ATS3067: French Studies Advanced 1

You can find this information yourself on the unit site, but generally cultural component accounts for 50% of your mark (usually comprising presentation, essay and exam) and language component accounts for the other 50% (usually comprising essay, translation test, oral exam and aural comprehension test).

For advanced 1 culture: culture presentation = 10 mins, culture essay = 1000 words in French, culture exam = 1 hour extended response in French.

For advanced 1 language (all in French obviously): essay = 500 words (ish?), translation test = 2 hours, oral exam = 15 min presentation on an unknown article with 1 hour's preparation beforehand + 15 mins conversation, aural comprehension = you watch a video 6 times and transcribe as much of it as you can.

For first-year French students I am reasonably certain that the cultural component will account for 25% and the langauge component 75%.

Attendance requirement is 75% and they will take the roll in every class. They claim that if you don't attend 75% of classes you will either fail or get a maximum of 50, but I stopped going to class after week 5 and I didn't fail or get 50 so jokes on them.

Hate to sound like a broken record but fuck everything about the cultural component. Some people like it though so it's really a matter of personal opinion. This semester we studied a bunch of texts and movies to do with the relationship between history and memory. Which was okay I suppose but had nothing to do with French except that the texts were in French.
The language component is good. Just challenging enough to keep you interested but not impossibly difficult. The department is very capable and in my 4th year of studying French at uni I have not yet met a single lecturer/tutor who wasn't highly competent.

Varies, but all French academic staff are pretty competent (and generally native speakers).

None, but not really necessary as your "exam" will be a translation test and you can practise that without past exams. For the culture exam we were given the topics beforehand.

3 of 5

None. Very annoying.

Grammar textbook + workbook, not really necessary unless your grammar skills are weak. You won't be doing any grammar work in class, it will be for your personal study use only.

Ze French department brings out a new course reader each year, which is unfortunately always slightly different from the year before so you do need to buy it as you will be using it in class every week.

Don't buy whatever you're studying in the culture component, you can get those novels in the library (and "cheat" by getting the English translations instead).

Generally, 2-4 hours of language + 2 hours of culture per week. For advanced 1, 2 hour language tutorial + 1 hour translation workshop + 2 hour cultural component seminar.

Workload is medium-high, compared to arts subjects in general. You are expected to do one translation per week, which should take 1 hour max, plus read various articles for language and culture, plus do any grammar/aural comprehension/speaking practice as needed.

Sem 1 2012