Course Outline

French I:

Course Description:

Study of fundamentals of French: conversation, basic writing, listening, and reading comprehension, vocabulary building, grammar, and culture. This is a beginning level course. There is no prerequisite for this course. In this course you will learn to read, write, speak, and understand French at a novice level, and will increase your knowledge of the culture of French-speaking regions around the world.

Course Objectives:

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

1. Demonstrate sentence level skills in writing skills

2. Demonstrate understanding of elementary French grammar

3. Recognize and comprehend basic spoken French within a given context

4. Initiate and respond to conversation French

5. Demonstrate ability to read elementary texts and instructions in French

6. Demonstrate knowledge of francophone cultures

Course Outline:

Course Topics will include the following:

1. Social greetings

2. Numbers

3. Calendar and time

4. Expressing likes and dislikes

5. Talking about weekend and school activities

6. Family and the home

7. Shopping and fashion

8. Food

9. Culture

Essential grammar structures will include:

1. Subject pronouns and the verb être

2. Present tense regular -er verbs

3. Agreement and placement of adjectives

4. The verb aller and its use in expressing the future

5. The verb venir and the immediate past

6. Possessive adjectives

7. Present tense irregular verbs (including avoir, faire, pouvoir, vouloir, prendre, boire)

8. Interrogative pronouns qui and que

9. Partitive article

 

French II:

Course Description:

This course reviews the essentials of vocabulary and grammatical constructions and presents further constructions not covered in French I. The course provides additional material for a solid foundation in conversation and composition and continues to place emphasis on knowledge and appreciation of the cultural backgrounds of French-speaking countries.

Course Objectives:

Students will:

1. acquire and demonstrate increasing competence in the four language skills: speaking, listening comprehension, reading, and writing

2. recognize and respond appropriately and with increasing detail to the most common spoken situations

3. demonstrate ability to write increasingly complex sentences in French

4. explain an increasing number of aspects of life in the French-speaking countries

 

Course Outline:

1. Grammatical topics:

• Irregular verbs

• Direct and indirect object pronouns, both personal and impersonal

• The imperfect tense

• Expressions of quantity

• Expressions of time

• Reflexive verbs

1. Vocabulary and social contexts:

• Parts of the body

• The French school system

• School subjects and majors

• Technology and communication vocabulary

• Health and sports

1. Cultural contexts:

• The French university experience

• Francophone culture and art