Two new French semester classes will be offered to Wadsworth High School students for the 2024-2025 school year: Colloquial French and French Film.
Wadsworth High School currently offers French 1, 2, 3, and 4.
Colloquial French and French Film are complementary to the French program. French 2 is required to enroll, so these classes are open to juniors and seniors. It is not necessary to take French 3 or French 4 concurrently, however, these semester classes do not replace a French 3 or French 4 credit.
Both classes were offered this year, but there was not enough student enrollment to begin the courses.
“They [new French classes] are intended to be fun and highly engaging and will allow our students to become more comfortable with and more confident in using the French language,” said Meredith Stratton, a French teacher at CIS and Wadsworth Middle School. “Since a language like Spanish or French requires a good 600 hours of dedicated study in order to achieve fluency, these courses will move students much closer to that goal. These courses will be advantageous for our students to achieve a level of fluency that, in turn, increases the likelihood of earning the Seal of Biliteracy.”
The curriculum for these classes involves less homework and more comprehension.
Colloquial French covers informal, more general French. There will be more vocabulary as well as an emphasis on listening and speaking skills.
“We’re going to be talking a lot about culture,” said Valerie Quist, a French teacher at Wadsworth High School.
French Film covers interpretive language and cinema origins.
“Students will also enhance their appreciation of French culture through the study and discussion of films and shorts,” Stratton said. “I envision beginning this class with vocabulary lessons that will allow us to later have discussions mostly or completely in French about the films we explore. By the end of the semester, I anticipate students watching the films with either French subtitles or no subtitles to really develop their listening and comprehension skills.”
These two elective courses are planned to broaden students’ class choices and there is great excitement for their arrival.
