Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996
Synopsis The subject consists of two parts: (i) Language in use and (ii) Reading contemporary France (i) Language in use This part of the subject aims to consolidate and develop students' practical performance and foster their capacity to become increasingly autonomous learners. Making extensive use of authentic print and audio-visual materials, it will engage students, inside and outside the classroom, in activities across the four macro-skill areas: aural and written reception, oral and written production. Units of work are organised around themes drawing on aspects of contemporary French society. Scope will be offered (including computer-assisted learning) for systematic review and extension of grammatical competence and phonetic correction. Use of the basic tools of the language learner will be practised and developed. According to their needs, students may undertake this part of the subject in one of two class contact formats: three hours per week or four hours per week. Students can also undertake extension work in a weekly one-hour class. (ii) Reading contemporary France This part of the subject aims to provide students with an explicitly informed practice of reading. Prescribed texts are representative of the cultural production of France, across a range of codes, discourses and registers, from the Second World War to the present day. Lectures and tutorials will engage students in understanding and identifying linguistic and genre-specific semiotic structures of texts, and developing these skills through intensive text analysis. Students will gain an understanding of the contexts of the production of the texts. By examining the interaction of text and context, they will question the text as ideological construct and evaluate the ways in which it reproduces or reshapes social systems of production of self, otherness, the world and their histories.
Assessment Part (i): Continuous assessment of oral production: 20% + Written production: 15% + Final listening comprehension test: 5% + Final written exam: 20% + Part (ii): Guided textual analysis: 10% + Essay: 15% + Tutorial work: 5% + Final test: 10%