Advanced Placement French Language

Syllabus

The advanced placement French language course is a class in which students will learn the skills necessary to master the French language AP requirements. It includes the four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Students will apply their knowledge through thematic units.

Listening

Objectives

The listening ability of candidates who have completed an AP French Language course should allow them to:

• Follow the essentials of conversation between educated native speakers who may occasionally use colloquial expressions
• Follow with general understanding oral reports and lectures on non-technical subjects
• Understand standard French transmitted clearly by such means as tape recordings, records, radio, telephone, and videotapes

Within these contexts, students who can understand nuances of French intonation patterns and fairly complex structures (e.g., tense usage, passive voice constructions, and word order) and who possess a reasonably broad vocabulary should be able to understand both the content of the message and many of the overtones conveyed by the spoken language, such as irony and humor.

Activities

The class will be conducted in French. The students will be exposed to many different styles of speaking in order to facilitate their oral discrimination and to improve their ability to pick up salient facts and ideas presented orally. Teachers will also frequently use materials and radio programs with follow-up questions.

Students will be encouraged to attend films, plays, and lectures in French, with as much preparation and follow-up discussion as necessary. Movies and music will also be methods used to improve students’ listening skills.

Evaluation

Evaluation will be conducted as is tested on the oral portion (exchanges and dialogues) of the AP examination, using appropriate CDs and other materials.

Speaking

Objectives

At the completion of the course, Advanced Placement French Language students should have attained a speaking proficiency that allows them to:

• Communicate facts, ideas, and feelings successfully in a form of speech readily understandable to native speakers of French
• Discuss topics of current interest and express personal opinions, including hypotheses and conjecture, using the subjunctive and si-clauses appropriately
• Narrate, describe, and explain using past (both passé composé and imparfait), present, and future tenses correctly
• Demonstrate a good command of grammatical forms and syntactic patterns
• Have immediate recall of a fairly broad range of vocabulary items in order to speak with fluency and accuracy
• Speak with an accent that is not so markedly foreign that it interferes with comprehension

Activities

Students will be expected to speak French accurately and spontaneously and progress will be monitored throughout the year. Students will be exposed to total classroom immersion in authentic French. Student performance will be enhanced through the use of a variety of speaking activities, such as:

• Exposés, résumés, and analyses (cultural, topical, historical)
• Skits (preferably written by the students themselves)
• Oral reports on themes and subjects from newspapers, magazines, or works of imagination
• Songs (content, vocabulary, means of expression)
• Debates (within the class, with other classes, or with other schools)
• Memorization and improvisation of dialogues (jeux de rôles)
• Dramatic readings
• Descriptions and storytelling or interpretation bases on pictures (e.g., filmstrips, cartoons, advertisements)
• Recording of answers to spoken questions (which may include simulation of “directed responses” like those on the AP Examination
• Podcasts or radio programs followed by questions to be answered orally
• Critiques of movies and plays
• Discussions of current events (comparing French and American viewpoints)
• Memorization and/or writing of poems
• Adaptation of American television games, played in French
• Classroom visits by native speakers
• Use of authentic French programs and podcasts, either to produce discussion concerning what is seen and heard, or in taping the students themselves
• Pronunciation exercises

Evaluation

Students will be asked to respond briefly and appropriately to a series of questions or directions given in French. They will also present a cultural comparison using their knowledge of the French speaking world.

Reading

Objectives

AP French candidates should attain a reading proficiency demonstrated by the following abilities:

• The ability to read expository and narrative French prose with good overall comprehension, despite some gaps in details and occasional misinterpretation
• The ability to understand French magazine articles on various topics of general interest as well as French advertisements
• The ability to read literary texts-novels, essays, poetry, short stories-in their original form
• The ability to deal strategically with texts that are conceptually abstract or linguistically complex, even if some misunderstanding occurs
• The ability to separate main ideas from subordinate ones and to recognize hypotheses, supported opinions, and documented facts
• The ability to draw inferences from material read, although recognition of subtle nuances may be limited
• The ability to discriminate between different registers of language (e.g., formal/informal, literary/familiar or colloquial, conversational); to recognize their cultural implications; and to appreciate some figurative devices, stylistic differences, and humor
• The ability to comprehend frequently used idiomatic expressions and to develop strategies for successfully interpreting unfamiliar words, idioms, or structures, based on English cognates, broad general vocabulary, and solid knowledge of grammatical forms and structures (Example: à son insu: past participle of savoir  + negative prefix in-)

Activities

Reading materials will emphasize the widest variety possible in terms of genre, content, length, and register. Students will be exposed to essays, literary prose, dramatic works, dialogues, bandes déssinées, advertisements, petites annonces, film, theater and book reviews, and journalistic material including editorials, poems, and articles.

Reading proficiency at the AP level presumes substantial and sustained prior training. Therefore, the acquisition of a broad reading vocabulary must be developed progressively over several years.

Student comprehension of a text will be strengthened through the following incremental steps, each of which assumes mastery of the previous one:

1. pre-reading activities that bring out the “cultural baggage” (expectations, prejudices, knowledge) students bring to the subject of the text and/or the cultural information (historical, social, literary) students lack in relation to the subject of the text
2. familiarization with vocabulary (working with French synonyms and English cognates) and key grammatical cues of the text (e.g., verb tenses)
3. factual comprehension of text (who, what, when, where, why, and how)
4. extraction of overall meaning and accurate interpretation of the salient features of the text
5. a close reading of selected passages for linguistic as well as stylistic analysis( e.g., recognition of register, tone, humor, irony, narrative techniques, etc.)

The reading material may be used as the basis for the following activities:

• summarizing
• paraphrasing
• outlining
• selective translation
• group discussion
• explaining or criticizing (by means of brief reports, written, or oral)
• imitation (paraphrase, pastiche)
• extrapolation in time or place (i.e., transposing from an 18^th century French context into a contemporary American one)
• contrastive discrimination (i.e., male/female point of view, young/old, French/U.S. opinion)

Writing

Objective

To develop their writing skills, students must be guided by the principles of good writing that require a clear focus, logical development, appropriate detail, selective supportive material to reinforce and enhance the ideas in the essay, and self-correction and self-editing, along with peer-correction and peer-editing skills. Students will:

1. express themselves in a variety of modes, styles and purposes: descriptive, narrative, informative, persuasive
2. set forth and develop ideas in clear, logical manner
3. demonstrate an understanding and control of the verb system
4. use language appropriate to the purpose of the text, the topic, and the intended audience
5. utilize a variety of grammatical structures and vocabulary

Students must know what is expected of them in terms of performance. The AP goals and guidelines for the essay grading will be explained to them and adapted during the course of the year.

Evaluation

Students will be required to write one writing sample per week, of varying length and difficulty. This exercise helps teachers to devise interesting and varied assignments and to find the time to devote to meaningful and helpful evaluation of the essays. Students will be required to rewrite essays on a continuous basis in the effort of improving their writing skills.