Presents a language teaching method designed to increase communicative competence through an application of speech act theory and the use of dialogs and the source language. (AM)

Describes a one-semester conversational course taught at Harvard University designed to teach basic oral communication skills in French with the main emphasis on teaching students to pause while speaking. (AM)

Four activities for classroom French instruction are described: a board game for children's vocabulary development; a sentence and dialogue construction exercise using comic strips (existing or student-made); a discussion of the treatment of the notion of "event" in different journalistic contexts; and an exercise in debating skills and language.…