Authentic Online Resources for Learning French

Computer technology and the Internet provide dynamic teaching and learning conditions that enable language learners to interact with people across the world, have individual access to a variety of meaningful authentic resources, and develop critical analysis and scientific inquiry. Computer technology can provide students with the means to interact with language as it is used by native speakers. More precisely, internet-based authentic resources give learners the opportunity to learn useful sociocultural facts, develop computer skills and use complex language through exposure to a variety of discourse in the target language. This paper aims at exploring how authentic internet websites and resources, developed originally for French people (vs. educational websites designed for French language learners) can be used as authentic teaching and learning resources. For this project, ten internet-based authentic tasks were assigned to 96 elementary French language students at the University of Tehran over five years (five elementary French classes). For performing these tasks, learners had to consult various French websites, working simultaneously on their reading and writing proficiencies, sociocultural and pragmatic competencies, and life skills such as planning, searching, creating, manipulating and using information for performing everyday tasks. Using online authentic resources for learning French, students demonstrated remarkable improvements in their lexical competency (through exposure and use of dynamic lexicon available at various websites), reading (scanning authentic texts for gathering information), writing (expressing individual ideas and opinions), creativity, sociocultural competencies (understanding the French culture and practical know-hows), and their ability to activate and use information for completing the projects, therefore, becoming language learners, and lifelong language users.