Course syllabus
Medium: English
General Description
The purpose of this course is to teach students how to gain access to
materials written in French taping into the knowledge and skills they already
acquired with and through English. This course is not only focusing on language, but also on cultural and historical issues, as well as on deductive and learning autonomy skills development. Incursions into other Romance languages are also offered on the program.
The benefits are multiple:
1. allows a relatively quick access to documents in French and prepare the ground for any further studies of the French language;
2. Improves knowledge of English language and vocabulary;
3. Develops deductive and learning autonomy skills in learning foreign languages;
4. Opens a window to other Romance languages with French as the transfer language;
5. Increases awareness and knowledge about European cultures and languages.
Composition
This module is
divided into two distinct UNITS taught simultaneously though separately to keep
the focus on a single skill at the time 1) Reading comprehension, and 2) Reading aloud (pronunciation)
Goals
Reading comprehension Unit: Students will be able to
- identify French, Spanish and Italian written forms
- assess the level of difficulty of a text in French
- read and understand a text chosen by them using reading strategies and
intercomprehensive tools developed for this course.
- develop and apply deductive skills based on French and English similarities.
- apply strategies in problem solving related to reading in a foreign
language.
- acquire a sufficient level of (reading) autonomy to be able to continue
alone with online resources after the course has ended (toward self-learning).
- organize their own reading activities/tasks as taught in class
Reading Aloud component: (Basic French phonology)
- allows student to identify and pronounce single French words.
b) knowledge
acquisition:
Culture:
- Students are introduced to main linguistic, historical and cultural facts about Western Europe and more specifically about France and England relationship.
Language:
- “Unconscious knowledge of French language” acquired through English is brought to students awareness.
- Students are exposed to induced grammar of French in an
intercomprehensive context.
Content and methodology
The 1st series
concentrate on
The Reading Aloud element starts as a separate activity (1hr for reading comprehension and 1/2hr for reading aloud) during the first series to finally be partially integrated to the reading comprehension element during the second series.
A combination of
methods:
Personal study: (10 hours minimum) through exercises and reading assignments.
Assessment
Reading Comprehension: For the reading
comprehension part, students should be able to interpret the main aspects of a
text in French based on deductive and inter-comprehensive methods.
Assessment will be carried out through the evaluation of students’ personal portfolio in which students are asked to keep their completed exercises, personal readings and translation works all through the course. A continuous submission of work is strongly recommended.