AP French Language Syllabus

2013-2014

Course Overview, Objectives and Design

The AP French Language course aims to:

  • Develop the ability to understand spoken French in various contexts.
  • Develop a French vocabulary sufficient for reading newspaper and magazine articles, literary texts and more, without dependence on a dictionary.
  • Develop the ability to express oneself in French, both orally and in writing, coherently, resourcefully, and with reasonable fluency and accuracy.

From the first year, students are encouraged to participate in French Club activities and in National French Week celebrations. They are urged to build the necessary skills and credentials to become eligible for the National French Honor Society, as well as try out for state and national French competitions. These activities prove to be strong motivatingfactors in the students’ desire to pursue French studies.

All course activities are geared to the course goals and expectations listed in the College Board publication pertaining to the Course Description for AP French Language that covers all 6 themes in the “AP French Language and Culture curriculum framework”. In order to achieve this, the teacher will use French almost exclusively in the teaching of the course and students are encouraged to do likewise.

The primary objective of AP French Language is to enable students to communicate in oral and written French in both formal and informal situations, while gaining a further appreciation of Francophone cultures. By the end of the second semester, students should be able to exercise the following skills:

•Listening: understand and interpret the main ideas of increasingly longer stretches of speech with different accents, utilize context clues to piece together non-comprehended information.

•Speaking: initiate a general conversation by means of asking questions; paraphrase what somebody else has said; begin to sustain conversation by utilizing effective communicative strategies; use increasingly precise vocabulary words; describe things and people; narrate experiences or events in various tense and mood; exchange opinions on cultural topics.

•Reading: read a variety of authentic materials.

•Writing: provide written responses to assigned questions; increase precision in the expression of ideas; describe or narrate ideas in extended informal writing; prepare a composition with a clear organization of topic sentences.

•Culture: gain a greater understanding of and appreciation for French peoples and cultures.

Course Activities

Reading

Reading is a daily activity. The texts come from a variety of sources: former AP exams, the textbooks, newspapers and magazines, the Internet, and literature. To build reading comprehension, the specific reading strategies taught in French 1 through 4 are reviewed and practiced: activation of prior knowledge, cognates/false cognates, deriving meaning from context, word families, compound nouns, prefixes and suffixes, orthographic changes from French to English, recognition of tone, and the identification of signal words, main ideas, supporting details, audience, and objective.Many of the themes present in the new AP French Language exam are already present in various textbooks, Quant à moi, Une fois pour toutes, Trésors du temps, but the teacher will also use more recent online material that pertains to the rest of the themes that are on the AP exam but do not exist in the established textbooks. Additionally students will be exposed to author biographies, samples of francophone literature, and articles with the same theme as the literature. Examples of authentic resources are the following:

Authors and readings:

  • RenéGoscinny:Le Petit Nicolas
  • Guy de Maupassant:La Parure
  • Pagnol, Marcel:La Gloire de mon père
  • Contes africaines Le Père éléphant, etc.
  • Camara Laye: L’Enfant noir
  • Gisèle HalimiL’Enfance d’une fille

Writing

Students are led through the writing process as they begin to compose paragraphs, short compositions, and essays that originate from the information presented and ideas explored in the various text chapters. Essays are done as homework every other week and turned in to the instructor. The essays are then returned to the students with errors coded (not corrected) so that the responsibility of the correction falls on the writer. Both copies receive a grade based on the official rubric for evaluating AP compositions. Each nine week period, the students will be given a 40 minute writing assignment without advanced knowledge of the subject.Every Monday, the students will write in their journals. There will be weekly writing activities related to topics covered in class and usually assigned by the instructor. There will also be several opportunities for the students to write informally so that they may create stories or poems on topics of their choosing.They will be encouraged to show precision and variety in the choice of vocabulary and verb tenses and never to translate from English. Peer-editing and self-editing will be practiced, along with varied group activities and always brainstorm to respond to a topic with as many ideas as possible.Students will first try to understand various topics given at the AP exam previous years, working with partners in order to translate them. Then they will organize their ideas, vocabulary and work on the grammar and syntax. The ultimate goal will be to build fluency and ease of expression. Journaling, reflections to readings and persuasive response to current issues will be a constant focus in the class.

Speaking

The course includes numerous partner activities, small group activities, and individual presentations so that more students are speaking more often. Students will speak fluidly, accurately, and intelligently on a variety of topics by: speaking and hearing nothing but French in class; narrating, describing, and explaining images, picture sequences, and other visual cues to a partner, the teacher, or a tape/CD; discussing a variety of topics with a partner, or a group, and make presentations in front of the class; talking in small groups to plan skits, dialogues, or presentations. Students will also be able to use formal and conversational forms of the language. The students will prepare a formal presentation on a famous French artist and will present the information to the class as that person. The AP French: Preparing for the Language Examination book is utilized to provide students with additional speaking practice for both the informal and formal components of the exam.Students should be motivated to use the language whenever possible: in class, with friends who take French, if possible with native speakers.

They will memorize poems, to improve their pronunciation, and intonation.

Various pronunciation exercises will be done every day in class. It is important for the students to understand that learning any language is an on-going process that requires continual study and practice and Mistakes are a normal part of the learning process and students should expect to self-correct or to be corrected. Active participation is required to learn and students will be given points based on participation.

Listening

All communication in the AP French Language class is conducted in French. The students’ class participation grades reflect the requirement that they only use French in the classroom. Listening is practiced every day in class when the teacher and other students are speaking. Guest speakers provide the opportunity for the students to hear other voices and accents. Students are exposed to other recorded materials on a regular basis such as: French films, songs, videos and DVDs, radio, and the Internet. To emphasize aural skills, the students view a selection of French videos/DVDs that correlate to the lessons being taught. Some examples of authentic visual resources are the following:

  • La gloire de mon père
  • Contes africaines

Students will listen to French songs at school and at home. They will try to write down he words they hear and look up. French music is also available on the Internet. Lyrics of the songs of Céline Dion, Adamo, Charles Aznavour, Edith Piaf and Dalida are available online. Spending ten minutes a day listening to French songs trying to understand will definitely improve students listening skills. In addition, students will be required to register for any of the audio/video news channels that are provided daily on the TV5 website. In this course students will listen to some of the released AP Listening files available. French Films are also very helpful listening tools and are widely available in video stores. While listening, students can’t expect to understand every single word but the general meaning.In addition, each year we have an exchange with a high school in Toulouse, France for 10 days. This is an excellent occasion for my students to use French in real life settings and expand upon the relationships they have already begun to build through email or Facebook prior to their hosting or travel experience. This interpersonal communicative interchange in the target language offers the students the opportunity to clarify meaning and negotiate it when exchanging new information with their French counterparts. On many occasions this is also an opportunity to keep an interactive journal in which they note linguistic differences and variations between English and French.

Student Evaluation

Exams generally contain a variety of components, including reading, writing, listening, speaking, and culture. These assessments contain matching, true/false, fill-in, and free response questions in reading, grammar, vocabulary, and culture. Speaking and writing compositions are done as a separate evaluation with rubrics based on the AP format. There is an ongoing assessment through interactive reading, oral reading, oral and written story summaries, and formal and informal essays.

Course Guidelines for participation:

Because the goal of this course is to allow you to communicate in French, we will speak French bell to bell. To enhance listening comprehension the teacher will communicate with the students during class and out of class in French including during explanation of French grammar. To enhance speaking skills,students are expected to communicate with their classmates and with the teacherONLY in French. Students will get points subtracted from the participation grade if communication occurs in English. Speaking only in French can be challenging but it is so much fun and at the end of each class students should notice improvement of their ability to express in French. Interaction out of class with other French teachers and the exchange students from France and other French speaking countries needs to be always entirely in French. Making mistakes while speaking in French are normal and should not prevent students from using the target language all the time. This will accelerate the development of the following skills: listening more carefully, thinking critically, self-correcting and becoming more confident in their knowledge.

Course Materials

Primary textbooks:

  • Quant à moi
  • Triangle
  • AP French: Preparing for the Language Examination AP French (2012 edition) Richard Ladd
  • AP French Language and culture – All access (2012 edition) Angelini, O’Neill, Alexandru, Huntington, Stofanak

Supplementary texts:

  • Trésors du temps
  • Moments littéraires
  • French IV Years
  • Une Fois Pour Toutes Une fois pour toutes (2nd edition)(Une révision grammaticale) Hale Sturges II, Linda Cregg Nielsen, Henry L. Herbst
  • French-English/English-French dictionary (Harper-Collins-Robert or Larousse recommended, size compact or concise)

Course planner: (subject to change)

Time frame: / Class work / Assessments
Week 1 /
  • Syllabus et introduction
  • Discuss the practice Strategies in order to develop reading and listening comprehension, writing and speaking skills.
/
  • Subscribe to a French magazine or make a list of French Websites which develop listening and reading skills (TV5, etc.
  • Learn to keep a journal in French
  • Technology: school website

UNIT 1
(4 weeks) / La Quête de soi: Les croyances et les systèmes de valeurs
Weeks 2, 3, 4 5 / -Laïcité en France (newspaper articles, original education documents, etc.)
-AP French, Ladd
-AP French, Angelini, O’Neill, Alexandru
Verb review: payer, s’ennuier
Present de l’Indicatif
Infinitives
Listening: French news, L’Express, etc. /
  • Speaking: picture story and discussions related to the topic
  • Le Petit Nicolas (drawing collection)
  • Long Composition 1
  • Fill-ins (words/verbs)
  • Dictée
  • Reading: Le petit Nicolas
  • Technology: Twitter

Weeks 6 / Imperatives
Faire causatif
Listening - Film: historical overview: The Battle of Algiers /
  • Discussions
  • Composition 2- Write a summary of the movie and Answer to questions following the movie preparing for a discussion
  • Fill-ins
  • Dictée
  • Technology: Wiki

UNIT 2
(4 weeks) / L’esthetique: Les Arts visuels
Weeks 7, 8, 9 & 10 / L’Impressionnisme
-Virtual museums
-Temporary exhibitions
-Visit to the Wadsworth Museum in Hartford
-
Verb review: décrire, s’asseoir
Descriptive adjectives
Comparative and Superlative of adjectives
Interrogatives
Tout; C’est vs. Il est
Listening: French News /
  • Virtual Museum Tours: L’Orsay & Le Louvre. Questions & Discussions
  • Long Composition 3
  • Fill-ins (AP)
  • Reading:
  • Dictée
  • Technology: Voicethread

Weeks 11 / Le mot juste: manquer à, render, partir, sortir, quitter
Film: Jean de Florette
Speaking: impromptu topics /
  • Composition 4 - Movie critique
  • 5 minute speaking prompts
  • Technology: Prezi

UNIT 3
(4 weeks) / Les défis mondiaux: L’environnement
Weeks 12, 13, 14 &15 / -French IV Years
-“Le francais dans le monde”
-Triangle
Verb review: conduire, mettre
Articles
Object pronouns, y, and, en
Order of pronouns
Disjunctive pronouns
Le mot juste: se moquer de
Listening: French News from N. Africa /
  • Picture story, questions, & Discussions (
  • Long Compositions 5
  • Fill-ins (AP)
  • Dictée
  • Technology: Voki

Week 16 / RévisionMidterm exam -
Le Grand concours
End of the first semester /
  • Review packet

UNIT 4
(4 weeks) / La vie contemporaine: les loisirs et le sport
Weeks 17, 18, 19 & 20 / -AP French, Ladd
-AP French Language and culture – All access
Verb review: verbs in – ger; prendre; découvrir
Prepositions with geographical names
Future tense and Conditional forms
Future perfect and past conditional
If- clauses
Passé Simple and Passé antérieur
Listening: French news /
  • Picture story, questions, & Discussions
  • Long Composition 6
  • Fill-in (AP)
  • Reading: AP texts
  • Dictée
  • Technology: Facebook

Weeks 21 / Listening: Film - Indochine
Verb review: préférer, projeter
Negative expressions
Relative pronouns
Le mot juste: il s’agit de
Listening: French News /
  • Picture story, questions, & Discussions
  • Composition 7 – critique of the film
  • Fill-ins (AP)
  • Voicethread
  • Dictée

UNIT 5
(4 weeks) / La science et la technologie: les découvertes et les inventions
Week 22, 23, 24, & 25 / Le Français dans le monde, TV5
Verb review: croire
What is subjunctive?
Formation of the subjunctive
Usage of Subjunctive
Listening: Champs-Elysées–interviews ondiscoveries in alternative sources of energy /
  • Picture story, questions, & Discussions
  • Long Composition 8
  • Fill-in (AP)
  • Reading: French Magazines targeting science and technology
  • Dictée
  • Technology: Glogster,

Week 26 / Verb review: vivre, venir
Adverbs
Comparison of adverbs
Demonstrative pronouns
Le mot juste: plaire à
Listening: Students watch the movie: Keita some projects related to the movie. /
  • Picture story, questions, & Discussions
  • Composition 9- Write a summary of the movie and Answer to questions following the movie preparing for a discussion
  • Fill-in (AP)
  • Dictée
  • Technology: Wiki

UNIT 6
(4 weeks) / La famille et la communauté: La famille
Week 27, 28, 2930 / La Francophonie dans le Maghreb -
-Gisele Halimi,
-Tajar BenJelloun
-Camara Laye – rites of passage
Verb review: vaincre, convaincre
What is function?
Requesting information
Hypothesizing
Describing
Expression of opinion or reaction
Disagreeing
Narrating
Listening: Interview with Gisèle Halimi /
  • Picture story, questions, & Discussions
  • Long Composition 10
  • Fill-in (AP)
  • Reading: L’Enfant noir
  • Posting on WIKI reflections of chapters
  • Dictée
  • Reading: L’Enfance d’une fille
  • Technology: Wiki

Week 31, 32, 33, 34 / AP PREP /
  • Review packet

Week 35, 36,37, 38 / FINAL EXAM PREP & course evaluation /
  • Review packet

FINAL GRADE:

In class-Oral/Written daily Participation 30%

Homework 10%

Tests 25%

Quizzes 25%

Midterm 5%

Final Exam: 5%

AP-Specific Training

To practice the AP French Language Examination, the students will be tested periodically in conditions similar to those of the AP Exam. Approximately 40 minutes of reading comprehension and 40 minutes of listening comprehension with CD or online audio files will be given in one session. The next session will consist of 40 minutes of compositional writing and 20 minutes of fill-ins of function words and verbs.

For the speaking portion of the AP exam, the students will train by speaking and recording directly into the digital lab language system using pictures from past exams or the online text (R. Ladd). Feed-back from the teacher will be given at regular intervals.

Bibliography

Texts

Bragger, Jeannette D., Rice, Donald B. Quant à Moi. Boston, Massachusetts: Thompson Heinle Corporation, 2005.

Blume, Eli, Stein, Gail. French Four Years. New York, New York: Amsco School Publications, 2004.

Hirsch, Bette G., Thompson, Chantal P. Moments Littéraires. Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath and Company, 1992.

Ladd, Richard, Girard, Colette. AP French: Preparing for the Language Examination. Glenview, Illinois: Addison Wesley Longman, 2011.

Lenard, Yvone. Trésors du Temps. Columbus, Ohio: Glencoe/McGraw Hill, 1997.

Rice, Anne-Christine. Cinemafor French Conversation. Newburyport, Massachusetts: Focus Publishing, 2003.

Angelini, Eileen; O’Neill, Geraldine; Alexandru, Adina; Huntington, Julie; Stofanak, Erica.AP French Language and culture – All access. Research and Education Association, 2012

Magazines

Paris Match, Journal Français, etc.

Web sites

TV5.com

Listen to a daily news summary on France Info.

For the news from Canada, read Matinternet.

Check the weather today at Meteo France. (French/English)

When you’re in Paris, go to this site to help you decide where to eat! You will find descriptions of various restaurants, as well as menus from many of them.

The train is one of the most convenient ways to travel through France. At the official site of the French rail service, called the SNCF, you get train schedules, make your reservations and purchase tickets for everything from local trains to the TGV.

The web site for the daily newspaper Le Nouvel Observateur, allows you to read today’s edition.

Le Web des spectateurs du cinéma provides information about films, locations, and time.

This web site offers to facilitate French study abroad through immersion programs. Its programs include staying with a local family and either working on a farm or attending a specially designed group program for a limited period.

A very "hippie," disorganized web site that offers help to people traveling all over the world who have specific needs, budgets, and life styles. It offers guide books, leaders, charter travel, and a forum for discussing trips.

This home page of the French TV sports channel (France 3) provides updates on all current sporting events.