FREN 1101 - Beginning French Language and Culture I

1. Effectively converse in French in the present tense on topics such as school, home, shopping, clothing and daily routines and comprehend spoken French and brief readings on those topics.
2. Employ idiomatic expressions and communicative strategies such as circumlocution in written and spoken French to convey a message rather than relying on word-for-word translation.
3. Break down and analyze a sentence, labeling words by their grammatical function and syntactic structures.
4. Conjugate verbs and employ the principles of gender and number agreement to formulate complete sentences and compose brief essays in the present tense.
5. Recognize morphological cues such as prefixes and suffixes as well as borrowed words and cognates derived from common languages (such as Latin) to guess the meanings of unfamiliar words in English and French.
6. Apply orthographic conventions and accent rules to correctly spell words based on how they sound and to pronounce words correctly based on their spelling.
7. Empathize with the difficulties any non-native English speakers, and minorities and immigrants face in learning a second language.
8. Identify some of the more basic cultural distinctions and linguistic variations between the many countries comprising the French speaking world.
9. Identify some cultural differences between English-speaking and French-speaking societies, particularly with regard to dress, housing, architecture, city design, gender roles, and family, and appreciate the interrelationship between language, culture, and environment as reflected both in grammar and vocabulary.
10. Reflect on the extensive cultural and linguistic contributions from France to the English-speaking world; recognize the contributions from French-speaking explorers, voyageurs, and early immigrants in the present United States and Minnesota in particular, as evidenced by the mapping and the extensive number of place names and some daily vocabulary and customs.
11. Identify examples of French vocabulary borrowed from other linguistic groups through historical events, such as France’s colonial presence in Africa and Indochina.
12. Label French-speaking countries and regions on a map, and be able to identify major immigration patterns of French speaking groups living in the United States and in the French-speaking world.
13. Consider the role religion and the Church have played in the history of France and the French-speaking world, and the role it plays in present society.
14. Reflect on the relationship between France’s own struggle for freedom in the previous world wars and the subsequent impetus for independence in its former colonies.
15. Consider the cultural and linguistic influence of countries such as the United States, neighboring countries and former colonies on France.

1. Greetings and expressions of courtesy
2. Alphabet, pronunciation, word stress, accent rules and orthographic rules
3. Cognates and borrowed words (such as place names)
4. Numbers through 100,000,000
5. Telling time
6. Expressing likes or dislikes
7. Definite and indefinite articles
8. Gender and number agreement between nouns and adjectives
9. Expressing possession
10. “Faire” expressions
11. Present tense conjugation of regular, accent-changing and some irregular and stem-changing verbs; expressing the immediate future (aller + infinitive)
12. Expressions with avoir
13. Vocabulary relating to school, home, family, clothing and shopping
14. Basic geography of the French-speaking world and role of French explorers in the United States
15. Cultural themes and vignettes through readings, class discussions, videos and multimedia presentations