French

This course, the second in our intensive summer language program sequences, with its contiguous course FR23B, is roughly equivalent to the second two quarters or to the second semester on students' home campuses. FR23A and FR23B combined seek to provide students who have some knowledge of the basic skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing in French the opportunity to expand and improve these skills with an emphasis on new forms of grammar and communicative skills 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 MOTIFS: AN INRODUCTION TO FRENCH by K. Jansma, Heinle, 5th Edition, 2011. Through the FR23AB course sequence, students develop the ability to communicate in spoken and written French and use basic structures of French grammar points and a basic working vocabulary 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, fashion trends, the education system, values, politics, French national identity, the geography and cultural aspects of France's regions, and the geography, music and cuisine of the francophone world. Following the FR23AB course sequence, students should be able to engage in short conversations in French, using simple sentences and basic vocabulary, with occasional use of past and future tenses, on familiar topics and express their basic everyday needs using the present, past, near future, and future tenses, and high-frequency regular irregular, reciprocal and reflexive verbs, in addition to the imperative, conditional and subjunctive moods, subject, object, and relative pronouns, articles, prepositions, possessive and demonstrative adjectives, adverbs, interrogative expressions, negative expressions, idiomatic expressions, expressions of quantity, and time and weather. Through the FR23AB sequence, students reflect upon basic cultural differences as in a variety of French and Francophone contexts, such as varying levels of familiarity/formality, etiquette, cuisine and dietary habits, family structures, commerce and the professional world, etc., as well as in cultural products such as film, performances, news, and music. Assignments include class participation, small group and pair work, role play, games, and individual and group presentations, written exercises and grammar drills, dictation, presentation of cultural products such as songs, films, audio texts, a variety of short and simple texts on cultural perspectives, and writing activities.

This course covers the scope of local government activities in France and the political nature of the financial decisions that accompany these initiatives. An explanation of the institutional and financial constraints facing the local public sector, along with an analysis of the reforms undertaken by the state, leads to a reflection on what decentralization means in France today and how it is evolving. The course considers the future prospects for local government action in France and compares this situation with other models of local government organization internationally. It also reflects on the current and future role of local governments in environmental transition policies and how their financial decisions may or may not contribute to them.

This workshop studies how to read and analyze journalistic content on cultural themes in a professional manner. It provides an opportunity to question journalistic expression by analyzing the facts and data it provides, the credibility of the information transmitted, and the meaning of their publication on certain dates and distribution platforms. The course examines quality, balance, and relevance of the sources; tone, rigor, and atmosphere of the expression; precision of the information; point of view of the narration; identification of the news; typology of the publications; analysis of the formats; and platforms of distribution.

This course examines the evolution of the historiography of the Cold War, with its recent transformations, to then analyze the nature of today's international relations marked by the “return of competition between the super powers,” an expression created by the Pentagon in 2016. The Chinese and Russian analyses of the evolution of the world that we have long called "Post-Cold War" is also studied.