Finalement: La compétence avancée à portée de la main! par Chantal P. Thompson, and Stayc DuBravac (review)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Reviewed by: Finalement: La compétence avancée à portée de la main! par Chantal P. Thompson, and Stayc DuBravac Frédérique Grim Thompson, Chantal p., and Stayc DuBravac. Finalement: La compétence avancée à portée de la main! Canadian Scholars Press, 2023. ISBN 978-1-77-338359-0. Pp. 379. Finalement offers a rare opportunity for advanced language courses in French: a proficiency-based textbook targeting advanced levels meant for grammar, composition, or communication courses. The objectives are to develop reading, speaking, and writing skills to reach advanced and even superior proficiency levels. The book is divided into four major units: I. Description and narration in the present tense; II. Narration and narration in the past tense; III. Narration in the future tense, opinion, and hypothesis; IV. Development of argumentation. Each unit is divided up into three communicative themes (12 themes total), themselves broken down into smaller grammar-focused chapters (26 chapters). This might seem overwhelming, but as stated in the introduction, Finalement is for either a two-semester sequence or a one-semester textbook with a large menu of options for the instructor to select. The themes explore topics such as identity, memories, travels, immigration, science and environment, media, happiness, and a few other topics that are relevant to current learners of French. Each thematic breakdown is introduced by a reading from Francophone authors (Belgium, Canada, France, Morrocco, Republic of Congo, Senegal, etc.), with pre-reading and follow-up activities. Following the reading, a series of theme-related chapters (re)introduces grammatical concepts, necessary to master advanced proficiency. The approach to grammar instruction is distinctly based on an inductive method to push learners to become independent in their learning, understand the rules on their own, while securing them in their language growth. All exercises are intentionally developed to push oral and written proficiency, through contextualized and theme-based lexical and grammar work. In each grammatical section, clear explanations and important notes such as "common mistakes" are presented, followed by application exercises. To conclude themes, students are given a writing theme-based project through a detailed process, to develop their sentence-to-paragraph abilities. Finally, tables of verb conjugation are listed with the most common tenses. Some strong characteristics: 1) The vocabulary seems current and authentic for today's communication. 2) On several occasions, the book offers opportunities to develop the paragraph narrative necessary to reach higher levels of proficiency. 3) This is a great overview of all fundamental grammatical topics necessary for proper communication in advanced proficiency. 4) Assignments push learners to think critically. 5) All units follow a similar format, facilitating the use of the book. 6) Instructors easily have the liberty to pick and choose what meets their course and program needs. 7) The texts and themes expose learners to the diversity of la Francophonie. Some weaknesses: 1) Lack of technology or mediatic support to make the book more relevant to today's students. 2) Activities are not accessible [End Page 162] on an online platform, so the instructors must hand grade them. Having an online platform that instantaneously gives feedback would be beneficial to the learners and instructors. Overall, the depth and quality of the textbook are strong, and I am considering adopting this textbook for my third-year composition course or fourth-year advanced communication course. [End Page 163] Frédérique Grim Colorado State University Copyright © 2024 American Association of Teachers of French
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.024 | 0.010 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".