Library Visits in France & the Children's Books We Loved There

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Bonjour! The rain is pouring down, but spring is whispering from around the corner here in Oregon--there are little purple crocuses blooming in our front yard and yellow forsythia blossoms beckoning from the backyard. Nonetheless, today I'm taking you back to our summer travels in France to share about the library books my children enjoyed during our stay there. (I'll link to them on Amazon so you can obtain them if you're in the U.S. or Canada.) We visited libraries everywhere we traveled in France, and we were thrilled to obtain a library card in Lyon during the last two months of our France stay. (I simply needed to sign a form swearing to our address in France, however temporary it was.)

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ACTFL 2014 Conference Summary: Language Learning Links

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Les amis, I've been wanting to tell you about the ACTFL Conference that took place in San Antonio, Texas, just over a week ago. ACTFL is the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages; their annual conference is oriented towards K-12 teachers of French, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, Japanese, German, and Italian. This year's conference was the second largest--there were well over 6,000 teachers in attendance!

Here are my favorite aspects of the conference:

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5 Ways to Learn French (or Another Language) Without Taking A Class

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When I was a high school French teacher, I told my students that high school was the last time in their lives when they could take a foreign language class for free. Now that I'm raising my children in French, however, I see that my statement wasn't entirely accurate. Here are five ways to learn French or improve your knowledge of the language for free without enrolling in a class:

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