39973 - French Language (Course and Laboratory) II (GR. A)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course students should be able to follow a lesson in French, to read a complex text about social or political sciences and make a fluent oral report on it in French. To this purpose they should reach a minimum level of B1 (Council of Europe framework) for spoken and written French, while the ideal level is B2.

Moreover, they should be capable of writing a text in French (minimum level B2).

Course contents

The whole course is composed of a series of 30 hours of lectures, and 40 hours of laboratory work dedicated to practicing spoken and written French, and to improving grammatical competence; labs are streamed according to the level of knowledge ascertained in the entry test.

The 30 hours course is organized into two modules: 

- One module will be devoted to reading and analyzing written and oral texts focusing on specific themes which are related to the disciplines of the degree course. We will analyze argumentative texts in many forms (oral, written and multimodal): political discourse, communications on the websites of political parties, forums, comments about the articles of a journal's website, social media. Topics will cover some relevant themes for students of Political Sciences, such as the European Union, secularization in France, as well as  themes which are relevant from a socio-cultural point of view. The aim of this module is to initiate students to the morpho-syntactic and discursive features of the argumentative text, but also to a specialized lexicon related to socio-political topics, and to some crucial periods in the 20th century French history.

- The second module will be devoted to discussing the topics treated in the texts and to improving writing skills in French (written composition of texts in French).

Readings/Bibliography

The texts used for class work will be made available in form of a “dossier” on AMS Campus before the beginning of the course.

For the laboratory:  

Grammathèque , (Livre + CD + Exercices), Ed. CIDEB.

Dictionary :

Le nouveau petit Robert de la Langue Française 2009 , Paris, Dictionnaires Le Robert, 2009.

 

For general reading :

1.       Charles Giol, De Jaurès à Sarkozy: histoire de France de 1914 à nos jours, Paris, PUF, 2008

2.       Jean-Jacques Becker, Histoire politique de la France depuis 1945, Paris, Colin, 2011.

3.       Pierre Bréchon, Les partis politiques français, Paris, La Documentation Française, 2011.

4.       Jean Baubérot, Histoire de la laïcité en France, Paris, PUF, collection « Que sais-je ? », 2013.

5.      Jacques Donzelot, La France des cités : Le chantier de la citoyenneté urbaine, Paris, Fayard, 2013.

Teaching methods

Lectures are aimed at developing skills in comprehending and interpreting written and oral specialized texts, and to produce written texts in French. The course will be held in French. The course will be held in French and will be dedicated to B2 students.

The language laboratory, on the basis of a specific grammar for Italian speakers and practical exercises with “communicative methods”, is aimed at allowing students to achieve a good level of linguistic and communicative competence.

Assessment methods

Students that follow lessons:

Overall assessment will be based on two written tests (mid-term test and final exam) and a final oral exam.

The mid-term test includes a cloze test and a reading comprehension. The final exam will consist in writing a composition in French.

Spoken French will be assessed by means of a discussion of a selection of pages from one of the books in the general reading section of the bibliography.

 

Students that do not follow lessons can take the exam as follows:

Written test – reading comprehension (minimum level B1), which consists in a cloze test, a summary and a written composition.

Oral test  - an interview on a selection of pages from one of the texts below:

Charles Giol, De Jaurès à Sarkozy: histoire de France de 1914 à nos jours, Paris, PUF, 2008

chapters: introduction, 1, 2, 3 

or

chapters: 1, 4, 5 

or

chapters: 6, 7 + conclusion 

 2.       Jean-Jacques Becker, Histoire politique de la France depuis 1945, Paris, Colin, 2008.

chapters 1, 2, 3 

or

chapters 4, 5, 6 (pp. 83-163)

or

chapter  6 

3. Pierre Bréchon, Les partis politiques français, Paris, La Documentation Française, 2011.

chapters introduction, 1, 2 e 3 

or

chapters 4, 5 e 6 

or

chapters 5, 6, 7 and conclusion 

4. Jean Baubérot, Histoire de la laïcité en France, Paris, PUF, collection « Que sais-je ? », 2013.

chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

5.      Jacques Donzelot, La France des cités : Le chantier de la citoyenneté urbaine, Paris, Fayard, 2013.

Préambule + première partie : chap. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

or

Première partie: chap. 6 + Deuxième partie : chap. 1, 2, 3, 4

Teaching tools

PC with V ideo Projector, Internet,  DVD

Office hours

See the website of Roberta Pederzoli