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Many students of French at Oxford study it with another language, or in a Joint school (Classics, English, History, Linguistics, Middle Eastern studies, Philosophy). The degree course normally lasts four years, one of which is a compulsory year abroad, which may be spent studying at a university, teaching French or working–in France or in another French-speaking country.

 

The First-Year (Preliminary) Syllabus

The first-year course is intended to provide preliminary training in the language and literary skills you will need later on in your studies at Oxford. It is designed as a bridge between the work you have done for A-Levels and what you will be doing on the Final Honours Course. The examination for which you study in your first three terms in Oxford will be the same, consisting of two language papers and two literature papers.

Language

French language teaching mostly takes place in college, where you will: 1/take part in oral classes and 2/learn translation into French (prose), advanced French grammar, and how to write a summary in French (paper I), as well as translation from unknown French texts–also called ‘unseen’–and from texts you will have studied (paper II). College language teaching is supplemented centrally at the Faculty, where several classes are run by native French speakers led by Dr Michael Abecassis, senior lecturer in French, a specialist of French linguistics, sociolinguistics, cinema and francophone culture.

The official recommended grammar book for your French degree is Roger Hawkins and Richard Towell, French Grammar and Usage: it wil accessible to you online via SOLO, the Bodleian library catalogue (but a paper copy is always a good choice). You will benefit from supplementing it with Margaret Jubb and Annie Rouxeville, French Grammar in Context, which also includes exercises. Most undergraduates also choose to have their own dictionaries (online translations resources are not always up to the job): the Collins-Robert French dictionary is a good resource. The best monolingual dictionaries are the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française and the Trésor de la langue française, both accessible online.

Literature

Paper III (Short Texts–Commentaries) is intended to familiarize you with close literary study through commentary writing and to introduce you to a variety of literary genres across periods. The texts studied are:

  1. Michel de Montaigne, ‘Des cannibales’ (a sixteenth-century essay).
  2. Jean Racine, Phèdre (a seventeenth-century tragedy).
  3. Paul Verlaine, Romance sans paroles (a collection of nineteenth-century poetry).
  4. Marie NDiaye, Papa doit manger (a twenty-first century play).

Paper III is usually studied over the first and at the beginning of the second terms of your first year; after some introductory lectures to literary studies, you will have lectures on all these texts at the faculty, as well as college classes and tutorials for which you will learn to write literary commentaries. This paper is examined by a 3h open-book examination for which you must write three commentaries on any three of these texts.

Paper IV (French narrative fiction) introduces you to four narrative texts written between the Middle Ages and the twenty-first century. The texts studied are:

  1. Anon, La Chastelaine de Vergy (a medieval Romance).
  2. Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses (an epistolary novel).
  3. George Sand, Indiana (a realist-but that’s debated–novel).
  4. Maryse Condé, Traversée de la Mangrove (an insular, post-colonial novel).

Paper IV is usually studied during the second and at the beginning of the third terms of your first years. You will have lectures on each of these texts at the faculty, as well as college classes and tutorials for which you will write essays. Paper IV is examined by a 3h open-book examination for which you must write three essays, each addressing a question about one of these texts.

These two papers are intended to give you a sense of the wide variety of literature written in French across time and of the diversity of critical approaches to these. They will help you familiarize yourself with the shape and sound of French from other times and places, as well as map your interests and inform your choices regarding which periods, authors, genres and questions you wish to study later in the course.

If you are studying French on its own, there are additional papers on French cinema, French literary theory and French thought.

 

Final Honours School (second to fourth years)

This is NOT a full account of the rules about choices and combinations of options for the Honours course–the three years after your preliminary examination. When candidates arrive in Oxford, they will familiarize themselves with a Course handbook and the university's Examination statutes, both of which set out all the Honours courses in full. What follows is a brief introduction to the course content, so that you can see what will be on offer.

Language

For your Finals examination at the end of the fourth year, you will take the following three papers in French:

  • Paper I: Essay in French on a contemporary topic.
  • Paper II: translation from French (unseen) and into French (prose). The texts selected will not come from books you will have studied in other papers.
  • An oral examination, for which teaching is provided on a regular basis both in college and at the faculty.

Students who only take French (French sole) will also sit:

  • Paper III: translation from pre-modern French.
Linguistics

You can choose to study the linguistics of French, which will allow you to investigate the history of the language as well as the logic of its structures, from sounds to words to sentences and discourse. Two papers in French linguistics are on offer:

  • Paper IV: history of the French language.
  • Paper V: linguistics of modern French (phonology-morphology-syntax).

Students of French alone (French sole) can also take:

  • Paper XIII: general linguistics
Literature and Culture

Six core literature papers are available in the French Honours course. How many you take will depend on whether you are a sole French student or not, or a joint schools students or not–but you will not take them all. They are of two types: papers investigating a period of literature, and papers focusing on prescribed authors or texts from a given period. There are lectures every year offered at the faculty on these, and for each paper, you will have eight college tutorials.

The period of literature papers are:

  • Paper VI: French literature to 1530 (medieval paper).
  • Paper VII: French literature from 1530 to 1800 (early modern paper).
  • Paper VIII: French literature from 1715 to the present (modern paper).

The prescribed texts or authors papers are:

  • Paper IX: Medieval prescribed texts: Chanson de Roland, Béroul’s Tristan, Villon’s Testament and Poésies diverses.
  • Paper X: Early modern prescribed authors. You will choose two among: Rabelais, Montaigne, La Fayette, Molière, Racine, Pascal, Diderot, Voltaire.
  • Paper XI: Modern prescribed authors. You will choose two among: Baudelaire, Flaubert, Stendhal, Mallarmé, Beckett, Barthes, Duras, Djebar.

In the second term of your final year, you will also have the opportunity to study for a paper XII (special subject). These are very popular and offer you the opportunity to investigate a wide variety of questions in a given period, or across periods, and across media (literary, aural, visual). Papers XII are taught through lectures and seminars across the first and second term of the final year. They are examined via the submission of a portfolio of essays and/or commentaries at the end of the second term of the final year.

You may also elect to write a dissertation (Paper XIV) on the topic of your choice.

More detail will be provided on each of these papers once you begin your studies at Oxford.

Year Abroad

The year abroad is usually the third year of the four-year modern languages degree for students of French. You will spend part or the whole of your year abroad in a French speaking country–if you study two languages you may decide to split your year abroad accordingly.  Students on their year abroad are encouraged to attend a French university, or to teach English in a French school as English language assistants (these posts are managed by the British Council). Students may also choose to work abroad, which requires solid organisation in order to obtain the right visa. You will plan your year abroad with your College, who must approve it.