I began my research with the exploration of the governmental bodies surrounding French Speaking Countries. There is an Agency for Cultural and Technical Cooperation (ACCT) on the Internet from which I gathered information. I made a map of the different countries listed on this page to get an idea of how many countries or what part of the world has a French speaking population. After finding information on the ACCT, I decided to look into the French government and their reasons for expansion. This brought me into the subject of economy and its effect on colonization.
I then searched through the CIA World Fact Book in the Documents room in the Graduate Library of the University of Michigan, for the countries in tthe atlas world data base, that spoke French or had a French speaking community. Some of the results were surprising, such as Brazil, Argentina, and Italy. Due to the fact that some of the countries had a small population of French speakers, I would use them for the map but only say a few words about it. My main focus was on countries that had French as their official language at one point in time. I looked up each country with a French speaking population and wrote out some of the principal reasons why they had this population or went as far as having French as their official language. Most of the reasons were due to French expansion and the empire, colonization and resources. I used this information as a base to show why certain countries speak French and others right next to it, may not. The main powers colonizing at the time were Great Britain, Spain, France, Portugal and the Dutch. I show these countries to get an idea of what kind of race was going on for resources. I took a look at the 17th and the 19th centuries of exploration to see what the French speaking world looked like then and to notice any major differences or shifts in power between France, Great Britain, and Spain. This took me to the Map Library where I looked at border differentiation across the globe and in the United States.
As a final aspect, I focused on regions in the U.S. and why they spoke French. This will give my students a more up close and personal view of the different cultures in the U.S. and in their neighborhood. I'll also take a look at other major languages spoken in the U.S. so they understand the diversity of everyone living in the U.S. today and its history.