French and Francophone Studies/French (B.A.) (2 subjects)

In the area of language practice, you will practice and expand the four skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing on the basis of the European Framework of Reference (from level B1 to C1), to develop your receptive and productive competence in oral and written communication. You will analyse and compare various aspects of German and French grammar. All courses in language practice include some aspects of regional and cultural studies (such as history, culture, politics, etc.) of both France and the francophone countries.

The purpose of linguistics is to examine the structure and usage of contemporary French and its historical development (e.g. the description of phonetic structure, vocabulary and grammar). The basic principles, core areas and methods of French linguistics are taught in the relevant courses. We make a point of offering a wide range of courses from traditional Romance language areas, such as historical linguistics, generative syntax and dialectology, as well as covering modern questions of discourse linguistics and cognitive semantics. The goal here is to enable students to carry out independent work using modern linguistic methods (e.g. computational linguistics).

Literary studies deal with the francophone cultures and literatures and their history from the medieval beginnings to the 21st century. You will be familiarized with various methods of text interpretation and literary theories, whose diversity opens up a great variety of approaches to text analysis and other forms of media processing (e.g. film). In the literary studies courses, some specific eras and works are dealt with in more detail. Some research areas in French literary studies are the French literature of the Renaissance, autobiographic writing in France after the Revolution, history of books, readers and reading, the modern French literature, as well as literary historiography and gender and virility studies.

In regional and cultural studies, you will acquire basic knowledge about the history, economics, politics, society and culture of France and the francophone countries, using theories from the social and cultural sciences. The acquisition of regional and cultural knowledge includes the development of intercultural competence to enable students to reflect on both their own and the foreign culture, and to comprehend the two cultures as dynamic, living and multifaceted systems. In the advanced courses, this basic knowledge is expanded using specific examples.

The degree programme includes one module to impart knowledge about using and designing media to process and present subject-specific content. Here you will also learn how to critically analyse content presented via various media.