FRN1070

French IA

P Anderson and A Macdonald

6 points
* 5 or 6 hours per week
* First semester
* Clayton
* Prerequisites: VCE 3/4 French or, subject to departmental approval, VCE 1/2 French or equivalent

Objectives This subject consists of two parts: (i) Language in use On completion of this part of the subject, students should have consolidated and developed their practical performance across the four macro-skill areas: aural and written reception, oral and written production. They should have extended their grammatical and phonetic correction, their communication competence in selected discourse forms, especially involving narration, and their understanding and use of register variation. Students should have become more competent users of the basic tools of the language learner and more autonomous language learners. (ii) Reading Contemporary France This part of the subject should enable students to develop an explicitly informed practice of reading across a range of codes, discourses and registers representative of French cultural production from the Second World War to the present day. This will involve identifying linguistic and genre specific semiotic structures of texts, understanding the contexts of production of the texts, examining the interaction of text and contexts of production and reception, questioning the text as ideological construct, and evaluating the ways in which it reproduces or reshapes social systems of production of self, otherness, the world and their histories.

Synopsis (i) Language in use This part of the subject will engage students in units of work organised around themes drawing on aspects of contemporary French society. Activities will include extensive and intensive reading, listening comprehension, role-play and simulation, written text transformation and production, supported by practice in the efficient use of the tools of the language-learner. Students will be offered scope (including computer-assisted language learning) for systematic review and extension of grammatical competence. 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. (ii) Reading contemporary France Students will study a variety of print, audio and visual texts across a range of codes, discourses and registers. Lectures will discuss issues informing the discipline area we call French, present the contexts of French cultural production from World War II to the present, and engage with ways of reading the major prescribed texts. Tutorials will involve students in intensive text analysis of a range of shorter texts and passages from the major prescribed texts.

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%

Prescribed texts

Bescherelle 1 La Conjugaison Hatier
French at Monash French section, Monash U
Le Nouveau Petit Robert Société du Nouveau Littré
Hergé Les sept boules de cristal Casterman Malle L
Au revoir, les enfants L'avant-scène Cinema

Recommended texts

Judge A and Healey F G A reference grammar of modern French Arnold