French 2B

Second Semester 2006-2007

Instructor:
M. Teelucksingh
Email
Foreign Language Office: 240-497-6387

Textbook: Discovering French (Blanc)

Review Days and Oral Presentations: June 1-6, 2007
Semester Review Date: June 7, 2007
Semester Exams: June 8-14, 2007

Theme: Daily Life - La vie quotidienne

Topic: School Life/La Vie scolaire: January 23 - February 16

Objectives: Students will be able to:

• Exchange information about past and present school classes and school related activities.
• Present information comparing their school life to that of a student in a francophone country.
• Interpret course schedules and extracurricular activities.
• Describe the academic calendar in a francophone country.
• Describe how course offerings in a francophone country reflect the goals of its educational system.
• Compare the daily school routine of students in the United States to those in francophone countries including course schedules and extracurricular activities

Essential Structures:

• Present tense of verbs: lire, écrire, dire, prendre, apprendre, comprendre
• L’imparfait
• Comparative and superlative constructions

Topic: At home/A la maison: February 20 - March 26

Objectives: Students will be able to:

• Exchange information about family and personal routines and household chores.
• Give and respond to oral instructions regarding household chores and daily routines.
• Describe family routines, including household chores, and explain what they indicate about the francophone culture.
• Compare family routines in francophone countries with those in the United States.
• Exchange, interpret and present information about homes, rooms, and furnishings compare them with those in francophone countries

Essential structures:

• Reflexive construction (in the present and le passé composé)
• Review faire and devoir
• Review familiar commands
• Mettre, nettoyer, sortir, partir, dormir
• Definite articles with parts of the body
• Prepositions of location
• Disjunctive pronouns with chez

Theme: Let’s go! /Allons-y!

Topic: Shopping /Faire des achats: March 28 - April 27

Objectives: Students will be able to:

• Request sales assistance and state preferences for purchases
• Exchange and present personal preferences for style and design of clothing for specific occasions.
• Identify types of stores and their products.
• Interpret information about size, price, and style of clothing items from authentic sources.
• Describe a past shopping experience.
• Compare shopping customs in francophone countries to those in the United States.
• Describe the shopping practices of francophone countries including specialty stores, food stores, and markets.
• Identify and describe products typical of francophone countries.
• Compare sizing systems in the USA with those in francophone countries.
• Apply the metric system to everyday life.

Essential Structures:

• Demonstrative and interrogative adjectives
• Review numbers 0 - 1,000,000
• En with adverbs of quantity
• Review comparative/ superlative
• Review adjective agreement
• Mettre
• Indirect object pronouns
• Adverbs ending in –ment
  

Topic: Going on vacation/Partir en vacances: April 30 - May 31

Objectives: Students will be able to:

• Ask or give simple directions to specified locations.
• Follow oral and written directions to a specified location.
• Exchange information on past and future travel.
• Interpret travel-related documents.
• Present a detailed description of past travel.
• Compare preferences for travel destinations and the means of transportation for Americans and people from francophone cultures.
• Describe and explain the cultural impact of les grandes vacances.

Essential Structures:

• Le passé composé
• L’imparfait
• Review interrogative formation
• Review contractions with prepositional phrases
• Prepositions with geographical place names
• Pronoun y
• Review prepositions of location
• Formal commands
• Il y a and expressions of time
• Review near future: aller + infinitif

DAILY LIFE/LA VIE QUOTIDIENNE

The third theme of the school year focuses on two different aspects of daily life: experiences at school and the routines associated with the home, including la toilette.

The first topic, School Life/La Vie scolaire, requires students to exchange, interpret, and present information on their school life, course schedules, and extracurricular activities in both the present and the past. In order to perform these tasks, students use three irregular verbs from Level 1, prendre, apprendre, and comprendre, as well as the new verbs lire, écrire and dire. The imparfait is the principal new structure introduced in this theme to describe past school experiences. In order to enrich their understanding of school, students describe the typical academic year in the francophone world, typical course offerings, and le baccalauréat. Students describe francophone school courses in context by comparing them with practices in the U.S.

At Home/À la maison, engages students in describing their house or apartment, talking about what they do every day in the home, and discussing some of their chores and responsibilities. Students name the various levels and rooms in the house and identify the furniture in a room using prepositions of place and discuss differences in housing between the U.S. and the francophone world. Equally important, they compare family routines and household chores in francophone countries with those in the United States. They give oral instructions regarding these daily routines and household chores using familiar commands. The reflexive construction, an important structure, is introduced in the present and passé composé. Students will use the reflexive construction in the present tense and familiar commands to communicate but they only need to recognize the reflexive construction in the passé composé. Students use the verbs mettre, nettoyer, sortir, partir, and dormir, and review the verbs faire and devoir.

In order to further enrich their perspectives, students research the availability of products typical of francophone cultures and confirm the francophone presence in their own communities.

LET’S GO!/ALLONS-Y!

The second theme of the second semester moves students from school and home experiences to the world of shopping, and then to the wider world of travel. The theme’s first topic, Shopping/Faire des achats et la mode, focuses students’ attention on this popular pastime and how to get from place to place in the community in order to shop for what is needed. They request sales assistance, express their preferences for style and design with respect to clothing for specific occasions, interpret prices, sizes, and styles, and use exchange rates to calculate prices. They identify types of stores, including specialty shops, and the products available in the francophone world. In order to talk about clothing and shopping experiences, students use the Level 1 verb mettre and review the comparative and superlative forms of adjectives. They also learn to use indirect object pronouns, en with adverbs of quantity, demonstrative adjectives, adverbs with -ment, and numbers from 0 to 1,000,000. Whenever possible, students apply the metric system to the description of clothing and food products when referring to sizes and quantities.

Students put their understanding of francophone shopping practices into context by comparing these practices, including sizing systems. Students recognize the relevance of their newfound knowledge of francophone shopping by reviewing the metric system, calculating currency conversions using exchange rates, and using authentic resources such as the Internet to obtain up-to-the-minute consumer information. Students find evidence in their own community of businesses that sell products manufactured in francophone countries.

The last topic of the year, Going on Vacation/Partir en vacances, moves students out into the wider world immediately before they begin their summer break. They exchange and present information on past travel and interpret authentic travel information and documents. They ask for, give, and follow simple directions to specific locations with formal command forms. Many of these communicative tasks require using the imparfait and the passé composé with avoir and être, and distinguishing between the two. Students review interrogative formation, contractions with prepositional phrases, and prepositions of location. They learn to use il y a with time expressions, the pronoun y, and prepositions with geographical place names. Students contrast how place names are expressed in English and French.

In order to extend their understanding of the travel environment, students examine one non-European francophone country and compare places and means of travel chosen by Americans and by French-speakers. Students apply their map-reading skills and use authentic resources to investigate francophone vacation spots.

GRADING POLICY:

• Grades will reflect individual achievement of course objectives and will be computed out of the total number of points possible.
• All skills are evaluated: listening, speaking, reading, writing. Students are expected to demonstrate mastery of these skills through active involvement in classroom activities.
• One of our most important objectives is to use French at all times.
• Grades will be based on formative assessments, which measure student learning during the course of a unit of study. These may include homework, classwork, quizzes, oral presentations, and writing assignments. There will also be summative assessments, which measure learning at the end of a unit of study. These may include unit tests and projects. Grades for formative and summative assessments count for 90% of the grade.
• Homework for practice or preparation for instruction will count for 10% of the grade.
• Each assignment will have a due date and a deadline. The due date is the one by which the student is expected to submit the assignment. Grades will drop one letter grade if the assignment is submitted after the due date and prior to the deadline.
• The deadline is the last day that an assignment will be accepted for a grade. In some classes, the due date and the deadline may be the same. Work not turned in by the deadline will be considered missing. Missing work will be recorded as a zero.

EXTRA CREDIT: The MCPS grading policy does not allow for extra credit.

REASSESSMENT:
There will be at least two opportunities for reassessment during each grading period. These will be identified before the original task/assessment and will occur during the instructional unit. Unit tests, culminating projects, essays, and semester exams will not be reassessed.
The reassessment grade replaces the original grade.
All students may be reassessed if they meet the following requirements: complete the original task or assessment, complete required assignments, and complete reteaching/relearning activities as determined by the teacher.

GRADING SCALE
A 90 – 100
B 80 – 89
C 70 – 79
D 60 – 69
E 50 – 59