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Guide > The Modules > General Intro to the Modules

General Intro to the Modules

There are seven modules in all. Each of the modules represents a different type of material to be analyzed in a cross-cultural fashion. It is not necessary to use all seven modules or to use them in the order in which they appear. It is essential, however, to start with having students answer the questionnaires since these questionnaires provide the basis for the students' subsequent explorations. Modules 2 through 7 can be used in any order you wish.

• Module 1: QUESTIONNAIRES
  
  • analyzing questionnaire 1
  • analyzing questionnaire 2
  • analyzing questionnaire 3
  
  
  
• Module 2: DATA/CHIFFRES
  This module provides access to both French and American statistical resources and polls found on the Web. They are used as supplementary resources and as a basis for research on certain topics of the students' choosing.
  
  
• Module 3: IMAGES
  This module is different from the others, in the sense that the content is to be generated mostly by the students themselves and added gradually to the site. It is meant to serve as a kind of bicultural visual dictionary and add a multimedia dimension to the Cultura site.
  
  
• Module 4: FILMS
  This modules provides you with: - a list of French films that have been made into American remakes - articles on remakes in general - film reviews of Trois Hommes et un Couffin and Three Men and a Baby - worksheets to work with Trois Hommes et un Couffin and Three Men and a Baby Analyzing films allows students to deal with issues unreachable through text only, such as the different ways in which humor, suspense, oral discourse or gestures can be used in very different ways.
  
  
• Module 5: NEWSSTAND/KIOSQUE
  It contains a variety of American and French newspapers and magazines found on the Web. This module allows students to compare, for instance, the headlines of the New York Times and Le Monde on a same given day and how one same news item topic is covered and presented.
  
  
• Module 6: LIBRARY/BIBLIOTHEQUE
  It contains a number of excerpts from articles and books which present French points of view on the US and American points of view on France. Some of these texts also present a comparative analysis on certain issues. These texts allow students to see what writers and experts have written and to link those observations with their own, leading them to further probe and question what they have discovered so far. The library contains: - historical texts (such as a comparison of the French and American revolutions) - anthropological texts (dealing, for instance, with the different ways in which French and Americans bring up their children or with the differing notions of friendhip, etc...) - literary texts (for instance, observations on France by Edith Wharton and on the US by Baudrillard and Simone de Beauvoir)
  
  
• Module 7: ARCHIVES
  They include all the answers to the questionnaires and all the forums which have taken place for the last six semesters between: - MIT students and students at the Ecole Supèrieure d'Aèronautique in Toulouse, France (Fall and Spring semesters of èXX) - MIT students and students at the INT (Fall èX - Lenox High School students and students at the Lycèe Marcellin Berthelot in Pantin (Year 1999) These archives will allow students to take a longitudinal look across several semesters and different constituencies and thus form yet other observations