Insider Perspectives on the Francophone World II
Course Description
Summary
Viewed from the outside, the French-speaking world offers enticing images of beauty, pleasure, and freedom. From the inside, however, it is a complicated, often contradictory world where implicit codes and values shape the most basic aspects of daily life. This course will give you an insiderʹs perspective on a cultural and communicative system whose ideas, customs, and belief systems are surprisingly different from your own. Together, we will examine how daily life and activities (friendship and family relationships, housing, leisure, work, and food culture) reflect culturally specific ideologies and values. We will also focus on questions of gender and the French language, including inclusive language, as well as French society’s coming to terms with the realities of its colonial past and the multi-racial Francophone world. Emphasis will be placed on developing ease, fluency, and sophistication in oral and written expression. Class will be conducted in French and revolve around authentic materials from the Francophone world (video, music, advertisements, literary texts). Introductory level.
Learning Outcomes
- Development of:
• familiarity with and a partial command of the phonetic system
• an understanding of and competency in the use of basic grammatical structures
• sentence-level discourse
• vocabulary in basic and concrete topics
• the ability to understand, and to speak, read and write about basic topics
• the ability to recognize different registers of language and cultural products and practices
• the ability to infer vocabulary, grammar and content through context
• the ability to recognize and identify essential information in various types of texts
- familiarity with French-speaking cultural contexts
- critical skills
- intercultural understanding
Prerequisites
Insider Perspectives on the Francophone World I or permission from the instructor (nrouxel-cubberly@bennington.edu) based on previous study of French. Proficiency level to be assessed by the instructor.
Please contact the faculty member : nrouxel-cubberly@bennington.edu
Corequisites
Attendance at 2 CSL speaker series. Attendance (2 times) at French Table.