Just spent a pleasant weekend with my old friend Jonathan and his family in Brussels. Elspeth is away on a university trip in Japan and Australia, so I thought I'd have a weekend away. We went to the René Magritte exhibition at the Brussels Museum of Modern Art. Very interesting, beautifully presented, though I am left baffled by Magritte's art. I'm sure I either analyse too much or not enough. Jonathan took us to his rhythm and blues club at Sounds - good solid rock/blues until 2 a.m. Sunday was spent relaxing, eating and walking.
I'm sitting here with my copies of Cours Illustré de Français Book 1 and Longman's Audio-Visual French Stage A1 . I have previously mentioned the former, published in 1966, with its use of pictures to exemplify grammar and vocabulary. In his preface Mark Gilbert says: "The pictures are not... a mere decoration but provide further foundation for the language work at this early stage." He talks of "fluency" and "flexibility": "In oral work it is advisable to persist with the practice of a particular pattern until the pupils can use it fluently and flexibly. Flexibility means, for example, the ability to switch from one person of the verb to another..." Ah! Now, the Longman offering, written by S. Moore and A.L. Antrobus, published in 1973, just seven years later, has a great deal in common with Gilbert's course. We now have three colours (green, black and white) rather than mere black and white. The layout is arguably more attrac...
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