Revised 08/2025

FRE 102 - Beginning French II (4 CR.)

Course Description

Introduces cultural awareness, listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills and emphasizes basic French sentence structure. Classes may be conducted in target language. Part II of II. This is a UCGS transfer course. Lecture 4 hours per week.

General Course Purpose

FRE 102 students will continue to develop competence in listening, speaking, reading, and writing in the standard target language while gaining an awareness of the culture, heritage, and civic values of the cultures studied.

Course Prerequisites/Corequisites

Prerequisite: FRE 101, or two years of successful completion of high school French, or demonstrated experiential learning. NOVA requires all students who did not take FRE 101 at an accredited institution of higher education or who have previous knowledge of French to take our placement test. We recommend that students who have not taken FRE 101 within the last year also take our placement test.

Students must be proficient in the present tense, the near future, direct object pronouns, and subject/verb/adjective agreement as well as familiar with the simple past and the imperfect tenses.

Course Objectives

  • Written Communication
    • Use course material to develop, convey, and exchange comprehensible ideas in the target language.
  • Professional Readiness
    • Collaborate with others and continue to use the target language and cultural behaviors to communicate appropriately in personal and professional settings at a basic level.
  • Interpersonal Skills
    • Show evidence of the ability to engage in simple conversation, ask discrete questions that initiate conversation, and use high-frequency words in interpersonal communications.
    • Communicate in some spontaneous spoken, written or signed conversations on familiar topics.
    • Use some or all of the following strategies to maintain communication: initiate modeled words, use facial expressions, repeat words, ask for repetition, and/or indicate lack of understanding.
  • Interpretive Skills
    • Comprehend main ideas and identify supporting evidence.
    • Comprehend information in a variety of familiar contexts from authentic texts that are spoken, written, or signed.
    • Begin to derive meaning through using structural patterns used in both familiar and new contexts.
  • Presentational Skills
    • Present relevant/prepared written and oral evidence of the ability to express own thoughts and preferences.
    • Demonstrate ability to create comprehensible oral and written messages in practiced or familiar contexts.
    • Develop increasing ability to create comprehensible oral and written production of questions and statements using grammar according to the course level.
  • Intercultural Communication
    • Interact at a survival level in everyday contexts with people in and from other cultures using the target language and appropriate rehearsed behaviors.
    • Develop geographic, historic, and cultural understanding of the culture(s) associated with a target language.

Major Topics to Be Included

  • Holidays and traditions
  • Daily routine and household chores
  • Media preferences
  • Health and well-being
  • Clothing
  • Life at the university
  • Professions and future plans
  • Relationships and finance