Rebecca Valette
Professor Emerita of French
Rebecca Valette
Ph.D.
Contact
Lyons Hall 304
Telephone: 617-552-8320
Email: rebecca.valette@bc.edu
Education
- B.A., Mount Holyoke College
- Ph.D., University of Colorado
Research Interests
Second language acquisition; development of French and Spanish teaching materials; Navajo art with ceremonial themes; history of the French flute school
BIOGRAPHY
Rebecca Valette joined the Boston College faculty in 1965 as professor of French and director of the Language Laboratory. She taught courses in foreign language pedagogy, as well as French language and phonetics. A charter member of the BC Phi Beta Kappa chapter (1970), she was also instrumental in establishing the BC chapter of the French honor society Pi Delta Phi (1997) which, in 1999, sponsored the first campus labyrinth. She retired in 2003.
Internationally recognized for her work in second language testing and acquisition, Rebecca Valette has lectured widely in Japan, Australia, France, Germany, Belgium, Yugoslavia, and Great Britain, as well as across the United States and Canada. From 1992 to 1994, she served as President of the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF). Rebecca and her husband Jean-Paul Valette are authors of over twenty widely-used French and Spanish college and secondary school textbooks. More recently, they have been focusing their research on Navajo art with ceremonial themes and have curated three museum exhibits of Yeibichai weavings.