FRN2080 - French studies 8

Leader(s): Patrick Durel

Offered

Clayton Second semester 2009 (Day)

Synopsis

Designed to equip students with advanced comprehension, speaking and writing skills, class activities build on the skills developed in Level 7. Oral work focuses on expository techniques needed to present the contents of longer articles. Written tasks will involve essay writing and English to French translation. Listening and writing production activities will enable students to develop skills leading to the writing of expository accounts of radi, TV news and current affairs programs.
In the Specialized Culture component (French Culture & Everyday Life), students will expand their understanding of how, in the French context, everyday life reflects and embodies cultural and social change.

Objectives

At the end of the course, students should have reinforced their ability to communicate and interact efficiently in French both in oral and written form by using appropriate techniques of exposition. They will be expected to develop and demonstrate the following skills in the target language:

1. Reading comprehension/oral production: students should be able to communicate the main points contained in a newspaper article, reformulating, structuring and explaining its content.
2. Listening Comprehension/writing production: students should be able to write an expository report presenting the information contained in radio or TV programs of up to 12mins.
3. Writing skills: students should be able to write a clear and detailed essay on topics which are familiar, passing on information or giving reasons in support of or against a particular point of view. They should be able to use appropriate expressions, vocabulary and syntax and demonstrate an acute awareness of issues of textual grammar (coherence and cohesion).
4. Morpho-syntax and stylistics: students should continue to further their knowledge of French grammar and develop their awareness of differences between French and English syntax through systematic use of a French reference grammar.
5. Students should also have become familiar with the use of software programs and electronic tools such as a grammar assistant, a bilingual electronic dictionary, an online French dictionary.
6. Students should have identified efficient learning strategies and developed an ability to autonomously take charge of and evaluate these strategies and their outcomes.

7. Students should have acquired a greater critical knowledge and understanding of modern French society, its values and their evolution.
8. Developed a critical understanding of issues of identity in France in the post-war period.
9. Developed a critical awareness of the nature of "cultural studies" and of the artificiality of the boundaries between disciplines.
10. Further developed their research skills.

Assessment

Written work: 10%
Comprehension work: 11%
Culture component written exam: 25%
Comprehension test: 12%
Translation test: 12%
Oral exam: 15%
Written exam: 15%

Contact hours

5 hours in total: one 1-hour computer lab workshop, one 1-hour translation workshop, one 2-hour language tutorial, and one 1-hour Specialized Culture lecture per week.

Prerequisites

FRN2070

Prohibitions

FRN3080