FRE 335 Phonetics of Contemporary French

This phonetics course aims at acquiring the main characters of the phonemes and intonemes of contemporary French and will focus on the particularities of the oral language. Students typically learn the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which is a system of symbols used to represent the sounds of spoken languages. Students learn to identify and produce the individual sounds of French, including vowels, consonants, and semi-vowels, as well as the prosodic features of French, such as stress, rhythm, and intonation patterns in order not only to recognize them (oral comprehension), but also annotate them (written comprehension) and produce them (oral expression) To help students develop their French pronunciation skills, this course includes a variety of activities, such as listening exercises, pronunciation drills, oral presentations, group conversation practice, video analysis, phonemic transcription, and pronunciation games, though using mainly authentic audio documents such as: film or theatre, dialogues, extract from a radiobroadcast. But this course will also use artificial and prepared audio files in a smaller proportion to target precise phonetic purpose. Student will understand the role of phonetics in language learning: Students should understand how the study of phonetics can enhance their overall language learning and communication skills, and be better equipped to continue developing their French pronunciation independently.