French/Francophone Language & Media
Grammatical Help
Oxford guide to the French language, Oxford University Press, 1992. REF PC 2105 R64 1992
Quebec's Centre Collégial de Développement de Materiél Didactique has an excellent site. Click on "Documents théoriques" at the top and then on "Rubrique Grammaticale;" then click on a topic.
Dictionaries
Trésor de la langue française;
dictionnaire de la langue du XIXe et du XXe siècle
(1789-1960), Editions du Centre
national de la recherche scientifique, 1971- REF PC 2625
I4
Dictionnaire de l'argot français et de
ses origines, Larousse, 1999. REF PC 3741 C66 1999
Try Orthonet, sponsored by the Conseil International de la Langue Française and connected to Le Dictionnaire Robert. Its "Corrections" service may be especially valuable.
Try YourDictionary for a listing of other dictionaries, including bilingual English-French.
A rich site with links to a number of electronic resources is ATILF (Analyse et Traitement Informatique de la Langue Française).
Language Practice
An organization called Language Revolution has developed a fairly good site for audio help with pronunciation. (Some of their other sections seem to require some sort of login, but the pronunciation portion seems to be openly accessible.)
The BBC has a site called French Steps that lets you hear French within a context.
Study abroad programs provide the opportunity for daily exercise in a language, Try BU's Office of International Programs web site for a listing of available programs.
Media
News Sources
The BU Libraries subscribes to the print version of Le Monde, France's major daily newspaper, and you can also connect to the electronic version from the Libraries' News web site. Be aware that the web version differs from the print, which is the case is all media that have both print and electronic versions.The web version may not carry the same article and you are very restricted in searching past, or archival, issues.
The Factiva database also covers Le Monde beginning with 2004 and offers indexing, which means you can search. From the Factiva home page, click on "search" and then change your language option.You can also click on "tools" and then "source lists" to see all the French-language publications covered by the database. Remember to use French terms to search. For example, a search on "writers" had 35 results; a search on "ecrivains" produced 1,830.
A site called AllYouCanRead lists French language magazines by category. News and Newspapers Online, maintained by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, has excellent links to newspapers worldwide.
Radio & Television
COMFM lists and connects to live French language radio stations that have webstreams. Note the media software required to listen or view. The BBC maintains good links to reliable web tv sites.
Cinema
For film information, check out the Bibliothèque de Film, which has a strong research component. And the Internet Movie Database, in English, is very comprehensive, but more popular.