* This course is located in Paris, France. *
Particularities of Oral French and Didactic Issues
This course proposes to explore the different facets of spoken French (phonetics, prosody, variations, multimodality). The objective is to understand what specific difficulties these aspects can present for learners of French as a foreign language and what methods can strengthen their skills in comprehension, speaking, and interaction. First, we will address the oral/written pair by questioning the legitimacy of a strict distinction that leads to the qualification of oral as non-standard, informal and deviant and written form as standard, formal and normed. Then, the different variations of French (called popular, standard, regional...) will be presented and we will reflect on the variety of French to be introduced in the FFL class. The phonetic, lexical and syntactic characteristics of spontaneous oral French will also be introduced as well as the multimodal factors that intervene in interactions. Finally, we will deal with the issue of pronunciation in a foreign language and we will focus on the vowel and consonant system of French as well as on some suprasegmental elements (rhythm, accentuation...). Examples of didactic activities for the FFL class will be presented and discussed to deepen each of these questions.