Madeline Turan

Prof. Madeline Turan teaches not only French but also Francophone cinema and teacher education courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Starting in Fall 2024, she also began supervising student teaching for teacher candidates in French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Before joining Stony Brook, she taught French at the middle and high school levels for over 30 years.

Prof. Turan believes that her students can gain significant knowledge and an understanding of the humanities even through one or two years of learning the French language and its diverse cultures. She integrates the study of literature, cinema, music, art, history, and society into her French language classrooms by providing careful scaffolding and encouraging students to utilize all available resources. Thus, her students learn about culture through the language that they are learning, rather than through someone else’s smooth English translation. She says: “I urge students to speak in my FRN 111. Regardless of whether they speak Français, Anglais, or Franglais, whatever comes out of their mouth is fine. If it’s not right, we’ll make it better. We have to let them use what they can and have them build on it.”

From an interview by Eriko Sato, August 8, 2024