French Lower Intermediate (L44) - Updated for 2018/19
Summary
Level:
You will have completed over 100 hours of tuition fairly recently or you have a reasonable foundation in the language at school level, possibly to 'O'/GCSE level up to grade B or equivalent. You can deal with most common 'survival' situations confidently. You now want to start moving beyond merely practising simple exchanges during your holiday or work trip abroad, learning to cope in non-routine situations and contributing to conversations on topics of general interest. The course will demand more of you by way of vocabulary learning and extend your understanding of the grammar of the language, e.g. by learning more tenses.
Main Objectives:
You will build up on previous knowledge and learn to describe experiences and events, and briefly give reasons and explanations for your opinions and plans. The emphasis will be on a more fluent and spontaneous oral expression. You will access more demanding authentic French texts. You will further develop your understanding of French society and culture, and start discussing them.
Please read our Can-do Statements (link on the right of this page) to see the competences which you will be working towards and can achieve by the end of the year.
Teaching:
1 x 2 hour class per week plus some independent learning.
Course Text
Elodie Heu & Myriam Abou-Samra (2016), Edito A2 - Méthode de français, Didier, ISBN-13: 978-2-278-08319-0
A copy can be purchased from the University Bookshop.
Course Description
Based on a step-by-step approach, the course is divided into learning blocks that focus on practical, useful and manageable language.
Activities will be devised to make sure you understand and can use the language presented during the lessons. You will put new language into practice via games, role-plays, and problem-solving tasks.
We will have access to online resources available on the Language Centre website to support your learning.
You will be given opportunities to check your progress. Homework tasks will be set each week to reinforce the language you learn in class.
Syllabus
Topics
- yourself and your friends;
- holidays: different ways of exploring another country;
- the world of work: writing a CV; preparing for an interview;
- the environment.
Grammar
-
present tense (revision);
- prepositions;
- pronominal verbs;
- direct and indirect object pronouns;
- relative pronouns qui, que;
- perfect tense;
- use of il y a, pendant, depuis;
- use of on;
- use of il faut, on doit;
- future tense;
- imperfect tense;
- perfect and imperfect contrasted;
- comparatives and superlatives.
Skills
- listening, speaking, reading and writing.