Overview
Susan LoBello lived in Europe as a child, attending French and Italian schools, and has been teaching French and Italian at the college level since 1981. She primarily teaches courses in intermediate French composition and conversation and advanced French grammar. In addition to investigating new pedagogical tools, her research interests include the works of Gide, Maupassant, Mauriac, and Sartre, and depictions of individuality, eccentricity, and self-deception in 19th- and 20th-century French novels and plays.
Susan is the coordinator of French 2190 and French 3010, a sequence of courses that builds on student's pre-existing knowledge of the language to attain greater proficiency in speaking and writing. She is currently working on means to overcome the "plateau" effect, in which students--having attained a level of proficiency which allows them to navigate fairly comfortably in the language--cease to make further progress even if they continue to work on the language. Susan believes that, with appropriate training in literature, culture, and grammar in the context of ordinary, everyday conversations, students can indeed move in the direction of native fluency.
Research Focus
- Works of Gide, Maupassant, Mauriac, and Sartre
- Depictions of individuality, eccentricity and self-deception in 19th- and 20th-century French novels and plays
