Learning Goals
Learning a foreign language is an essential component of a Liberal Arts education, offering broad perspectives on other cultures and enhancing abilities in one's own.
Fluency in the French language along with knowledge of a wide range of literature and life in a variety of Francophone cultures, reached through a structured and flexible sequencing of courses from entry to seminar levels, are the goals of our curriculum for majors and non-majors alike. Since full immersion is the most effective way to achieve fluency, all our courses are taught exclusively in French.
Mount Holyoke French majors are competent global citizens who go on to a wide variety of careers.
Immersion
Majors and non-majors are fully immersed in French in all our courses. Students who choose to go abroad become able to study alongside French speakers in courses within the regular academic curriculum of French and French-language universities.
Communication
Students who take courses in the French department become able to engage in substantive and active discussions with French speakers, ranging in complexity from everyday conversations to abstract intellectual discourse.
Expression
Students become able to produce written documents and oral or media presentations that are not only grammatically correct, coherent, and well-organized, but display sophistication of thought and analysis.
Civilization
Students become acquainted with a broad range of written, visual, and digital texts, as well as social and cultural artifacts from all regions of the French-speaking world.
Exploration
Mount Holyoke French majors are able to conduct independent research, articulate their results in effective spoken and written French, take advantage of internship opportunities, and collaborate in a global environment.