-scoringor correction by teacher, followed by consoli-dation and transfer activities? Is the syllabusintroduced? Are the level of input and of the

target audience clearly defined and explicitlydeclared? Is the development of grammarstudy skills addressed? Is the corpus of exam-ples taken from the written or spoken lan-guage? How are socio-linguistic and registerfeatures dealt with ? Is the approach descrip-tive or prescriptive? Is use made of text-gram-mar methodology, i.e. is the functioning ofgrammatical features described from the start-ing point of their use in authentic written orspoken texts, at levels higher than the sen-tence? How are error correction and testingapproached: by giving 'the right answer'?extra feedback? a score? Is the metalanguageexplained on a need-to-know basis, or perhapsdefined in a glossary? Are issues of languageawareness addressed? In the next two sections,I look at the content of 'grammar' sites, then atthe use made of the medium by site designers.

Content of French 'Grammar' Sites

Coherence of Approach to Grammar

As Eastment (1996) noted in his report on theInternet and ELT, Web publishing is entirelydifferent from conventional publishing, inrespect of quality control. "The logo of a well-known publisher is a guarantee that, even ifthe work is not relevant to a user's needs, itwill not be a waste of time" (ibid: 51). On theWeb, in contrast, it is very easy for individualsor organisations to put up text that has notbeen through a rigorous process of criticalreading, refereeing, editing or proof checking.

Thus Web grammar courses are frequentlynot paced, but consist of exercises 'bolted on'to each other without explanation. For exam-ple, French Lessons with Real Audio Soundby International Language Development(ILD)1 has very little by way of an introduc-tion or a rationale for the division of the siteinto pages entitled 'lesson', 'vocabulary','grammar' and 'exercises'. (What, one won-ders, is the difference between 'grammar', a'lesson' and 'exercises'?) Lack of clarity andnon-existent proof-reading combine with non-sensical exemplification in this extract aboutpronouns, cut and pasted from 'a CALL sitefor teaching German, Russian, Italian, English

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The web for French grammar: M-N Lamy

and French' (GRIEF) which claims to provide"help with grammar and translation"2.

"As well as the subject pronouns in the table,there is also on which means one. Therefore,'on' can be used to mean we or they. Ce as inthis, that is also a subject pronoun which is usedwith the common verb etre. You will recognise itsuse in the plural form c'est. 'Ce' is not a politeform."

I am tempted to add a few exclamation marksin virtual red ink. Another example of poorpresentation is the ILD site's index whichunhelpfully subdivides the site into 'Grammar1', 'Grammar 2', 'Grammar 3', etc.

Choice of grammar topics is another area ofinconsistency. Sites either read like the table ofcontents of traditional grammar books, as inacademic French sites like Erindale College,University of Toronto3 and the Telequebec sitefor teachers, AU6 Prof4, or they display an arbi-trary selection of topics (e.g. GRIEF's choice ofnouns, pronouns and verbs), sometimes aggra-vated by the accidental inaccessibility of someof the links (for instance GRIEF's link to verbsproduced a 'Not Found" message).

There are quality sites, but even those suf-fer from inconsistency. A good example of thisis the French Language Course by JacquesLeon5. This starts with a personalized intro-duction, a level 'definition' (basic French), astatement of aims and some sort of syllabus, astatement of non-commercial interest and anemail address. A second introduction, onelevel down, explains the metalanguage used.The image is that of a charismatic maverick "Iam not a grammarian, nor a teacher in Frenchliterature. However, I know my own languagewell enough to be able to teach it." But thevoice of the author suddenly ceases to providethe cohesive overview, when the user is pre-sented with an 'index' covering a mixture ofstructural elements (sentence structure), lexi-cal lists (the family), notions (time) and trans-actions (where do you come from) withoutexplanation or recommendations for pathwaysthrough this heterogeneous material.

Quality of content is most often found inuniversity sites, which are aimed at more

advanced learners. They typically offer ratio-nales for syllabuses, principles for the descrip-tion of the target language and excursions intothe history of the language. But the material isvery often purely presentational, maybe in theform of a text-heavy 'lecture', with bibliogra-phy, as in the traditional print media, withinsufficient or no advantage taken of Webtechnology. Appalachian State University pro-vides one example of this6, the University ofToronto another.

Notions of language awareness are almostabsent from grammar teaching on the Web,even though hypertext provides opportunitiesfor introducing this. For instance, the CentreInternational d'Etudes Pedagogiques (CIEP)7

is a teachers' resource site where the Frenchmaterial is also offered in translation (Englishand other European languages), via hot links.France a la Carte8, the site of the CulturalDelegation of the French Embassy in London,also for teachers, uses alternative screens inFrench and English. However, neither sitebuilds on this opportunity to be explicit aboutthe different ways in which languages struc-ture similar linguistic notions, or about thevery different ways in which metalanguage isused in both teaching cultures.

Methodological approaches to grammar dif-fer hugely from site to site. The discrepanciesin quality can again be explained by theabsence of quality assurance; anyone can pub-lish his or her favourite ideas on what grammaris about. Some sites appear to be underpinnedby no discernible method. Others are firmlyrooted in a particular academic or national cul-ture. Others are pragmatic and use methodsintended to suit their target audience. Clickingon links in any French grammar gateway willcall up documents embodying a variety ofapproaches, for instance transactional, like ILDor Travellers' French9, or structural as in GregLessard's Queen's University site10, or text-grammar based, as in A116 Prof. There is noeasy way of identifying sites which reflectone's preferred method, however. Reviewsfound in resource and gateway sites are notable to offer more than sound-bites like "anexcellent site" or "a wealth of information",and these opinions are often injudicious.

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The web for French grammar: M-N Lamy

Quality of the L2 Corpus

Exemplification policies on the Web often fol-low the tradition of school grammars. Exam-ples are almost always 'made-up', and notauthentic quotes from corpora. On sites whichdo not originate in a French-speaking country,examples are also frequently inaccurate. Gap-fills may be ill-conceived, as in this examplefrom Ithaca11. You are asked to fill the gap inthe square brackets with a verb chosen from amultiple option:

"(Did you walk) [ ] seule pourvenir chez moi?"

The only relevant selection the learner canmake from the options offered is "sepromener", which does indeed translate 'towalk', but not in this sentence's context of'going to a place on foot'.

Throughout most of the material which Ihave seen, the written form of the languagepredominates, again, as in traditional gram-mars. A fairly conservative interpretation of'correct' usage is the norm, and there is littlepreoccupation with register.

Personal or 'Hobby' Sites

Individuals' home pages are as numerous inour area of investigation as they are elsewhereon the Web. Some have become householdnames. They can be dire, but they can be greatfun and they can be educational. BernardPivot, a well-known French arts journalist hasorganised a dictation competition every yearsince 1985. La Dictee de Pivot on television isa French cultural landmark. His site12 providesarchives of all the 'Dictee de Pivot' events everheld, as well as information about similarcompetitions across the French-speakingworld, and a complete handbook of Frenchspelling, including discursive explanations andexercises. Other individuals reveal their owneccentric approaches to grammar, such as theowner of 'Le true des genres'13 who claims toteach a way of predicting the genre of "morethan 18000 French words" which involveslearning forty endings by rote. I make noclaim about the effectiveness of learning from

such individual inputs, but at its best, thegenre 'personal Web site' can offer ideas thatmore concerted efforts miss out on. As far asuse of the medium is concerned, individual'hobby sites' are dependent on resources andare typically very uneven: the Pivot site useshot links and gap-fills, whereas 'True des gen-res' is just a page of print put up on the Web.

Advantages of the Medium forTeaching Grammar

It has been claimed that there are analogiesbetween the structure of hypertext and that ofhuman languages (e.g. see McBride & Seago,this volume). Hypertext can also be a help towriters of grammar material in their strugglesto find ways of making metalanguage accessi-ble to learners; a Web writer could use links toprovide not only examples but also definitionsof any 'difficult' metalanguage used. Access toinformation is very easy, as users may click onicons, on links in main texts, or on indexedentries in frames; this seems perfect for allow-ing learners to find a 'bit' of grammar for quickremedial work, even if they are not sure whatto call the item sought. Interactivity offersgrammar-learners several advantages; auto-matic correction, tracking and self-scoring arefacilities which Web tools are uniquely placedto provide. Interactivity with a teacher or anative speaker of L2, for example in a MOO orin a newsgroup, presents learners with attrac-tive opportunities for individualized (and free)help with L2 grammar. Finally, the medium'sability to carry audio makes it possible to con-template learning the spoken grammar of a lan-guage, whilst its potential in terms of graphicsand animation could give rise to imaginativepresentational devices to aid comprehensionand memorisation of language structures.

What Actually Happens on the Webin Terms of French GrammarTeaching?

The use of words like 'could', 'possible' and'potential' in the preceding paragraph will

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The web for French grammar: M-N Lamy

have alerted readers to the fact that these facil-ities and opportunities turn out on closerinspection to be seriously underused, as a fewhours of surfing soon show.

Use of Hypertext

In many sites, hot links are used for indexingpurposes only. Site structure too often overem-phasises embedding, which results in sparsescreens and generates a feeling of 'goinground-the-houses' for not much reward (Win-dows and frames for multiple choice questionsand gap-fills are the main culprits in thisrespect).

Hot links can turn a site into a tool forquick look-up: this facility is well understood,as you can see with the many 'verb finder'sites, specialising in verb conjugations, suchas ARTLF14. But the slowness of the Weboften defeats the purpose. A verb-finder CDloaded on your desktop would be much faster.It might be even faster to look up the trusty oldBescherelle dictionary of verbs on your shelf(Bescherelle, 1990).

One of the things that hypertext technologycould do well is correct learners' errors. How-ever, the culture of error-correction found inmost sites is minimalist. It involves supplyingthe right answer (with or without a score), butdetailed feedback is never volunteered, thoughit would be easy to invite learners to click onlinks for further information or more exercisesrelating to the grammar point which causesthem difficulties. At CIEP, the user is treatedlike a naughty girl (or boy). "Testez vos con-naissances" (test your knowledge) reveals asparse set of non-contextualised gap-fills, witha distinctly user-hostile response screen: onmy system it produced a 'Javascript alert' win-dow, with a triangular danger sign, and itresponded to my - perfectly correct - answerswith a damning "Mauvaise reponse. Vous avez0 points!" (Bad answer! You have scored 0!),and when I tried again, with an abrasive "Vousavez deja repondu a cette question!" (You'veanswered this question already!)

External links (i.e. to another site) are a fre-quent feature and they work well as pointers toresources, rather than as teaching tools. This is

understandable, as such a device if used wouldneed maintenance, as shown by one of JacquesLeon's pages, which promises a self-testinglink but in fact sends you off to an obsoletesite in Marseilles.

Sometimes, a good idea emerges. Using anautomatic mail facility, Ithaca motivates itslearners into doing some composition as aconsolidation activity: after they have com-pleted a manipulation exercise, they areinvited to embody the newly-learnt structure ina personal message, which they send to thesite. It is then posted for all to see, with a cap-tion showing who sent it and where they arefrom. This is a not only a good example of anice match between pedagogy and technology,but it also confirms the curate's egg nature ofWeb sites; I criticized Ithaca earlier for inaccu-racy.

Non-textual Facilities

The medium's ability to carry audio is under-used. Few sites bother at all. Many promiseaudio as a future development. Some havestarted building it in, but clicking merely suc-ceeds in calling up an 'Under construction'screen. ILD has dialogues with a link to anaudio recording, but the educational value ofthis needs to be questioned in terms of the usemade of the sound (mere repetition of theprint) and the quality of the dialogues them-selves (inauthentic, non-contextualized).ILD's vocabulary lists are also linked to audio,which perhaps makes more sense. As to graph-ics and animation, neither were found in thisstudy to have been used for pedagogical pur-poses, apart from the use of colours for, e.g.masculine nouns versus feminine.

Maintenance and Updating

Leaving a trace of maintenance activity on thesite can be a bad idea. For instance, the Uni-versity of Toronto's message saying "lastupdated 9th Oct 1996" does not encourageconfidence in the site-owners' commitment tothe site. On the other hand, the CIEP's'Chronique' (like a newspaper language col-umn, bringing news of neologisms, examples

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of 'street' creativity, and a personal view ofcurrent linguistic change) is a delightful fea-ture. It was last updated last week, as I write,indicating that the site-owners are constantlyon the look-out for items to feed to their read-ers, and perhaps more relevant to reader loy-alty and motivation, that someone is alwaysthere, looking after the site.

France a la Carte: A toolkit forinnovative teaching

Sadly so far this study has only evidenced lim-ited instances of good practice, often lost in amass of mediocre material. So here is anexample which provides relief from thisgloomy picture! Designed for French lan-guage assistants and teachers of French as aforeign language, France a la Carte hosts avery small but hypertext-friendly model ofwhat teachers and pupils can do with even aminuscule bit of realia. It is aimed at GCSElevel, and is based on a children's story, beau-tifully illustrated in colour, which acts as thecentral resource for multi-layered languageexplorations, making very attractive use offrames, colours and graphics.

There is a showcase feel about this site, butit has thought of almost everything, and withsome expanding (I shall suggest how below),it could be a wonderful grammatical play-ground for learners of any age. Last but notleast, it treats teachers as adults, by givingthem elements of pedagogy, which they canauthor themselves to create the tool that bestsuits them.

It has limitations. It is not a self-standingsite. Its main aim is staff development for aspecific audience. It deals with grammar viaexercises only, offering no exposition of gram-matical principles. But it shows the hugepotential of a text-grammar based approach ina hypertext environment.

Newsgroups and MOOs

I have so far looked at Web-based material,but amongst general Internet tools which can

be accessed via the Web (though not them-selves Web-based) are newsgroups (asynchro-nous bulletin board systems) and MOOs (syn-chronous chat systems). French newsgroupsare more interested in scientific and IT issuesthan in language, therefore evaluating theircontribution to grammar learning is not anonerous job! Comparing them with English-language newsgroups, however, it is clear thatan opportunity is being missed in the French-speaking Web. Eastment lists no fewer thanfifteen ELT-related newsgroups, including "Agroup for harsh criticism of poor spelling andgrammar"! (ibid: 75).

As far as MOOs are concerned, again, theEnglish-speaking world is dominant. Le MOOfrancais15 potentially offers the opportunity touse the L2 in order to create objects, to talkabout space, to effect transactions, etc., all ofwhich user-moves could be designed so as torequire that the learner sharpen up his or herlevel of accuracy, as the system will react witherror messages if interventions are notcouched in the terms that it expects. In reality,however, Le MOO francais remains mostly'under construction', and is very much under-visited.

Promotional Sites

French publishers' sites, such as Larousse16,CLE International17 or Didier18, are a goodsource of information on where to buy gram-mar materials, but they don't display samplesof their wares. They offer nothing like theCobuild site's free demonstration of concor-dancing, for instance19. Hachette has an excel-lent on-line generalist magazine reviewingWeb-sites, 'L'Intemet en francais'20. Both on-line and hard versions (available at newsstands and station kiosks everywhere inFrance) are very attractive and offer (realis-tic!) mini-reviews of a wide variety of sites,but not so far of any French language site.When challenged on this in a personal com-munication, the editor, Frederic Reillier, saidthat he was aware this was a 'weakness', butthat his readers were more interested in learn-ing English.

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Conclusion

[n 1996, Eastment felt that ELT materials onthe World Wide Web represented a triumph ofform over content. The present investigationinto French grammar teaching on the Web hascome up with a similar conclusion as regardscontent, which varies enormously in type andquality, and is not even so sure that form is tri-umphant. The francophone and French-teach-ing Web worlds lag far behind their EFL andELT counterparts, and mainly fail to come upwith tools that match up to the medium's richpotential. If we seek innovation in grammarteaching, we might want to look to sites likeFrance a la Carte, ideally scaled up to com-prise a variety of texts, including some froman oral corpus, self-keyed exercises with linksto extra feedback or further practice, an Audiofacility and perhaps a 'language chronicle'with regular updates to retain the feel of ahuman presence. This of course would have toprove economically feasible for an individualor an educational institution to prepare, but itis not technically impossible or even difficulttoday, let alone in the future. The Web forteaching French grammar is an underused tooland a chaotic resource, but it needn't be awaste of time, given some imagination.

References

Eastment, D. (1996) The Internet and ELT, TheBritish Council.

Le Nouveau Bescherelle (1990), Hatier, Paris.

URLs

1. ILDhttp://www.ild.com/french/unitl.html

2. GRIEFhttp://larch.ukc.ac.uk:2001/home/ew/nfr/jral/jral/openfrench/options.html

3. University of Toronto

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/french/vale4. AlloProf

http://www.alloprof.qc.ca/5. Jacques Leon

http://www.kd.qd.se/iii/languages/french/course/

6. Appalachian State Universityhttp://www 1 .appstate.edu/~griffinw/fre2005/gramclass.html

7. CIEPhttp://www.ciep.fr

8. France a la Cartehttp://www.campus.bt.com/CampusWorld/pub/FranceALC/

9. Traveller's Frenchhttp://www.travlang.com/languages/cgi-bin/langchoice.cgi?page=main&lang 1=english&lang2=french

10. Greg Lessard's course, Queen's University atKinstonhttp://ww.total.net/~lessardc/al_venue.htm

11. Ithacahttp://www.ithaca.edu/hs/lang/lang2/fraform2.html

12. Dictees de Pivothttp://www.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/cgi-bin-ulg/pivot

13. Le True des genreshttp://www.fourmilab.ch/fran5ais/gender.doc

14. ARTLFhttp://humanities.uchicago.edu/forms_unrest/inflect.query.html

15. Moo francaishttp ://moo. syr. edu/~fmoo/telnet moo.syr.edu 7777

16. Laroussehttp://larousse.compuserve.com/

17. CLE Internationalhttp://www.france.diplomatie.fr/frmonde/languef/fle_cle/index.html

18. Didierhttp://www.france.diplomatie.fr/frmonde/languef/fle_didier/index.html

19. Cobuildhttp://titania.cobuild.collins.co.uk/direct_info.html

20. LTnternet en francaishttp://www.hachette.net

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