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Paris

French Language, Culture, and Civilization at the Sorbonne - Year 1 2009/2010
French Language & Phonetics

140
Language Level: Intermediate
Placement Exam Required
French Language & Phonetics
Language of Instruction: French
Course taken with: International Students
The Sorbonne (Paris, France)

Course Description

Hours & Credits

140

Hours of Instruction

9

Semester Credit Units

14

Quarter Credit Units

Prerequisites and Language Level

Note: A placement exam will be required when you arrive on site.

Intermediate
This course is designed for students who have completed or tested out of a minimum of two semesters (or three quarters) of college-level French. However, students must take a placement exam to determine the course level into which they will be able to enroll.

Please use the following only as a guideline to determine what each student's language level may be. Each semester/quarter is of COLLEGE-LEVEL French or the equivalent of:

0 Semesters/0 Quarters = Low Beginning
1-2 Semesters/1-3 Quarters = High Beginning
3-4 Semesters/4-6 Quarters = Intermediate
5-6 Semesters/7-9 Quarters = Advanced
Fluent/Native Speaker = Superior

Overview

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: 27 hours (1 hour per day from Monday through Friday every other week)
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 field 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

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:
-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.