69273 - French Language and Culture I (First Language)

Learning outcomes

The student must know the basic elements of French language and culture. He/she shall be able to understand and produce written texts and oral speeches, expressing him/herself in a fairly fluent and spontaneous way.

 

The purpose of this course is twofold: to enable a deepening of grammatical knowledge and to open this knowledge of linguistics and stylistics.
Curiosity on all the issues of French language history and its variety.
Train students to an organized presentation of a literary work between the 19th and the 21st centuries.

Course contents

Organization of the Matter

According to the title of the course, the matter includes a linguistic part – in a broad sense – and a cultural part.

For convenience’s sake, the Thursday lesson will be dedicated to the linguistic part; the Friday lesson to the cultural part.

However, the gains will naturally enrich each other.

Linguistics

The category of the French Verb: morphology, syntax, uses of the tenses

The main morphological categories will be reviewed during the course: moods, tenses, persons, voices, aspects; but the conjugations strictly speaking shall be acquired by the students through their own means.

Agreement rules of the verb and the participles, as well as the value of tenses, will also be reviewed during the course in terms of verbal syntax.

A lesson will be dedicated to the use of the subjunctive mood, notably in some subordinate clauses or in some contexts of modalization.

The recent past, the progressive present and the immediate future will be studied too.

Prerequisite Reviewing

Verbs shall be known at all the moods and all the tenses, as well as in the three voices, notably:

- verbs in ER (including irregular verbs in YER, CER, GER, and verbs such as appeler, jeter);

- verbs in IR (both categories);

- verbs in AINDRE, EINDRE, OINDRE, OIR(E), (T)RE, ONDRE, ENDRE, OMPRE, UIRE, URE, (S)OUDRE, AINCRE along with other irregular ones;

- auxiliary verbs être et avoir.

Grammar / Spelling / Phonetics, Phonology and Written Forms

- punctuation rules;

- accentuation rules;

- difficulties of pronunciation;

- simple and compound relative pronouns;

- place of simple or double personal pronouns (subject, direct object, indirect object); place of the pronouns en and y;

- gerunds / present participle / verbal adjective: usage rules.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary will be enriched in three different ways:

- through quick systematic acquisitions in the form of lexical items;

- through acquisitions built up along with the study of the texts;

- through reading suggestions offered to the students.

NB: these different acquisitions will be drawn on either for the written exam or for the oral exam.

Culture (oral exam)

The students will be trained in the story of the French language by studying a diachronical overview, from the indo European, romanic, gallo-romanic and French languages.

The written tools will be studied in themselves as well in an historical perspective.

A part of the cursus will be dedicated to the idiomatic forms.

For the oral exam, the students must have read a complete work of a reasonable size as a short story by example. This work will be chosen with the teacher, and it will be presented before the exam during one class session statement.

If necessary, the study of the work could be helped by multimedia tools.

Readings/Bibliography

Basic Bibliography

BERTHET (A.) and LOUVEL (C.), Cahier de perfectionnement - Alter ego 5, Paris, Hachette Français langue étrangère, 2010 (NB: only for the workbook).

BESCHERELLE, La Conjugaison pour tous, new edition, Paris, Hatier, 2012.

BESCHERELLE, Orthographe, new edition, Paris, Hatier, 2013.

BESCHERELLE, Le Vocabulaire, new edition, Paris, Hatier, 2013.

BIDAUD (F.), Grammaire du français pour italophones, Turin, UTET, 2011 (as well as grammar exercices for Italian-speakers, Turin, UTET, 2012).

GONZALEZ REY (I.), Les Expressions figées en didactique des langues étrangères, Fernelmont, EME (coll. Proximité didactique), 2007.

MERGER (M.-F.) and SINI (L.), Côte à côte, préparation à la traduction de l’italien au français, Scandicci (FI), La Nuova Italia, 2013.

PARODI (L) and VALLACO (M.), Grammathèque. Grammatica contrastiva per italiani, Genoa, Black cat-Cideb, 2010 (3^d edition). Theory and workbook.

Dictionaries

Il BOCH- Dizionario francese-italiano italiano-francese di Raoul Boch. Quinta edizione a cura di Carla Salvioni Boch. Con CD-ROM per Windows, Bologna, Zanichelli, 2007.

REY (A.) and CHANTREAU (S.), Dictionnaire des expressions et locutions, Paris, Dictionnaires Le Robert (Les Usuels du Robert), 1^st edition 1997, 2^d edition 2006.

ROBERT and SIGNORELLI, Dictionnaire français-italien, italien-français / Dizionario francese-italiano, italiano-francese , Paris, Dictionnaires Le Robert, 2006.

Le Petit Robert 2015, Paris, Dictionnaires Le Robert, 2014.

Teaching methods

Organisation of the Course

The course will be divided in two parts, clearly distinct from each other:

1) the theoretical course (Professor Martine Pagan);

2) the assistantship (Doctor Marie-Line Zucchiatti).

The assistantship is mandatory and strictly connected to the theoretical course. The aim is to improve the students’ skills in oral and written production. Teaching is specifically displayed in phonetic, grammatical and lexical training.

Assessment methods

The final exam of the course “French Language and Culture” includes:

- the written exam about grammar and vocabulary (around 2:30 hours);

- the oral exam relying on texts studied during the course.

It is necessary to pass the written exam with a grade superior or equal to 18/30 in order to be allowed to take the written exam. For the written exam, the use of a dictionary is allowed.

Teaching tools

- books reported in the bibliography (recommended but optional)

- compulsory purchase of a grammar for personal use

- Lesson material (texts, broadcasts, DVDs, documentaries), featured sites, authentic texts on various topics (news etc), CDs etc.

Office hours

See the website of Martine Pagan