French Language and Culture Level 1

Upon completion of this course, students should be able to use the present and near future tenses to conduct basic conversations and write brief paragraphs about a range of everyday topics. This course aims to provide beginning students with a practical command of the vocabulary and grammar of the language. Topics include pronunciation, counting, indefinite articles, interrogatives, infinitive expressions and conjugation of common verbs. (Contacts, eighth edition, Lessons 1-8)

French Language and Culture Level 2

Building upon the skills studied in Level 1, students will improve their conversational precision by considerably developing their vocabulary as well as by learning to use the compound past tense. Grammatical topics include possessive and demonstrative adjectives, idiomatic verb expressions, comparatives and superlatives, imperatives, measurement, money and expressions of time and season. (Contacts, eighth edition, Lessons 9-13)

French Language and Culture Level 3

Students at this level will acquire vocabulary on a wide range of topics and will gain proficiency in expressing wants, needs and obligations. Grammatical topics include the definite and partitive articles, prepositions, adverbs, idiomatic verb usage, and expressions of quantity and date. (Contacts, eighth edition, Lessons 14-19)

French Language and Culture Level 4

Upon completion of this course, students can expect to converse on a broad range of topics with greater confidence and precision. Building upon the skills already acquired, students learn direct and indirect object pronouns, relative pronouns, the pluperfect and imperfect verb tenses, adverbs of time, and expressions of habitual and progressive action. (Contacts, eighth edition, Lessons 20-24)

French Language and Culture Level 5

Having completed Level 5, students can expect to be able to discuss numerous topics with relative sophistication as well as to read and write multi-paragraph texts. Students at this level learn the future tense, irregular adjectives, conditional expressions, ordinal numbers, reflexive verbs and pronouns, the imperative form and expressions of reciprocal action. (Contacts, eighth edition, Lessons 25-29)

French Language and Culture Level 6

(Contacts, eighth edition, Lessons 30-33)

Conversational French

This program is designed for students who are already proficient in the skills taught in Levels 1-5 and who want to increase their conversational abilities. Conducted entirely in French, this course provides an opportunity for students to markedly improve their speaking and listening skills. Magazines, video and audio tapes, and other resources designed to provide practical opportunities for vocabulary development are selected to match student interests. Grammatical lessons are integrated in response to student needs and objectives.

Text

Since communication in a foreign language requires an understanding of the cultural context, our aim is to teach you the living language through carefully selected textbooks, newspaper and magazine articles and other relevant materials, rather than have you repeat and memorize tourist phrases.

Over the past thirty years, we have reviewed many university-level French textbooks and have selected Contacts, eighth edition (Houghton-Mifflin) as the one that best fulfill the objectives of our students in beginning and intermediate levels. Teachers provide suggestions for texts and supplementary materials at the higher levels. Books may be purchased at the Barnes and Noble Boston University Bookstore, 660 Beacon Street, Boston or online on Amazon.com.

Tuition

Tuition for the French program at all levels is $349. There is a non-refundable $35 registration fee for first-time students only.

In addition to our core program, we offer immersion programs which cover levels 1 to 5 of our core program in 6 weeks (4 weeks in summer). Tuition for the immersion program is $1,745.

Schedule

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* Please call to register for the Summer French Immersion Evening course at .