Paris, France - Course Descriptions - Intermediate 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 speakers who had ever attended 240 hours FLE classes and who wish to develop their skills in French language and acquire detailed knowledge on thematic/themes.

Format

Cours Pratique/French Language: 120 hours (2 hours per day from Monday through Friday)

Phonetic class: 25 hours for Fall 2 & 20 for Fall 1

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

Goals

The training aims at enabling the learners to acquire an intermediate level of communication in French, to enable the learner to understand and to express themselves, orally and in writing, 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 clear means.
• Oral description and short writing about current or past events, current or past activities and personal experiences about familiar topics and various fields of interest.
• The literary corpus familiarizes the students with some great texts and initiates them to critical reading.
• The lectures about the French culture and society enable the students to go into detail their knowledge about the French civilization and to perfect/improve their listening 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%: individual oral test (%10), detailed comprehension on a oral document (10%) and a phonetic grade (continuous assessment 20%) 

Teaching Materials

• Festival 3 (handbook), Exercises book Festival 3 and a CD from the handbook, various documents (oral, visual and written)
• Exercises book and personal exercises
• Texts extracted from the "FLE par les texts", Belin, five texts for the individual final oral test
• Phonetic improvement elaborated by applied linguistics (linguistique appliqué) teachers

 Communicative Goals (oral and writing skills)

• To count and to describe: telling news in brief, an anecdote, to relate the past, to talk about a past event
• Expressing feelings: expressing the reasons of one's friendship to someone, one's passion; to tell an experience (negative or positive)
• Explaining, justifying. Explaining one's job, justifying one's life style choices, comment an event
• Giving advice, expressing one's objectives/goals: expressing goals
• Situating events in the past (past, present, future)
• Planning, expressing hypothesis: to expose a situation and to propose solutions for the future
• Expressing one's opinion from miscellaneous topics
• Comparing and Opposing: to know how to compare symbols, regions, housing styles, two judgment, two opinions, two behaviors
• Debating and arguing: expressing the reasons of one's opposition to the subject, explaining different arguments, debating on ideas
• Reported someone's speech
• Introduction to literature: situating the texts into their socio-historical context

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

• 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

• Reviewing of nouns
• Reviewing of adjectives
• Reviewing of pronouns
• Reviewing of articles
• The value of the narration present tense and future
• The past tenses (imperfect, present perfect, past perfect) sensitization of the preterit
• Passive voice
• Adverbs
• Prepositions and locations (locutions prépositives)
• Personal Pronouns, double pronouns and their place in affirmative, negative, imperative sentences
• Relative composed pronouns
• Probability
• Subjunctive
• Indicative alternation/ subjunctive on completive sentences
• Sequence of tenses (indicative mode)
• Expressing the cause
• Expressing the consequence
• Expressing the goal
• Expressing the time
• Expressing the condition, the hypothesis
• The opposition/ concession
• The Comparison
• Reported speech (present/past) and the indirect interrogation

Vocabulary

• The street, the city: traveling all over city-dweller locations, sight-seeing the city, taking notes about what's going on, comment on the news in brief
• The employment, the work: naming, defining, characterizing professions, recalling about former jobs
• The environment, the climate: sensitization to ecology and to issues raised by our environment (city and countryside)
• Housing, Accommodation: comparing the individual or cultural representations. Describing, qualifying, situate a house.
• Family, friends, relationships: distinguish and express different types of social relationships, talk about the customs and social codes, express feelings, blaming, congratulations
• Free time, leisure: share one's tastes concerning leisure, art, parties…
• Sports, health: talking about a sport; give one's opinion about some sports, ask for advice especially about health

Phonetics

A specific phonetic test is set up for all the students in order to place them into the appropriate training class and particular difficulties. We place them either into an Ax group which contains a spelling program aimed according to their native language or in group with a RA program, if they have already attended the class. (cf. Phonetic test and syllabus)

Content

Ax Improvement: deepening to the study of speech sounds and training to the perception and adapted production to the different linguistic groups.

Activities

• In class: explanation about a tackled part, 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, and reading

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