Vive Voix is a collection of French and Francophone poetry read aloud by native speakers of French. The featrued texts may be organized by author's name, first line or title. At the time of this review, there were fifty-three authors featured, most of them the classic figures that one finds in French literature anthologies and textbooks - Apollinaire (his collection includes two poems read by the author himself), Baudelaire, Cocteau, Hugo,LaFontaine, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Valéry(also reciting his own work) and many others. It is interesting to note the presence of Jacques Brel and Léopold Senghor among the featured Francophone poets.
Vive Voix is a project of Wheaton College organized by Professor Kirk Anderson.
Type of Material:
Audio collection of French poetry
Recommended Uses:
Self-directed learners can use this site for pronunciation practice,
Technical Requirements:
QuickTime
Identify Major Learning Goals:
The user will learn how to understand French poetry as it is recited.
Target Student Population:
Undergraduate students of French
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
Depending on poem, different levels of listening and reading proficiency in French.
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
The strength of this collection is its selection of some of the most commonly taught works of French poetry for reading and listening on the Internet. With a click of a mouse learners can hear French poetry read by native speakers. They can listen to them as often as they like for general appreciation, to study French phonetics and to imprrove their own petry reading techniques. There are several pieces read by the authors themselves, which always adds an engaging dimension for the student. This is particularly true when one is familiar with the poem in advance; the oral rendition is frequently a very different experience from what one experiences on the written page.
Vive Voix also has a few texts that have two different readings of the poems. See Valéry and Villon.
Concerns:
The simple expandable layout lends itself well to potential expansion. It would be an enhancement to see more women, North African, Sub-Saharan and DOM-TOM poets added to this impressive collection.
It would be preferable to include the written text of all the poems. Femme Noire
of Senghor is an example of a poem that does not have the accompanying text.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
Faculty can use Vive Voix to familiarize students with poetry reading and to provide instruction in phonetics and listening comprehension. Faculty who teach online courses will be particularly grateful for this site, because it allows students to hear clearly articulated French spoken by a variety of native speakers.
The site can be profitably used in the classroom, in a lab setting or anywhere by self-directed learners.
Concerns:
A possible enhancement would be an expansion of the external links on Vive Voix to author-specific sites. The Bibliothèque Nationale has a number of very interesting sites that refer to authors that are featured in Vive Voix,
particularly in its Lettres collection.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
This site is very simply designed with a clear emphasis on functionality. The author strives to bring French poetry directly to the listener in the most straightforward way possible and succeeds. The sound is clear and the process is user-friendly.
Creative Commons:
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