Core French 12

Unit 1: Language Learning Is a Lifelong Process

Big Idea: language learning is a lifelong process. The lifelong-learning Big Idea is carried mainly by the WEAVE'd opportunity/continuation competencies (engaging with Francophone communities, identifying opportunities that require French, continuing language acquisition beyond graduation) — exercised across every skill in this course rather than taught as their own sessions. Its one anchored skill is the strategies toolkit a lifelong learner keeps using after graduation: a range of strategies to support communication in French, in any context, for the rest of your life. (A second Big Idea, "Becoming more proficient in French allows us to explore diverse opportunities," is entirely disposition-carried in the same way — through those same WEAVE'd opportunity competencies — with no discrete Content skill of its own, so it has no separate unit here.)

• Communication strategies — paraphrasing, cognates, reference tools

Unit 2: Discuss and Justify Opinions with Nuance and Clarity

Big Idea: with increased proficiency in French, we can discuss and justify opinions with nuance and clarity. Nuance and clarity require tense/mood SELECTION across all eight named forms — passé composé, imparfait, plus-que-parfait, présent, futur proche, futur simple, conditionnel de politesse, and le subjonctif — plus the four communicative functions that carry an opinion (open-ended questions, sequencing, expressing doubts/wishes/hypotheticals, and explaining needs/emotions/opinions). Evaluating and responding to the opinions of others is the interactive half of the same Big Idea.

• Passé composé — narrating completed past actions

• Imparfait — habitual and descriptive past

• Plus-que-parfait — the past before the past

• Présent — selecting the present in a multi-tense text

• Futur proche — near-future plans

• Futur simple — the true future tense

• Conditionnel de politesse — polite and hypothetical requests

• Le subjonctif — mood for doubt, wish, and necessity

• Open-ended questions to elicit a deeper response

• Sequencing extended narration with a rich connector set

• Expressing doubts, wishes, possibilities, and hypotheticals (subjunctive triggers)

• Explaining needs, emotions, and opinions with nuance

• Evaluating and responding to the opinions of others

Unit 3: Sharing Feelings and Opinions Enhances French-Speaker Identity

Big Idea: sharing our feelings, opinions, and beliefs in French enhances our identity as French speakers. The productive competencies through which a student expresses that identity: sustaining a meaningful conversation, choosing precise words and register, and narrating a story across time frames.

• Sustaining meaningful conversations, orally and in writing

• Word choice and register nuance — verb forms, pronouns, near-synonyms

• Narrating stories across a variety of time frames

Unit 4: Appreciating Francophone Cultures to Explore Global Issues

Big Idea: appreciation of Francophone cultures allows us to understand and explore global issues with greater awareness. First Peoples and Francophone interactions in Canada (Michif, Chinook Jargon, Innu writers on colonization) and the ethics standard — cultural appropriation and plagiarism/attribution — are the culture-and-awareness content here, pitched at students doing senior source-based work.

• First Peoples and Francophone interactions — Michif and Chinook Jargon

• Ethics of cultural appropriation — permission, context, and misrepresentation

• Plagiarism and attribution in source-based French work

Unit 5: Diverse Forms of Cultural Expression Worldwide

Big Idea: exploring diverse forms of cultural expression promotes a greater understanding and appreciation of cultures worldwide. Idiomatic expressions from across la francophonie, register and etiquette variety, and interpreting a wide variety of authentic texts are the forms-of-expression skills here; regional variation across the Francophone world runs through the idiom and interpretation skills throughout.

• Register — formal versus informal speech and writing

• Etiquette — forms of address and politeness conventions

• Jargon, abbreviations, and txt spk

• Idioms with avoir, faire, être

• Slang (l'argot) across la francophonie

• Figurative and fixed idiomatic expressions

• Interpreting a wide variety of authentic French texts