Introduction: Le Voyage à Travers le Temps is designed to help students of third-year college French learn to write creatively in the French language. Beginning with simple tasks and progressing to more complex ones, this site guides students through various multimedia activities in order to lift learners out of their current cultural environment. Students travel back in time and imagine situations that are not part of their everyday life. Le Voyage may serve as supplementary material to accompany any third-year French course.

Goals: The site provides students with experience in interdisciplinary analysis: film sequences, texts, images, and music function as a springboard for creative thought, analysis, and writing. Furthermore, this site emphasizes student responsibility. If students desire to learn more background information on the subject at hand, they have the option to link to selected French sites in the Ressources.

Organization: Le Voyage is organized into four chronological dossiers (Le Moyen Age through the 18th century). Each dossier is divided into four sections:

1. Introduction: Explains the writing activity.
2. Traitement du sujet: Guides students through pre-writing exercises.
3. Création de document: Students create a composition or web page.
4. Chat/E-mail: Students role-play, brainstorm, revise and edit in either a chatroom or by e-mail.

Points de repère: Each century revolves around one writing activity.

1. Le Moyen Age: Décrire une personne
2. La Renaissance: Écrire une lettre
3. Le XVIIe siècle: Raconter un événement
4. Le XVIIIe siècle: Expliquer une idée
5. Le siècle de votre choix: Exprimer une opinion

Multimedia: The last assignment is based on multimedia writing. It introduces students to the idea of integrating different media in order to express an opinion. The site provides an example from which students can build their own web page.

*I would like to thank the Center for Educational Technology at Middlebury College for providing me with the instruction and tools to build this project.

Created by Vanessa Arnaud, Ph.D. Please send comments and questions to arnaud@saclink.csus.edu