Paris, France - Course Descriptions - Elementary French and Phonetics II

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 taken FLE courses of 120 hours or so and who wish to develop their skills in French language.

Format

Cours Pratique/French Language: 120 hours (2 hours per day from Monday through Friday)
Phonetic class: 27 hours (1 hour per day from Monday through Friday every other week)
These classes prepare to the CCFS French Language Diploma/Certificate.

Goals

The training aims at enabling the learners to acquire an elementary level of communication in French, to enable the learner to understand and to express themselves, orally and written, in daily life situations.

The training is centered upon:

• Oral and written comprehension of isolated sentences, common expressions and short texts or conversations about familiar topics.
• Oral and written communication concerning daily life situations with simple means.
• Oral description and short writing about current or past events, current or past activities and personal experiences about familiar topics.

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

• Festival 2 (handbook), Exercises book Festival 2 and a CD from the handbook, various documents (oral, visual and written)
• Exercises book and personal exercises
• Phonetic improvement elaborated by applied linguistics (linguistique appliqué) teachers

Communicative Goals (oral and writing skills)

• To know each other, to greet, to introduce oneself
• To inform, to inform oneself, situate a spot, explain an itinerary
• To announce, to count/tell an event
• To invite someone, to answer (to RSVP) an invitation
• To offer/propose, to accept, to thank
• To apologize, to justify
• To talk about quality, a price
• To ask/ to give permission to do something
• To ordain and forbid
• To situate oneself in time
• To describe a person in simple terms (physical aspects, temper)
• To describe a thing (size, color, material…)
• To give one's opinion about someone, something
• To complain
• To understand a simple text, informative and explanatory text, a short tale
• To understand everyday documents (ads, flyers, menus, timetables, etc…)

Activities linked to those targets:

Oral

• Spontaneous and directed exercises: simple information exchange linked to everyday life, the narration of story, the description of an image, a person, an event, activities, experiences, short presentation on a familiar subject, commentary on picture or an image
• Interaction: role play (group of 2 or 4 students): ask for information, simple transactions, expressing an opinion, etc.
• Comprehension: work on read or listened documents (semi-authentic audio document, sonorous/tone texts, songs and documents extracted from the textbook)
• Dictations

Oral Assessment

• Exercises and interaction: participation (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

• Exercises: written exercises (appropriation of grammatical points and reusing of the thematic vocabulary)
• Blank exercises, reusing exercises, questions- answers, multiple choices exercises, substitution exercises (singular/plural, masculine/feminine, present tense/passé compose, etc.), creativity exercises, free exercises
• Writing essays in group or individual essays of short texts on a theme (semi-guided exercise)
• Images to describe or comment
• Dictation

Comprehension

• Read documents in group or individually with semantic and syntactic spotting clues in order to produce hypothesis on their meanings
• 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

• Review definite, indefinite, partitive and contracted articles after "ce n'est pas"
• Reviewing of the nouns: gender and number
• Reviewing of the adjectives: formation, place, agreement (accord) in gender and number with the noun or the subject of certain verbs
• Reviewing of possessive adjectives and the learning of possessive pronouns
• Reviewing of demonstrative adjectives and the learning of demonstrative pronouns
• Adjectives and indefinite articles: autre, autre chose, aucun, plusieurs, quelques, quelques-uns/unes, certains
• Prepositions and prepositional locutions : entre, au milieu de, en face de, à droite de, à gauche de, autour de, à côté de, au bout de, etc.
• Tenses : 3 groups + reflexive verbs
• Present tense (reviewing), progressive present, the passé composé, the imperfect, the plus-que parfait in past tense texts, the recent past, the future, the conditional present tense of politeness, the gerundive, the imperative
• Adverbs in –ment and the place of the adverb in simple tenses and passé compose + encore, déjà
• The personal simple pronouns COD and COI + en et COI y. Place of the personal pronouns in affirmative, interrogative, negative and imperative sentences
• The relative pronouns 'qui, que, où, dont' + sensitization : preposition + qui (for people)
• The negation : reviewing de ne … pas, ne … plus, ne … rien, ne … jamais, ne … pas encore + learning de ne … aucun, ne … ni… ni, ne … que, sans
• The interrogation : Qui est-ce qui ? Qui est-ce que ? Qu'est-ce qui ? Qu'est-ce que ? Lequel ?
• Impersonal phrase : il faut + infinitive
• Completive subordinate (indicative mode) : sensitization = the completive sentence in a past context
• Expressing the cause (comme)
• Expressing the consequence (donc, alors, c'est pourquoi)
• Expressing the goal (pour, dans le but de + infinitive)
• Expressing the time (lorsque, pendant que, depuis que, il y a/cela fait + durée + que, dans + durée, pour + durée)
• Expressing the opposition (pourtant, cependant, quand même)
• Expressing the condition (si + present tense/ future and sensitization : si + imperfect/ conditional present)
• Expressing the comparison : verb+ plus/autant/moins + que ; plus de/ autant de/ moins de + noun + que. The superlative : le plus/le moins + adjective + de + noun
• Reported speech present tense (sensitization of the past tense reported speech)

Vocabulary

• The customs, the manners (greetings, vacation, introductions, thanks)
• The space (the trips: to explain or understand the path to follow with the help of a city map) and time (dating an event)
• Leisure, sight-seeing (simple information on a trip, public transportation and buying tickets), organizing a trip
• Work (introduction of one's work), timetables, professions, educational system (small and big school, talking about their studies, classes, teachers)
• Vacation/Holidays (holiday places: the countryside, the mountains, the beach) and the meetings (ways to meet)
• Feelings: simple vocabulary to express their feelings and tastes (expressing what one likes)
• The market, groceries, food, cuisine/cooking (simple transactions at the market or at a store, quantity, numbers, prices), ordering a meal at a restaurant, content of meals, cooking recipe.
• Great steps of life (birth, couple's life, death) and ceremonies
• The appearance, the simple physical features
• Clothes, fashion (simple transactions at a store: indicate what one wants and ask for the price)
• The house (simple description of the housing), life's style
• Music (the most listened singers in France and musical instruments)
• Cinema (critic of a movie, description of the main characters and their main characteristics, era and location)
• Sports (the most frequent sports: ski, tennis, soccer, rugby, race, and hiking)

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 into an EI group with an elementary program (cf. Phonetic test and syllabus)

Content

Improvement: discrimination and production of the all speech sound in French instructions of the common spoken French. Continuity, rare vowels, nasal vowels, desanalization, consonants.

Activities

• In class: reviewing of exercises from the lesson then written exercises
• In the lab: recording of the lesson explained during the class, repeating of the pattern sentences, creation of instructions, reading

Phonetics Assessment

Continuous assessment 20%: repeating tests, creation, perception, discrimination, reading

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