Learning a foreign language promotes new ways of seeing the world and the self in relation to it (Gee, 1996), making practices and perspectives underlined through the acquisition of vocabulary and grammatical structures available for appropriation (Bakhtin, 1981; Kramsch, 1993, 2009). Using a combination of interviews and self‐reported questionnaires, this study explores what may influence learners' preconceived images and cultural representations of the French language and culture in an introductory French language course. Data analysis shows that participants started a reflection on how learning a foreign language opens access to the cultures that speak it and embodies cultural acts. However, the findings suggest that at the beginning level, the reflection on the interconnection between a language and its culture needs to be nurtured within the course content itself in order to encourage the process of developing cross‐cultural understanding.

The stereotype has it that native French Speakers are annoyed by foreign Speakers' errors in pronunciation. The purpose of this pilot study was to assess beliefs about the importance of accurate pronunciation in French held by three afferent groups: (1) 73 second‐ and third‐semester students of French at a large midwestern research university in the United States, (2) 16 nonnative‐speaker instructors of French at the same institution, and (3) 24 native Speakers of French living in France. In a fall Semester, each of the three groups received near mirror‐image versions of a questionnaire, ranging from 33 items (for the learners) to 29 items (for the instructors) to 26 items (for the native French Speakers) in true/false format. Acknowledging that attitudes toward foreign accents might be language‐ and nationality‐specific, all questions pertained to Americans speaking French. Percentages were calculated, and corresponding questions on all three questionnaires were grouped according to theme, then compared and cross‐referenced with participants' backgrounds. Generally, this study revealed a gap between the attitudes of hypothetical native Speakers, promoted in teaching on the one hand, and the attitudes professed by real native Speakers on the other hand. The results of this study discredit the myth that native French Speakers have a low tolerance for an American accent in French. Instructors, and nonnative Speaker instructors specifically, need to project more realistic goals and refrain from misinforming their students that a perfect native‐like pronunciation is vital to successful communication with native Speakers.

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Research on the place of culture within the foreign language curriculum has shown that current teaching practices often consider culture as simply something to be added on instead of effectively integrating it (

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