French

This course is an initiation to writing for the theater, examining the link between writing and spoken text. It includes several writing exercises that lead progressively toward a short play which is then workshopped among the class. In addition to this practical dimension of writing, the course includes reading and discussion of the dramatic texts of various actors.

In examining how contemporary political power is organized, notably through constitutions, this course presents a view of issues past and present, legal and political, French or foreign, national and international.  It also offers several keys so that students can orient themselves among the facts, the information, and the documentary sources.  Students are given a certain amount of information but also encouraged to build intellectual and practical skills to bring out their critical thinking abilities, their ability to hold a rational argument, and stimulate their creative intellectualism.  The themes examined in the course include: defining a certain number of fundamental notions related to the analysis of constitutional law and the political institutions; examining several examples of foreign political institutions; and understanding the trajectory, the situation, and the characteristics of today’s French institutions.  Through case studies and applied examples, each course meeting is an opportunity to enrich the methodology required to examine these issues.

This course, the first in our intensive summer language program sequences, with its contiguous course FR12B, is roughly equivalent to the first two quarters or to the first semester of beginning French language instruction on students' home campuses. FR12A and FR12B introduce basic speaking, listening, reading and writing skills to the complete beginner and the beginner with limited previous knowledge of elementary French within a French-immersion context. Placement in this course is determined by students' previous experience and the results of a language assessment taken prior to arrival. Course material includes: K. Jansma, MOTIFS: AN INRODUCTION TO FRENCH, Heinle, 6th Edition, 2014. Through the FR12AB sequence, students gain the ability to communicate in spoken and written French and develop a foundation in French grammar, basic working vocabulary organized, and information on French and Francophone culture including greetings, leisure activities and sports, vacation time, family structures, schooling and values of the French Republic, the distribution of household chores, environmental protection, cuisine, grocery shopping and eating habits, the workplace, café life, multiethnic society, youth culture, and the geography, and music and cuisine of the francophone world. Students engage in short conversations using simple sentences and basic vocabulary with occasional use of past and near future tenses. Covered in this course are the present, past, and near future tenses, along with high-frequency regular and irregular verbs, reflexive verbs, and the imperative and polite conditional moods, as well as subject and object pronouns, articles, prepositions, possessive and demonstrative adjectives, interrogative expressions, expressions of quantity, and time and weather expressions. Course grading is composed of class participation, small group and pair work, role play, written exercises, dictation, presentations of cultural products such as songs, films, audio texts, a variety of short, simple texts on cultural perspectives, and writing activities.

This translation course is taught at the first-year level. This course focuses translating both the tone and grammar of Francophone and Anglophone literature, and provides abstracts from English and French writers, mostly from the latter half of the twentieth century. The course first practices translating from English to French, and then from French to English. Students can choose to take one or two parts, whether English to French or French to English.

The course focuses on the constituents of the simple sentence and their categorization (the different classes of words), as well as on the morphosyntactic relations within the simple sentence. The nominal group and its constituents are studied more particularly. It is about learning to identify words from their characteristics in terms of their form (morphology), their meaning (semantics), and their combinatorial possibility (distribution).

This course provides an approach to the study of neuroscience. It covers the major issues addressed by the discipline and the fundamental bases of the functioning of the nervous system.

This course consists of three segments: oral comprehension, oral production and expression, and phonetics. Oral comprehension focuses on listening and understanding conversations, radio shows, and interviews; taking notes; and writing a summary. Oral production and expression develops oral skills through discussions and presentations. Finally, phonetics emphasizes rhythm and intonation, articulation, phonetic notation, elocution, pronunciation, and oral and gestural expression.

This course analyzes Francophone literature and the stylistic choices authors make to enhance and create certain points in their writing. It focuses on contemporary Francophone literature with a postcolonial approach, its different forms in comedy/humor/irony, and different genres such as the novel, poetry, theater, and essay. It covers historical background and analyzes different literary details.

The extensive independent study field research paper produced by the student is both the centerpiece of the intern's professional engagement and the culmination of the academic achievements of the semester. During the preparatory session, IFE teaches the methodological guidelines and principles to which students are expected to adhere in the development of their written research. Students work individually with a research advisor from their field. The first task is to identify a topic, following guidelines established by IFE for research topic choice. The subject must be tied in a useful and complementary way to the student-intern's responsibilities, as well as to the core concerns of the host organization. The research question should be designed to draw as much as possible on resources available to the intern via the internship (data, documents, interviews, observations, seminars and the like). Students begin to focus on this project after the first 2-3 weeks on the internship. Each internship agreement signed with an organization makes explicit mention of this program requirement, and this is the culminating element of their semester. Once the topic is identified, students meet individually, as regularly as they wish, with their IFE research advisor to generate a research question from the topic, develop an outline, identify sources and research methods, and discuss drafts submitted by the student. The research advisor also helps students prepare for the oral defense of their work which takes place a month before the end of the program and the due date of the paper. The purpose of this exercise is to help students evaluate their progress and diagnose the weak points in their outline and arguments. Rather than an extraneous burden added to the intern's other duties, the field research project grows out of the internship through a useful and rewarding synergy of internship and research. The Field Study and Internship model results in well-trained student-interns fully engaged in mission-driven internships in their field, while exploring a critical problem guided by an experienced research advisor.