Undergraduate - UnitATS3068 - French studies advanced 2

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Notes

Synopsis

This unit involves students in teaching and learning activities equally developing language skills and cultural competence. Activities equip students with advanced comprehension and production skills. Oral work focuses on expository techniques. Written tasks involve essay writing.. Listening and writing production activities develop advanced skills required to produce accounts of radio or TV news and current affairs programmes. Students develop advanced language skills and competence in the theory, research methodology and practices, and discourses involved in sophisticated critical enquiry, understanding and analysis in an area of French studies, working under guidance to define and write a research essay.

Outcomes

Upon completion of this unit students should have:

1. Reinforced their ability to communicate and interact efficiently in French both in oral and written form by using appropriate techniques of exposition;
2. Developed reading comprehension and oral skills enabling them to communicate the main points contained in a newspaper, reformulating, structuring and explaining its content;
3. Acquired listening comprehension and writing skills to produce a report presenting the information contained in radio or TV current affairs programmes of up to 12mn duration;
4. Developed essay writing skills enabling them to produce a clear and detailed essay on familiar topics, communicating information or arguing for or against a particular point of view, using appropriate vocabulary, expressions and syntax and demonstrating an acute awareness of issues of textual grammar (coherence and cohesion);
5. Furthered their morpho-syntactic and stylistic competence, expanding their knowledge of French grammar and their awareness of differences between French and English syntax through systematic use of a French reference grammar;
6. Become familiar with the use of software programs and electronic tools such as a grammar assistant, a bilingual electronic dictionary, an online French dictionary;
7. Developed advanced knowledge and understanding of modern and contemporary France and its culture;
8. Acquired a more powerful explicit understanding of and competence in the theory, research methodology, practices and discourses of an area of French Studies;
9. Acquired the advanced language skills involved in developing critical enquiry and analysis and expressing outcomes and understandings in the framework of a research essay;
10. Identified efficient learning strategies and developed an ability to autonomously take charge of and evaluate these strategies and their outcomes;
11. Developed individual and cooperative research skills.

Assessment

Written assignments (2700 words): 60%
Seminar Presentation: 10%
End semester oral examination: 15%
End of semester written examination: 15%

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Natalie Doyle

Contact hours

One 2-hour language tutorial
one 2-hour seminar
one 1-hour workshop per week

This unit applies to the following area(s) of study

French studies

Prerequisites

ATS3067

Prohibitions

ATS1068, ATS2068