French in Action is a French language course, developed by Professor Pierre Capretz of Yale University. The course includes workbooks, textbooks, and a 52-episode television series.

The television series — the best-known aspect of the course — was produced in 1987 by WGBH, Yale University, and Wellesley College, and funded by Annenberg/CPB, and since then, has been aired frequently on PBS in the United States, developing a cult following[1] for its romantic comedy segments interspersed among grammar and vocabulary lessons.

In 2010, Yale University hosted a 25th anniversary reunion in celebration of the programme’s success.

Origins

During the Second World War, Yale Professor Emeritus of Romance Languages Jean Boorsch, had produced for the American ASTP (Army Specialized Training Program) and the Navy V-12s (V-12 Navy College Training Program) an approach to oral French learning. He used a language immersion technique that he published in 1944 as the “Méthode Orale de Français”.[4] It had two main characters Mireille and Robert. Between 1960 and 1961, Boorsch and Capretz worked on an oral teaching method (never published) in which they retained the names of these two characters.[5]

Capretz maintained these names in tribute to the “Method Boorsch” in each of the versions of his own “methods” before developing his French in Action course. He had the opportunity to progressively develop the characters themselves during this evolution.

Format

Each episode is half an hour long. Early episodes have four main elements:

A classroom session, featuring Capretz explaining the basic ideas of the episode to a group of international students

An excerpt from an ongoing story, filmed especially for the series, and framed as a narrative that Capretz and his students are inventing in order to practice their French. The story focuses on American student Robert Taylor (Charles Mayer) and his French love interest Mireille Belleau (Valérie Allain).

Clips from French films and television shows, illustrating the new vocabulary words of the lesson

A brief Guignol-style puppet show recapping some element of the episode’s story (filmed at the Théâtre Vrai Guignolet at Champs-Élysées)

Cast

Pierre J. Capretz - Narrator
Valérie Allain - Mireille
Charles Mayer - Robert
Virginie Contesse - Marie-Laure
Julie Arnold - Cécile
Patrice Bachelot - Jean-Luc
Franck de la Personne - Hubert
Jean-Claude Cotillard - Mime/Homme en Noir
Riton Liebman - Jean-Pierre Bourdon
Mohamed Camara - Ousmane