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L'Histoire au Jour le Jour

mark of Le Monde texts, and its potential for language-driven explorations, limited though it may be leveland source-wise, hardly needs to be restated. As with the paper version, the electronic database lends itself to all kinds of extensive or intensive enquiries whether lexical, syntactic or discourse-based. But because its search options make it readily possible to select texts, in the broad range of types featured, according to specific sets of parameters, it is much better adapted for comparative studies: discourse treatment of a particular topic across different types of text (e.g. biographic dossier, entretien, opinion, publicity), or variations in the style of a particular author for example. Yet, if anything, the electronic display of the texts makes them even more difficult to handle and process than usual, not least because their inevitable fragmentation and the uniformity of their presentation impede reliance on layout, typographical and associated clues which can normally be so helpful for learners in their approach to intimidating Le Monde texts. Thus Le Monde on CD-ROM, like its paper counterpart, remains best suited to the more linguistically proficient A-Level and a fortiori post A-Level language students and is likely, even at these levels, to require tutoring guidance if its linguistic potential is to be exploited to the full. There are, however, a number of ways in which the electronic mode can facilitate this process. The fact that the database can be readily interfaced with other electronic resources is itself an advantage: its exploration can then be either assisted with comparatively little effort (using for instance electronic dictionaries such as the Robert Electronique or other reference databases), and/or rationalised by means of such tools as concordancers, which make room for a whole gamut of inductive lexical, syntactic or other synchronic or diachronic studies. Besides, the search options make it possible to initiate explorations selectively and purposefully, and in this sense to tailor enquiries or comparisons whether lexical, notional, functional or discourse-based to particular needs and requirements. The pedagogical usefulness for students cuts several ways: it makes for increased control over material selection and for linguistically analytical pointedness; but it is also conducive to meta-linguistic and meta-cognitive awareness, the importance of which for the learning process is now welldocumented (cf. O'Malley and Chamot, 1990, amongst others ). But the flexibility of the search procedures and the diversity of text types and topics also have more mundane benefits, particularly for teachers: they simply make it easier to track texts for specific functions. For example, locating five texts to suit particular prerequisites common topic (immigration), directly and indirectly addressed, explicitly and implicitly contrastive points of view, linguistic diversity, length adapted to examination formats for comparative purposes would take hours of laborious scanning with the paper version of Le Monde; with Le Monde on CD-ROM, it is a matter of no more than half-an-hour.