By VP of Research Dr. Jack Dempsey & Dr. Julien Berthelon
In this blog series, we explore Cascade Reading as a language learning, reading comprehension, and writing tool across different languages. As of now, Cascade Reading operates in 5 languages, including English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German, with more on the way. Although this series will explore some challenges specific to a particular language, a likely theme to emerge is that Cascade Reading is poised to support language learning and literacy acquisition universally across languages.
In this third installment, we spoke with Dr. Julien Berthelon, a former French Instructor and now an International Programs Coordinator at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Challenges in French Language Learning
Dr. Berthelon has over a decade of experience teaching French at the University level across domains, including speaking, pronunciation, literature, and composition. Over the years, he said that students were usually most nervous about pronunciation and speaking; however, they also frequently had issues with several foundational grammatical concepts in French.
“Students would struggle with a few grammar concepts like the use of subjunctive, pronoun placement, prepositions, genders. Figuring out how to form prepositions, and especially finding out where pronouns go in French as compared to English was always a challenge.”
This point about pronouns is something familiar to many educators of romance languages like Spanish, French, and Italian. In these languages, direct object pronouns, like the word ‘it’ in ‘I bought it,’ appear in between the subject and the verb, essentially reading as ‘I it bought.’ These challenges with word order don’t go away, especially as the language grows more and more complex.
“Obviously you start with shorter sentences, and the longer you go the longer sentences should get. That’s where you start getting word misplacements, mistakes in negations, agreements across sentences, etc..”
Supporting French Learning with Cascade Reading
What’s perhaps most powerful about the Cascade Format is that it operates in largely the same fashion from language to language. For example, the above diagram was easily applied to French from our original English principles. After demonstrating how Cascade Reading works to Dr. Berthelon and having a discussion of how it could best be used, a few ideas came to mind. In particular, the Cascade Explorer View stuck out as a potentially useful tool for students learning grammatical concepts.
“I like that you can highlight which word belongs to which family. I like the visual aid, and I really like the collapse feature where you can just essentialize the sentence to see what’s the main subject and verb. Having that visual aid for students would be useful.”
He also went on to describe how he would implement Cascade as a reading tool in courses, especially before students are typically able to engage with primary sources due to the language complexity used.
“I could see activities with newspaper articles, something that’s not written for learners, primary sources. I think it could allow the teacher to expose learners to primary sources earlier in the teaching process. It would help break down the more complex sentences. Even with more advanced levels, particularly with literature, this could be really helpful (e.g., with Proust, Balzac). You could use it to talk about the writing styles in addition to facilitating understanding.”
About the Instructor
Julien Berthelon, Ph.D., spent over 12 years teaching French language, culture, and literature at American universities while pursuing his doctorate in French Literature and Cinema at the University of Illinois, which he completed in 2024. Drawing on his deep expertise in language and cross-cultural exchange, he now serves as Academic Program Coordinator for the College of LAS International Programs at the University of Illinois, where he fosters intercultural engagement and meaningful connections. In this role, he supports both American students pursuing study abroad experiences and international students navigating academic life in the United States.
