What is genuinely foreign has to be eliminated. Each topic is approached by reading and discussing a literary text. Literary texts were chosen that introduce students to the culture's attitude toward a particular aspect of life. Literature is understood here in the broad sense to include all language use with an esthetic dimension, including contemporary songs and popular tales. I decided to use literary texts not only because of their enduring quality, but more importantly because in the francophone world, literature is an inextricable part of cultural identity.
Literature is bound up with social, political, historical and even economic development.
Thus, through literary texts, students can acquire knowledge of francophone cultures in both their diachronic and synchronic dimensions. At the same time, by reading and interpreting these texts, students can acquire higher order linguistic and cognitive skills as they develop their aesthetic and interpersonal sensitivities. Whenever possible I tried to expand upon vocabulary from the text. Other exercises asked students to find cognates or elaborate families of words. In this way students could learn how to build upon their English skills to increase their reading comprehension.