French

This course is a study of three components: grammar, written comprehension, and written expression. The course examines sentence structure and verb systems and focuses on complex notions of time, causality, and argumentation. The course analyzes literary texts from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries for their grammatical properties, literary style, and practice of written expression.

This course is for students at an intermediate level. It develops students' abilities to participate, be at ease, and make themselves understood in simple daily professional and social interactions. The activities are based on oral productions such as media, films, and songs in order to give students the opportunity to practice pronunciation, intonation, rhythm, clarity, spontaneity, fluency, and interaction through role-plays, songs, and presentation. The objective of the written part of the course is to help students read and write short texts of various types. Students learn how to describe events and express feelings and wishes in a letter. Grammar is studied through the observation of various texts, such as letters, novels, short stories, and news articles. Exercises of French grammar are also part of the course.

This course analyzes the comic, a narrative art that reads not only in each successive box but also in a complex system relating to the space of the board and album as a whole. It applies literary tools to the media to take into account the image and sequencing. The course focuses on the theme of “the quest” using comics from the French-Belgian domain: set in a medieval universe more fantasized than properly historical. It considers quests and conquests in antico-medieval fictions including literature, cinema, and games.

This course is broadly equivalent to A1 Basic User, Breakthrough Level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

This course focuses on the study of contemporary texts and recordings drawn from the French media (radio, television, newspapers, and films), as well as on the function and place of media in the French society. Exercises give students the opportunity to practice document analysis, grammar, phonetics, and general comprehension. Students also work on a project for the semester with two professors on a media topic of their choice.

This beginning French course focuses on developing oral and written competencies and understanding the basic sentence structure of French. Students learn the basics of introducing oneself in French, simple vocabulary, basic verbs, and conjugations in the present form.

From the contemporary to the extreme contemporary, this course offers a journey through literature. It provides an opportunity to discover, through the study of a few authors and excerpts from various works, how French literature of the last decades takes on a form of engagement and disengagement in the uncertainty that creates our present. The course sharpens sensitivity and broadens knowledge in the literary and cultural fields. It improves mastery of the French language to develop the capacities of analysis, synthesis, and criticism essential to intellectual work. The course focuses on the novel, the short story, and the theater on the path of renewal at the borders of reality and fiction: telling again and again, telling the real in times of crisis.

This course focuses on the emergence of the literary tale, both the scholarly and popular aspects, and the way in which its great models, particularly Giovanni Boccaccio’s THE DECAMERON and Giambattista Basile’s STRAPAROLA, depict the oral origins of the genre. As they relate to a corpus of classic literary tales (Perrault, Grimm), the course studies contemporary cinematic adaptations to examine the plasticity of the genre, including the emphasis of fairy tale in popular culture. It examines how these stories are appropriated and adapted to fit the current social and political discourse and discusses whether these adaptations are part of scholarly or popular culture. Films studied include Pier Paolo Pasolini’s LE DECAMERON (1971), Jacques Demy’s PEAU D’ANE (1970), and Pablo Berger’s BLANCANIEVES (2012).

This is an advanced level C2 French course focused on perfecting grammar, writing, vocabulary, and oral expression. The course covers understanding and analyzing texts (news articles, scientific literature, literary excepts), speaking skills (debate, presentations), and writing (synthesis, supporting arguments, literary expression). 

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.