French

This is an intermediate level French language course for students who have previously completed two or more semesters of French. Building on the basics of the language and utilizing good listening comprehension skills, the course builds students’ confidence in their ability to communicate. It focuses on understanding expressions and common vocabulary relevant to one’s persona life, including family, purchases, surrounding environment, studies, and work. The course builds skills to understand advertisements, announcements, and simple clear messages; read short, simple texts; and find specific predictable information in common documents such as short advertisements, brochures, menus, and timetables; understand short simple personal letters and emails; communicate during simple, habitual tasks that demand only an exchange of simple, direct information on subjects and activities that are familiar; have brief exchanges, using a series of sentences or expressions to describe in simple terms family or other people, living circumstances, education, and current or recent professional or academic activities; write notes and simple, short messages; and write a personal letter or email that is focused and structured, such as a thank you letter.

This tutorial course focuses on Francophone literature. It discusses two novels centered around the idea of laughter and irony, as well as excerpts from critical texts and other short literary works.

This course, the sixth in our intensive summer language program sequences, with its continuous course FR170, is roughly equivalent to the sixth quarter of lower-division French language instruction and an upper-division French composition course on students’ home campuses. FR60 and FR170 provide students who have completed the better part of a university-level second-year French course or its equivalent the opportunity to expand and improve their speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills, as well as expand their cultural knowledge of the French and Francophone world. The course is based on a presentation of advanced intermediate-level forms of grammar, an expansion of students’ working vocabulary, and practice of oral and written communicative skills, with a particular emphasis on their writing skills. Placement in this course is determined by students’ previous experience and the results of a language assessment taken prior to arrival. Textbook and Course Materials for the course include: RÉSEAU: COMMUNICATION, INTEGRATION, INTERSECTIONS, by J.M. Schultz and M.P. Tranvouez,. Grammar, vocabulary, and cultural topics are discussed, including art, literature, cinema, vernacular French, multicultural society, Francophilia and Francophobia, and France’s role in the European Union. Students engage in class discussions, write summaries, dialogues and essays, in addition to group and individual oral presentations.

This workshop for advanced level students (C1 and C2) offers a framework, space, and means to approach creative writing in French. In a relaxed environment, the workshop provides an opportunity to discover authors in touch with the current world, express sensitivity, and exchange ideas about French literature, particularly contemporary literature. The workshop consists of exploring various authors and genres to find one’s personal style and voice in French; story writing; cinematographic, theatrical, radio, and poetic writing. Linguistically, students develop the ability to characterize, in writing, the multiple descriptions (places, characters, emotions) contained in their productions; orally contextualize and justify the choices made in their writing; question texts and authors with delicacy and subtlety; and express feelings. The workshop provides an opportunity to reflect on one’s relationship to writing (pleasure, anxiety, necessity) as well as one’s relationship to writing in a language that is not one’s mother tongue (frustrations, freedom of expression).

Crises such as the German Occupation, the Algerian War of Independence, and the strikes and riots of May 1968 sent shock waves through French society that sooner or later found their way into literature and film. This course examines how French writers and filmmakers responded to some of the major upheavals of mid- to late 20th century France. The course explores the following questions: How do writers and filmmakers seek to remember events that many would rather forget? What is the relationship between individual and collective memory? How might writing and film give expression to crises of personal and national identity? Previous experience of literary analysis is not required but is an advantage. All texts are studied in translation.