UCL CENTRE FOR LANGUAGES
& INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
Course Units 2015-2016
Successful completion of French Current Affairs and Culture (Social, Historical and Political) at the UCL CLIE, or equivalent qualifications/experience.
20 x 2-hour classes.
80 hours in total.
LCFR6807, LCFRG807, LCFRM807.
The course is designed for very advanced level students requiring the language for academic purposes.
The course comprises knowledge and understanding both of the structure of the French language and its use in academic environments, such as lectures, seminars and conferences. The course covers academic development, academic culture and conventions, critical thinking, reading and writing academic texts (i.e. in the students main degree subject e.g. history) as well as other related topics to prepare students for further academic study/research in French speaking countries. This will be related back to the student’s degree subject.
The course will enhance knowledge and use of linguistically complex structures (a variety of styles and registers from a range of authentic academic material).
Various transferable skills will also be further developed.
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 Suggesting and expressing specialised opinions, critical topic-related comments;
 describing, defining, explaining;
 debating, commenting, thinking critically, problematizing for essay writing;
 suggesting, making hypotheses;
 composing written pieces of information for academic purposes (essay work, synthesis, summaries, reports);
 conducting oral presentations on complex academic topics; conference skills (simulating conference and academic discussions – academic oral registers, presentations); extracting and selecting key ideas; note taking for writing short reports;
 reading specialised texts;
 Interviewing.

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Main topics/themes to be covered
 On the place of literature in humanities; on the relationships between literature, history and philosophy.
 On morals and ethics; ideologies and the global world;
Universities; studying in a French speaking countries.
French ways of thinking (‘Manières de Penser’; ‘Sciences Humaines’); thinking critically on current issues with specialised academic and non-academic texts (focus on registers and transferable skills).
Reading
 reading for gist, scanning for specific information and text structure in academic sources;
 in-depth analysis of academic topics in relevant publications.
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Writing
 analysis and review of articles; note-taking from and for presentations; writing up presentations; essays; working with different registers
 professional reports and conference papers;
 journal articles; reports
 French academic reading and writing skills: writing a detailed plan for contrastive synthesis; writing French résumés; the different plans for French dissertations
 formal academic correspondence
Listening
 radio, TV, audio material;
 presentations;
 academic debates.
Speaking
 formal and informal discussions, debates, round table;
 seminars;
 presentations;
 conferences.
Discourse Strategies
 analysing/comparing texts from various academic sources (different text types, styles and registers);
 preparing oral contributions for different audiences;
 spoken versus written professional communication.
Main Aspects of These Strategies
 structuring (logical structures);
 linking devices (lexical, grammatical);
 assessing appropriate usage of registers and styles;
 academic vocabulary.
There is no textbook for this course.
 Monolingual Dictionary (Micro Petit Robert)
 Bilingual Dictionary (Collins/Robert)
Materials for the course will be drawn from:
 Authentic written material from various sources to be advised by tutor; specialized tailor-made academic skill-
 and academic reading folders designed by tutor.
Authentic audio and audio-visual material.
In addition there is a wide range of language learning materials available for self-study in the Self-Access Centre.