FREN401

Upper-Intermediate French I

Kittie Bruneau, Cercle éternel, 1981.

The Department of FHIS offers a series of eight courses designed to build students’ skills progressively in the four basic communicative functions of listening, reading, writing, and speaking. FREN 401 is the first of a pair of Upper-Intermediate courses—401 and 402—aligned with level B2 objectives of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR).

The course is open to all students with a sufficient level of French, whether they are in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th year.

With an approach that is communicative and collaborative, inductive and interactive, the course aims to refine the skills acquired in Intermediate French I & II or equivalent courses and to enhance students’ knowledge of French and the Francophone world. Students will be able to consolidate and expand their writing, reading, comprehension, and speaking skills in French.

The course is devoted to providing students with tools for interacting with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction in French possible without strain.

The course is focused on:

• grammatical analysis, vocabulary enrichment, and socio-cultural competency using a wide variety of authentic documents of the French-Speaking world (news, literature, songs, etc.);
• the deep understanding of both concrete and abstract topics in a complex document (written or oral);
• the ability to research Francophone relevant resources and synthesize them;
• the production of clear, detailed, nuanced, and well-structured written and oral communication on a number of topics (use of critical thinking and creativity, construction of arguments to defend one’s opinion and explain one’s viewpoint, use of rhetorical strategies);
• the ability to correct one’s own mistakes (when writing or speaking) and constantly improve;
• the development of learner’s autonomy.

Both individually and in collaborative small groups, students will produce and share ideas in workshops, whole class discussions, oral presentations, debates, or other writing assignments. French grammatical structures such as relative pronouns, the passive form, the subjunctive, and logic connectors will be studied within a task-based approach so that students reach a greater degree of complexity and sophistication when expressing themselves.

Language of instruction: French

Recommended prerequisites: one of FREN 123, FREN 302, or French Immersion 12, or assignment based on placement test