Indiana State Academic Standards and national foreign language standards four and five focus on the ability of students to see and understand things from the perspectives of other cultures. In order to accomplish these standards, students first need to determine their own cultural perspectives. It will then be possible for them to analyze the ways in which they demonstrate their perspectives and to compare their actions and reactions to events to those of others. Through this comparison/contrast process, students will come to better understand why people react in different ways to the same stimuli. Enabling students to increase their use realia from the foreign culture can further facilitate this understanding.

This project will begin by having students take a series of association surveys. The students will then put the class reactions together and look for patterns of responses. Once students have gained an understanding of their answers, they will be given a list of French students' reactions to the same survey questions. Students will then compare and contrast the two sets of responses. At this point, students will watch two versions of the same film. Three Men and a Baby is a remake of the French film Trois Hommes et un Coffin. Though these two films use the same basic screenplay, specific scenes were staged in different ways. Student will analyze these scenes and determine the reasons for the changes and the effects of the changes. This same process will be used with news articles and other realia. Additionally, a class of high school students near Cannes, France has agreed to become keypals with these students. This opportunity will afford the two sets of students the opportunity to exchange information about their daily activities and hopefully to develop friendships. As a means of evaluating this project, students will keep journals, write papers and present skits.