FR 1013

French For Reading

 

Instructor: Dr. Ed Ouellette                                                            Section: 001

Office: 230 KH                                                                                  Room: ARM 101

Phone: 325-2426/6181                                                                  Days: MWF

Office Hours:                                                                                    Time: 12:30 – 1:20

Web Page: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX                edouellette1@earthlink.net

 

Required Texts

• Sandberg, K. and E. Tatham. French for Reading. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1968.

 

Recommended

• Coffman-Crocker, Mary E. Schaum’s Outline of French Grammar 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990.

• A GOOD French-English dictionary. Some choices are:

•• Apollo French-English Dictionary

•• Collins Robert French-English, English-French Dictionary

•• Harrap’s New Collegiate French and English Dictionary

•• Larousse French-English Dictionary

•• Oxford Hachette French Dictionary, and

•• Saturne French-English Dictionary.

• Kendris, Christopher. 501 French Verbs. New York: Barron’s Educational Series, 1982.

 

Course Objective

            This course is designed to give graduate students a reading knowledge of French to aid them in their research. This objective will be reached by providing the student with an introduction to French vocabulary as well as thorough explanations of major grammatical forms. In class the student will use all of the language skills, including reading writing, translating, listening, and speaking, although the major emphasis will be on reading and translating.

            Three main tasks lie ahead of you: (1) learning a vocabulary, (2) learning the structural organization of French (i.e. word order), and (3) learning to discriminate among verb tenses (mastery of this last point is VERY IMPORTANT if you want to pass the qualification examine).

 

Policies and Grading

 

            • Daily work and classroom participation                       10%

            • Translations                                                           30%

            • Exams                                                                     35%

            • Final Exam                                                             25%

                                                                                                100%

 

            Daily work and class participation mean carefully studying handouts and/or the textbook’s example translations at home, doing any assigned homework, and then being able to answer questions about vocabulary and grammar during class time.

            Translations will be handed out every Monday and due the following Friday, unless there is an exam that week. The translations will vary in length, getting progressively longer as the semester progresses. All translations must be typed, double-spaced, using correct, idiomatic English.

            There will be 4 exams during the semester. Exams will generally be twice as long as the weekly translations. Exams will be take-home and must be typed, double-spaced, using correct, idiomatic English.

            The Final Exam is also take-home and handed out two weeks before the end of the semester. It will be approximately twice as long as a regular exam. The final exam is due NLT 7 December 2001.

 

The Qualifying Exam

            Many of you are probably taking this course to fulfill your department’s secondary language requirement. This language requirement varies from department to department. Some departments simply require that you earn an “A” in both FR 1013 and FR 1023; others require you to pass a qualifying exam. You should check with your department to determine which policy applies to you.

            If you have to pass the qualifying exam, you must:

• Choose a French book of at least 80, typed pages. Picture books, the so-called “coffee-table” books are not permitted. Try to choose a book that is closely related to your field of interest, as there is a better chance of encountering similar terms or concepts.

• Leave the book with the secretary (Claire) in room 202 KH. She will then ask one of the French professors to look it over and determine if it is a suitable text. If it is, the professor will select a passage, approximately 2-3 pages in length, for your test. The passage will be left with the testing center and the book returned to you by me.

• After the return of the book it is strongly recommended that you pick out a couple of pages at random to practice translation. You should pay particular attention to the verb tenses, as those seem to have been a sticking point for many of the earlier students. I can look over these translations if you wish.

• Contact the testing center when you are ready to take the test. The test will last two hours and you can use a dictionary (bring your own). NB: Many dictionaries have a verb guide in the back, which could prove useful during the exam. After you take the test, a professor will grade it and return it to the testing center which will then mail the results to you.

 

 

 

How to Approach This Course

            Before even attempting a translation, read a whole sentence or paragraph entirely though. This first “rough” reading will orient you to the general subject matter, even though you do not get all the details.

            Next read the first sentence of the paragraph. Now that you know the general orientation of the whole paragraph, the first sentence will fit into a definite scheme of meaning that will aid you in deducing the meaning of any words you do not definitely know. It is at this point that you are emphatically encouraged to make an educated guess at the probable meaning.

            Let’s take an example. Suppose that the rough reading of the paragraph you are to translate indicates that it is about the solar system. You can translate the first sentence readily, except for one word, as follows:

 

                        The planets revolve around une étoile…

 

WARNING! Don’t stop just because you don’t know the meaning of une étoile; don’t bother to look in the vocabulary. Read on! You may get a clue! You read

 

                        The planets revolve around une étoile called the Sun.

 

            Now reflect for a moment and deduce logically what that unknown French word must be. Did you say a cigar? a doghouse? Of course, it is a star. It takes only a small acquaintance with the subject to deduce meaning, and you probably do it all the time in reading English, to save trips to the dictionary.

            It is important that you practice French regularly and frequently. Try to do some reading every day. It has been very definitely proved that a little every day is more effective than a lot on just one day. In other words, an hour every day better than seven hours one day a week.

                                                                                    Edward M. Stack

                                                                                    Reading French

 

A Note on Translations

            An English translation of a French passage must have the following characteristics:

                        • It must be in natural sounding English, devoid of traces of French word order. It should sound as if you composed it originally in English. There need not be an English word for every French word.

                        • It must present the entire idea of the French passage. You must read each French sentence, and then provide an English one that conveys the same idea in English. It must not add any ideas (or interpretations) or omit any.

                        • It must not change the time (verb tense) of the French (with few exceptions, explained later), as this would be a mutilation of an important part of the idea.

            Your command of English will be taxed in the selection of the exactly appropriate word. The writing of a translation is a creative act which is separate from and more difficult than merely reading and understanding French. You should soon develop the ability to read through a French passage and tell the general meaning without attempting a sentence-by-sentence translation.

            The kind of so-called literal translation that results from a word-for-word substitution of English for French is a poor translation. After arriving at a rough translation, try to free yourself from the French for a moment and visualize the situation as it would exist in the arena of your own experience. Then simplify and rearrange the idea of the French as much as necessary to convey the situation perfectly in English, leaving no ideas out. For example, in reading a letter from a French business firm, you find at the end the following sentence:

 

            Veuillez agréer, Monsieur, l’expression de nos sentiments distingués.

 

A literal translation of this is

 

            Kindly accept, Sir, the expression of our distinguished sentiments.

 

This way of ending a letter is obviously hilarious in English, but the intent of the French writer was quite serious. He was merely using the customary final formula. The proper translation of the long French formula is the English phrase that serves the same purpose in a letter – Yours truly.