Intro: Welcome

The course is offered to students enrolled in graduate programs at Boston College who are required to demonstrate a reading knowledge of a modern foreign language. For many departments (e.g., English, Philosophy, and Theology), satisfactory completion of this 12-week course with a B grade or better is all that is needed to fulfill the language requirement. Other departments may still require that students pass a test that they administer, usually a translation of a page of text written in the foreign language and related to the program of study. Please check with your department if you are not sure of the requirement that applies to you.

Beyond fulfillment of this requirement, we will work to build the skills needed to conduct scholarly research in French. This is, in fact, the primary focus for our work.

This course starts from the most basic aspects of French and assumes no prior knowledge of the language. Students who take this course quite frequently have never studied French before.

Regular class attendance is expected. If summer travel or research plans will cause you to miss more than two or three classes, please discuss this with me right away.

In my experience this course has been both successful and enjoyable for most all students. I look forward to working with you this summer !

Stephen Bold