Paris, France - Course Descriptions - Advanced French and Phonetics

Course Information

Contact Hours and Credits

Availability

Full Description

Ten hours per week are devoted to grammar, verb conjugation, spelling, vocabulary, approach to literary texts, written and spoken expression. The texts used in this course have been developed by the faculty at the Sorbonne and all reading materials are focused on French culture. This is the same for conversation topics as well. There will be regular evaluation of work and progress, as well as a final exam (written and oral). This course builds on students' existing knowledge of French.

Audience

This class is aimed at non-French-speaking young adults and adults who had already taken FLE courses of 360 hours or so and who wish to develop their skills in French language and acquire detailed knowledge on miscellaneous civilization thematic/themes.

Format

Cours Pratique/French Language: 120 hours (2 hours per day from Monday through Friday)
Phonetic class: 25 hours (1 hour per day from Monday through Friday every other week)

These classes prepare to the Diploma of Languages or the CCFS French Language Diploma/Certificate.

Goals

The training aims at enabling the learners to acquire a functional dimension on the learning of the language (on parle pour …) and its relational and intellectual dimension (on parle de … et avec …). The learner will communicate and interact in daily life situations (to write administrative letters for instance), but also express ideas, opinions, feelings.

The training is centered on:

• Oral and written comprehension of long and complex texts (concrete or abstract topics from miscellaneous sources)
• Oral and written comprehension about daily life situations (to inform and to get informed, make claims or express one's opinion, etc.)
• Oral and written description of current or past events, current or past activities and personal experiences on various topics from autobiographic to socio-cultural or geopolitical (giving info about oneself, one's country, etc.)

The literary corpus familiarizes the students with a series of great texts and initiates them to critical reading.

The lecture about French society and culture enable the students to deepen their knowledge on French civilization and to improve their oral comprehension.

Teaching Approach

Communicative approach centered on the learning of the language structures. The grammatical axe is favored to develop the four skills.

Overall Assessment

• Continuous assessment 20%: tests in class (grammar questions, dictations, written and oral exercises, written and oral comprehension)
• Final exam 80%:

1. Written part 40%: grammar questions (20%), written comprehension (10%), written expression (10%)
2. Oral part 40%: description of an image (10%), comprehension questions on an oral document (10%) and a phonetic grade (continuous assessment 20%) 

Teaching Materials

• Edito B2, Didier
• Various documents (sounded, visual and written)
• Exercise book and personal exercises
• 8 to 10 "Anthologie de la literature française" (Belin) texts, of which six will be used for the final individual oral exam
• Literary stories: chronology of great literary movements, author biographies
• Phonetic improvement elaborated by applied linguistics (linguistique appliqué) teachers

Communicative Goals (oral and writing skills)

• Draw the main ideas from a text at the very first listening or the very first reading: find the main thread/theme, cultural references, the implication of the locator or the author
• Use the context to define the meaning of not-famous expressions (orally or written) and idiomatic turns
• React with writing and orally in a personal way (and relevant) at society topics
• Participate in a relevant manner to debates or conversations about society topics while giving information and opinions
• Write a summary. Rephrase oral or written information in brief written text.
• Make the difference between locator opinions and authors' point of view
• Introduction to the literary analysis: locating texts in their socio-historical context and comment them

Activities linked to those targets:

Oral

• Spontaneous and directed exercises: simple information exchange linked to everyday life, the narration of story in a coherent way, argue in an efficient manner, 10-minute presentation on a cultural, tourist, artistic or literary topic.
• Interaction: role play (group of 2 or 4 students): ask for information, interview for a job, validate a project, debate, ideas, etc.
• Comprehension: work on read documents (poems, literary texts) or listened documents (semi-authentic audio document, sonorous/tone texts, songs and lectures)
• Dictations

Oral Assessment

• Production and interaction: quality of skills (understanding the instructions, global skills, appropriate vocabulary, phonetic correction)
• Comprehension: checking on the global comprehension or a detailed sonorous document according to lexical targets (discovery, recognizing, hypothesis on the meaning) and linguistics (structural spotting)

Written

• Production: written exercises (appropriation of grammatical points and reusing of the thematic vocabulary)
• Blank exercises, reusing exercises, questions- answers, multiple choice exercises, substitution exercises (présent/passé, subordinate/nominal groups, etc.), creativity exercises, free exercises
• Writing essays in group or individual essays of short texts on a theme (semi-guided exercise)
• Work on writing essays: argumentation topics or inventing writing, cover or resignation letters, comments on a quotation, short text, literary poem explanations, etc.

Comprehension

• Read documents in group or individually with semantic and syntactic spotting clues in order to produce hypothesis on their meanings
• Exercises of literal comprehension: study of literary texts vocabulary, synthesis of knowledge
• Exercises of written comprehension from the textbook (Multiple questions and answers to fully write) and various documents

Written Assessment

• Exercises: checking of the comprehension of the instructions, global skills, level structures, vocabulary
• Comprehension: checking of the comprehension (global and/or detailed) and the interpretation of the document's information

Grammar

• Express one's opinion: certainty and doubt (indicative and subjunctive)
• Reported speech
• Expression of feelings
• Liking words
• Expressing the cause and consequence
• Passive voice
• Expressing the comparison (comment numbered data)
• Past narration
• Expressing one's appreciation/opinion/assessment
• Expression of time
• Past participle agreement (with "avoir", reflexive verbs, verbs followed by an infinitive)
• Expressing quantity
• Present participle, gerundive and verbal adjective
• Relative pronouns
• Expressing the goal
• Expressing concession and opposition
• Expressing the condition and hypothesis

Lexicon

• Vocabulary: opinion and feelings: certainty, doubt, love, friendship, happiness, sadness, anger, etc.
• Liking words and logical connective
• Media vocabulary: oral and written press
• Sightseeing
• Means of transportation
• Vocabulary: to talk about art, cinema, literature
• Food (cooking and gastronomy)
• Corporal expressions (n'en faire qu'à sa tête, couper les cheveux en quatre, avoir la main verte, etc.)
• The environment
• The weather forecast
• Geography
• Wildlife (wild animals, trees and flowers, etc)
• Science and techniques
• Computer science
• Work

Phonetics

A specific phonetic test is set up for all the students in order to place them into the appropriate training class. We place them either into a RA group or an R group, if they have already attended the RA class (cf. Phonetic test and syllabus)

Content

• RA Improvement: improvement of the pronunciation and structured approach of the follow-up
• Continuity, rhythm, pronuncing the vowels, oral/written relations

Activities

• In class: theoretical explanation of the lesson, rehearsal of the exercises then writing test.
• In the lab: recording of the lesson explained during the class, rehearsal of the pattern sentences, creation of instructions, reading.

Phonetic Assessment

Continuous assessment 20%: rehearsal tests, creation, perception, reading

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