Drawing on its experience working with individual students, departments or universities to meet both narrow and broad international learning objectives, IFE has observed the utility of a special and innovative program to:

 prepare students with little or no secondary school French for language-based study abroad in their last two years;
 at the same time provide students a thorough introduction to contemporary France and its issues;
 to meet both of these objectives in part through contact with local society, throughout the semester.

IFE would like to develop this program in partnership with a US-based institution, either exclusively for its own students or on a consortial basis.

The Sophomore Semester could optionally include a faculty-led component, if desired.

The Idea:

Far from simply a language program, the Sophomore Semester combines an intensified, high-participation language-learning component with English/French instruction in contemporary French and European issues. The program would provide students with the language tools and content needed to participate in organized debates in French on current affairs and events during the final portion of the semester.

Both of these program aspects – language learning and French-European social studies – are enhanced by a set of innovative program features including volunteer activities, language exchange events with French students, a guided field research project and the like. Taking into account each student’s language level, these features are designed to provide students maximum contact with French students, French civil society, and with French institutions and organizations.

More on the language component:

IFE has worked with French-as-a-Foreign-Language specialists (“FLE”) to develop a language-learning module comprising a French language course with a FLE professor, several hours per week of language workshop with a young FLE professional or graduate student with teaching experience, and individual meetings and assessments, all of which is based on the idea that the rest of the program will lead students to be speaking French throughout the week and throughout their semester in Paris.

The content courses:

Course topics are identified which lend themselves to pluridisciplinary treatment and possibly also to site visits and field trips, thus appealing to as broad a set of interests as possible. The overall academic outcome should be a solid grasp of France today, including the European context. At the same time, the bilingual professor(s) introduces French terms and, increasingly, French texts (of graduated difficulty and length) culminating in the student’s preparedness to make a short oral (and/or written) presentation of some aspect of the course material in French. Small individual or group projects are also a means both to activate student language capabilities and to personalize to some extent the course content.

IFE:

IFE is a trusted field-level partner to a number of institutions, specializing in hybrid learning outcomes focused on social science understanding, cultural learning and rapid linguistic progress.

IFE is happy to provide inquiring institutions with references in the profession.

Concerning the Sophomore Semester, IFE recently had the occasion to design and operate such a program on a one-time basis. The positive results of the experience motivate IFE to seek a partner or partners for a permanent program.

Practical details:

 Language requirement: two semesters of college French with good grades, or the secondary-school equivalent

 Target population: ideally, first-semester second-year students, but the program could also serve the needs of seniors who want to recapture lost language capacity before graduating

 Program size: 8-20 students

 Program costs: below the average cost for Paris-based semester programs