French 3

Conducted in an immersion style, the major goal of this course is to improve the student’s ability to understand spoken French and to communicate in French with greater fluency. French III is designed for students who have who have mastered and internalized fundamental vocabulary and grammar. Students will continue to master more sophisticated vocabulary and grammatical concepts and will be assigned a substantial amount of written work. Students will improve oral, aural, writing, and reading proficiencies through language laboratory work, reading literary excerpts, classroom discussion, and compositions. Students will continue their study of various aspects of culture in the Francophone world.

Prerequisite: ▪A final grade of 70 or better in French II; or

▪Incoming freshmen with a minimum of four years of French with a grade of 80 or better; and/or

▪Teacher recommendation.

I. Learning Objectives (A statement of learning objectives is a statement of changes to take place in students.)

Upon completion of this course students will be able to:

• Converse about a variety of topics including health sports, entertainment, personal care, furniture, homes, and transportation and French traffic laws.

• Compose original written works, such as dialogues, poetry and compositions.

• Understand and discuss authentic French texts including short stories, poetry and film.

• Conjugate regular and select irregular verbs in the present, imperative, futur proche, futur simple, passé composé, conditionnel, subjunctive and imparfait.

• Narrate a story using the imparfait and passé composé correctly.

• Use direct and indirect object pronouns properly in both conversation and written work.

• Describe and discuss past, present and future events clearly.

• Discuss future events, hopes and dreams.

• Demonstrate a global understanding of francophone cultures.

II. Learning Experiences (A learning experience is the interaction between the learner and the external conditions in the environment to which he/she can react.)

• Through the course of the year the students will have participated in the following activities.

• Write compositions on various topics including: French music, their dream home, traffic laws, and poetry.

• Create dialogues that show their ability to express themselves orally.

• Read short stories in the target language.

• Interpret authentic French conversation as seen in music and Film.

• Have both small group and class discussions on various topics.

• Share stories and personal experiences.

• Complete grammar exercises to practice using the grammatical structures introduced in class.

• Process their ideas on topics discussed in class, and use new vocabulary through the writing of journals in French

III. Course Outline (A brief outline of the major topics and units which are central to this course: the sequence of topics and units may be altered by the teacher based on the needs of students):

1. Grammar: Student will review, learn, and use:

• The verb tenses previously learned including: présent, impérative, and passé compose.

• The imparfait, conditionnel, futur proche, futur simple, and subjonctif.

• Articles and gender of nouns, and pronouns (direct, indirect, and simple demonstrative qui and que.)

• Students will review the use of adjectives and adverbs.

2. Vocabulary: Students will learn thematic vocabulary from units in the text. This will include but is not limited to:

• Entertainment, the home, sports, the body, morning routine, clothing, childhood, and travel.

IV. Course Materials: The following list represents the major texts and/or resources used in French III. Teachers also use additional supplementary texts: articles, materials and curriculum documents which they have gathered or prepared themselves and which they believe enrich and extend student learning.

Valette and Valette, Discovering French Blanc, Nouveau: McDougal Littell, 2007