FRENCH I
cod. 1004595

Academic year 2024/25
1° year of course - Annual
Professor
Elena PESSINI
Academic discipline
Lingua e traduzione - lingua francese (L-LIN/04)
Field
Lingue e traduzioni
Type of training activity
Characterising
60 hours
of face-to-face activities
12 credits
hub: PARMA
course unit
in - - -

Learning objectives

The course aims at providing students with a sound basic knowledge and the development of spoken interaction and reading skills.
During the module the student will learn to
identify the textual indicators which help determine the typology of a written text
identify morphology, semantic fields, synonyms and antonyms
analyse sentence structure
analyse the use of mood and tense
understand and analyse texts in the original language
summarise and comment on the content of the analysed text.

Prerequisites

Students are required to have followed the practical language courses during the first semester These courses are intended for the first year students in order to prepare them for the module in the second semester.

Course unit content

Course title: Linguistic functions and textual typology.
The module will be held in French and focus on the study of a variety of text types that the students will come across during the their L2 French studies. The texts analysed during the first part of the course will be authentic texts selected from daily and weekly newspaper articles, advertising texts, announcements, information texts, song scripts and all of which will be made available in paper or electronic format. In the second part of the course descriptive and narrative literary texts and critical essays will be the focus point of study. The course will begin with the simplest texts and gradually progress to the more complex writings; all of which will be taken from twentieth and twenty-first century works. The study focus will be the analysis of the typology of written and audio-visual documents in their various forms and provide a means to vocabulary enrichment, sentence analysis and the introduction to translation strategies. Text comprehension and interpretation activities will be targeted at the acquisition of strategies necesssary to compare, summarise and translate texts. In the analysis of articles and critical essays, particular attention will be paid to the discursive, cohesive and coherent aspects of the texts. Narrative and descriptive features will also be taken into consideration through literary and non literary texts.
Comprehension and re-elaboration activities will be targeted at the acquisition of strategies to compare, confront, summarise and translate the literary texts. The students are further required to read a novel and a collection of short stories in original language and in an unabridged version. The title will be indicated in the examination programme.

Full programme

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Bibliography

Grammaire: Y. Delatour, D. Jennepoint, M. Léon-Dufour, B. Teyssier Nouvelle grammaire du français –cours de civilisation française de la Sorbonne – Hachette – (2004) 2018
Per gli studenti Francese III lingua (6CFU):Philippe Claudel, Le bruit des trousseaux, Le Livre de Poche.
Kim Thuy, Ru, Le livre de Poche.
Per gli studenti Francese I e II lingua (12 CFU):
Annie Ernaux, Les Années, Folio, Gallimard.
Philippe Claudel, Les âmes grises, Le livre de Poche.
Louis-Philippe Dalembert, Avant ques les ombres s'effacent, Sabine Wespieser éditeur.

Teaching methods

Lectures will be held in the classroom and materials will be made available on the University platform ‘Lea’. In addition, more practical work is also integrated into the course with the language courses held by the language tutors throughout the academic year. During these courses students will carry out exercises on listening and reading comprehension, written and spoken production as well as grammar and phonetics.

Assessment methods and criteria

Competencies and skills will be assessed through an oral examination in French after successfully passing the compulsory written examination. There are four parts to the written examination: listening comprehension, reading comprehension, phonetics and grammar. During the oral examination, the students will be expected to discuss the texts analysed in class as well as other texts studied outside the classroom. Competencies and skills tested during the oral examination are as follows:

- Spoken competence corresponding to a B1+ level
- Knowledge of the instruments necessary to analyse written discourse
- The ability to express personal opinion on specified topics.
- The ability to translate and summarise the texts read in class and answer questions regarding the language, the structure and the typology of text. Beginners allso need to demonstrate a basic communicative skills.
- The ability to elaborate and discuss independent analysis and re-elaborate ideas dealt with during the course as well as show in-depth personal study.
The final mark will be calculated on the average of the written and oral examinations.
A negative assessment will be given if that the student is unable to attain the minimum requirements of the course; has failed to achieve spoken competence at a B1+ level; is unable to decodify texts or make independent judgement; shows a lack of personal and independent study and has failed to make use of the information available.Sufficient evaluation (18-23/30) is determined by the demonstration by the student to have learned the basic and minimum contents of the course, the ability to speak French in a suitable topic, and that, despite the simplicity of communication, has some characteristics of level B1 +; ensuring a sufficient level of self-preparation, ability to solve problems related to information retrieval and decoding of complex texts, as well as the formulation of independent judgment. The mean scores (24-27/30) are assigned to the student who produces evidence of a level more than sufficient (24-25/30) or good (26-27/30) evaluation indicators listed above. Higher scores (from 28/30 to 30/30 cum laude) are awarded based on the demonstration of a level as very good to excellent evaluation indicators listed above.

Other information

Students are required to pass a written examination before being admitted to the oral examination.
The written examination consists of four parts: listening comprehension (non-beginners)/ communicative functions (beginners), reading comprehension, phonetics and grammar.

2030 agenda goals for sustainable development

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