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AP French Language
  

French Language Advanced Placement

Recommended Prerequisite:  French I, II, III

Grades Offered:  10-12

Credit:  ½ to 1

SDE Course Code:  3045

MNPS Course Code: FLA1545

 

Course Description 

This course follows the guidelines of the College Board Advanced Placement French language.  It encompasses aural/oral skills, reading comprehension, grammar, and composition.  Students taking such a course emphasizing the use of French for active communication have the following objectives: the ability to comprehend formal and informal French; the acquisition of vocabulary and a grasp of structure to allow the easy, accurate reading of newspaper and magazine articles, as well as of modern literature in French; the ability to compose expository passages; and the ability to express ideas orally with accuracy and fluency.  Students are able to express their ideas on a variety of topics including abstract and concrete themes.

 

Course of Study

Objectives: Students will be able to . . .

·        Understand spoken French in various contexts

·        Read newspaper and magazine articles, literary texts, and other

non-technical writings without dependence on a dictionary.

·        Express themselves competently with adequate fluency in both written and spoken French. 

 

Thematic Vocabulary

·        at the hotel

·        services at the hotel

·        visiting the doctor

·        at the hospital

·        at the dentist’s

·        a rendez-vous in town

·        how to describe where one lives

·        friends and personal relations

·        life stages

·        college or work

·        professional life

 

Grammatical Concepts

  • The comparative
  • The superlative
  • Pronouns lequel, celui, and le mien
  • The subjunctive:  temps and mode
  • The past subjunctive
  • Si plus the imparfait
  • The plus-que-parfait
  • The conditional with si phrases
  • Other uses of the conditional
  • The conditionnel passé
  • Reciprocal reflexive verbs
  • Relative pronouns qui and que
  • The preposition with relative pronouns
  • The relative pronoun dont
  • Ce qui, ce que, and ce dont
  • The preposition plus the infinitive
  • The past infinitive
  • The present participle
  • The conjunction plus the subjunctive

 

Reading Topics

  • Une étrange aventure
  • En voyage
  • Les peches
  • Le bracelet
  • Le Portrait
  • Young tourists in France
  • The Michelin Guide
  • French and their health
  • France and mineral water
  • French towns
  • Town or country?
  • Interview in the street
  • Friends and family
  • The qualities of a friend
  • Ourselves and others
  • The bac

 

Cultural Studies

  • Dates, events, and people from 1870—present
  • Charles de Gaulle
  • P. Eluard, Liberté
  • Movie:  Au revoir, les enfants
  • French and the Europeans
  • The Muslim religion
  • Racism
  • Song:  Ethiopie
  • Les antilles francophones
  • Africa in the francophone community
  • France and the new world

 

The AP French Language Examination

Students sit the AP French Language examination in May of the second semester of study.  The examination is approximately two and one-half hours in length.  To assess the student’s ability in the four skills of listening, reading, writing, and speaking, the AP French Language Exam will evaluate the student by requiring the student to . . .

 

·        Listen to brief exchanges between two speakers and select appropriate rejoinders from four choices provided.

·        Listen to dialogues or monologues and then, after each, answer questions based on what they just heard.

·        Read several prose passages (and an occasional poem) and respond to multiple choice questions based on the presented content.

·        Show knowledge of correct grammatical structure in answering questions about the reading selections.

·        Show knowledge of correct function word and verb usage by means of filling in banks with the correct French function word or verb tense.

·        Write in French a well-organized and coherent composition of substantial length in a forty-five-minute time frame based on a topic provided.

·        Tape record their responses to questions based on a visual stimulus (a picture or series of pictures), which provides a context for the questions. (Students are given 90 seconds to prepare their answers and are given 60 seconds to respond to each question.)

 

Standards

Standards are based on guidelines provided by the American Association for Teachers of French (AATF) and the guidelines for the American Council for Teachers of Foreign Language (ACTFL).

ACTFL: http://www.actfl.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3392#standards

College Board: http://www.apcentral.collegeboard.com/

Tennessee Standards: http://www.state.tn.us/education/ci/ciforeignlang/ciflmodern1.htm                                                             

Textbook

Valette, Jean-Paul and Rebecca.  Discovering French Rouge.  Boston:  McDougal Littell Co., 2004

 

Resources

College Board AP French Language Course Description