INSTRUCTOR: GUY TOUBIANA
Office Hours: M W: 1:00-2:45
T Th: 2:152:45
Office number: 9535253
Home number: 5717254
Room: 232a
Email:
FRENCH 490
ADVANCED GRAMMAR, SYNTAX, AND TRANSLATION
FALL SEMESTER
2013
This course seeks to help you to acquire the necessary skills for a fluent idiomatic writing style. Often, students may express themselves correctly but are restricted in the formulas at hand for voicing any given idea and have little notion of the rich variety of expressive possibilities in French. This course should help you to increase your awareness of the diversity of the linguistic resources in French.
The material will cover advanced grammar, stylistics, and comparative stylistics. Our exercises will concentrate on translation. There is no better way to achieve mastery of a foreign language than to translate it. They will help you to monitor your grasp of the general principles and the nuanced details discussed in each class. The new vocabulary that you will see will stimulate you to enrich your personal French and English lexicons. Many of the techniques to which you will be exposed are offered as ways to avoid some other manner of expression. A style that repeatedly relies on the same structures is monotonous. The remedy is to substitute alternate procedures for those that tend to recur regularly. Hopefully, by the end of the semester, students should be able to express themselves in the same degree of depth and nuance in French than in English.
Language learning requires a steady and constant effort but is fun! As such, regular attendance is requested from you.
Grading policy:
Class participation...... 15%
Homework...... 10%
Chapter quizzes...... 35%
Compositions...... 15%
Final exam...... 25%
Quizzes will be given at the end of each chapter. You should have 5 quizzes during the semester. Each one will last 40 minutes. Use of online translators, translation software, etc. is cheating and will not be tolerated.
Nofinal exam will be given during the reading period.
Programme d' études
Workbook: Idée PrincipaleStyle Varié de Maurice
Cagnon et Lillian Szklarczyk (HeinleHeinle)
DateChapitres Fonctions
Aug.29PresentationLe Verbe
Chapitre 1
p. 111
Sep.3-5Chap. 1Le Verbe
p. 1222
Sep.10-12Chap.2L'Adverbe
p.29-39
Quiz 1
Sep.17-19Chap. 3Le Substantif
p.45-48
Sep.24-26Chap.3Le Substantif
p.48-53
Quiz 2
Oct.1-3Chap.4L'Adjectif
p.57-65
Oct.8-10Chapitre 4L'Adjectif
p.65-75
Oct.15-17Chapitre 5L’Article
p.81-89
Quiz 3
Oct.22-24Chapitre 6Le Pronom
p.95-103
Oct.29-31Chapitre 7
p. 107-111La Préposition
Nov.5-7Chap. 7La Préposition
p.111-115
Quiz 4
Nov.12-14Chap.8La Conjonction
p.119-125
Nov.19-21p.125-132La Conjonction
THANKSGIVING
Dec.3-10Review