Credit Hours - 3

Course content

This course will focus on contemporary and emerging literary theories like feminism, ecocriticism and decolonialism. Works of theorists will be studied and/or assigned to students to make presentations on. This course will also have a practical component which will consist of an application of these theories to the analysis of chosen literary works. As in the theoretical component, students will make oral presentations of their analytical studies and submit the written texts for assessment.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

In this course, Students will be introduced to different sub-domains in which languages are in contact. Students will be, among other aspects, introduced to contact linguistics as it relates to sociolinguistics and typological linguistics and the repercussions that this can have on the teaching and learning of French as a Foreign Language. Notions such as bilingualism, borrowing and code switching, interference, inter-language, pidgins, and creoles will be discussed. Particular attention will be given to the Ghanaian context.   

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

This course will explore literature beyond the French language. It will not only compare French literature and African Francophone literature but also literatures originally written in English or translated in French or English from other European languages or African languages. Students will study how different literatures are interrogating Africa today through a choice of themes like African identities, gender issues in Africa or governance in Africa. 

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

This course focuses on getting students to critically assess the various teaching materials on the market for teaching French, taking into account the various components necessary for the language classroom. These include objectives, outcomes, coherence between the content, proposed activities and exercises and the objectives and outcomes. Other factors to be considered include checking the appropriateness of the proposed activities with the public, time allocated and the competence to be worked on.

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

The course will analyse the treatment of gender issues in literary works written in French. Some of the pressing questions to be discussed include the following: How are men and women represented in literature in French from countries like French, Côte d’Ivoire or Québec? How are sexual identities defined and contextualised? Also, how do readers from different cultural backgrounds interpret and understand fictional works in relation to gender issues? 

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content 

This course presents students to a domain that is gaining grounds in applied French studies. Students are presented with current developments in domains such as French for banking, French for diplomacy etc. Students will be invited to read on current trends in these domains, and also encouraged to attempt contextualizing the results within the Ghanaian socio-cultural space. This course will be very practical and students will be assigned different domains where they will have to develop contents for specific domains within the Ghanaian context. 

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

This is a writeshop style course. Many believe that literature is for a happy few inspired by gods or ancestors. Literature is more about techniques, rules, tropes, inventivity, etc. This course will introduce students to the work of writers. It aims at helping them develop a better understanding of the process of writing. The students will also improve their writing skills in French. They will learn to constructively criticize their classmates' drafts. They will discover poetry, short stories, autobiographies and so on through a creative lens.

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

This course introduces students to the discipline and nature of Translation Studies (TS) through an overview of the major translation theories that have been shaping the practice and study of Translation since the 1900s. Using a diachronic perspective to the study of the said theories, the Course lays special emphasis on the principles and methods used to translate different text types.  This Course is a unique bank of important theories that will equip our students to better practice Translation and conduct ground-breaking research in the area of Translation in a very unique manner.

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

There is a growing production of pop culture in France and Francophone countries that requires academic attention. With this course, students will be introduced to the non-canonical literary and cultural productions in French. They will analyse popular novels and short stories by writers like Isaie Biton Koulibaly, web-series, “blockbusters”, animations or hits music in French. They will also learn why popular culture is not only entertainment but also a way to retelling the world.

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

This course is designed to keep students abreast of practical issues in translation and interpreting such as translation strategies, public speaking skills, localization, crowdsourcing, translation/interpreting Commission/Agreement, code of ethics and professional conduct and legal matters in translation and interpreting. Students are also exposed to the use of text-processing software (e.g, Trados and Memsource) that are currently in use in the translating and interpreting fields vis-à-vis the role of the translator. 

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

This course examines the morphology and syntax of French. It aims at presenting the different morphological processes in French. The focus shall be on the inflectional morphological features of French and how these are accounted for according to different morphological theories. Another critical aspect shall concern the relationships between French inflectional morphology and syntactic functions. These shall constitute the second part of the course. The verb phrase especially, and the noun phrase shall be focused on in order to highlight the idiosyncrasies associated with French.

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

This course covers issues pertaining to the translation of literary texts (poetry and prose) and specialized texts. Students will be exposed to ethical, historical, cultural, aesthetic and linguistic considerations around the translation of literary documents such as religious texts, novels, newspapers, social media conversations, poems, songs, etc. They will also deal with considerations around translating technical (specialized) texts in various domains such as medicine, law, economics, gender, politics, business, technology, sports, etc. 

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

This course focuses on the analysis of the phonetics and phonology of French. The different segmental and supra-segmental properties of French shall be put into perspective. Under investigation will be properties such as phones, stress, melody etc. and their relevance to studies in a comparative perspective. These features will be pitched against those of other languages, especially those spoken in Ghana. The idea is to allow students to understand the relevance of French in the theorization of phonetics and phonology. 

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

In this course, students will learn to apply writing, reading and listening strategies for efficient translation and interpreting. They will also learn to analyse texts (oral and written) for translation and interpreting. Lastly, students will be exposed to reformulation of texts through reformulation activities including paraphrasing, summarizing and précis-writing with special emphasis on lexical relations, coherence and cohesion, and thematic progression in a text.                               

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content 

This course is divided into two parts. This first part will concentrate a discussion of various linguistics theories predominant before the advent of cognitive linguistic approaches. These theories will be demonstrated using the French language. The main theories that shall be surveyed are structuralist, behaviorist and generative approaches to understanding language. Thus, Saussurian, Skinerian, Chomskyian, and other foundational understandings of language studies will be critically studied. This first part of the course will concern mainly theories of phonetics and phonology, and theories of morphology. 

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

This course offers students an introduction to discourse analysis which is mainly aimed at acquiring methodological competence in the translation of specialized and general texts. Students are equipped with the relevant theoretical tools for discourse analysis in translation – in written and oral discourse, lexical relations, coherence and cohesion as well as thematic progression in text.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

This course is intended to help students further develop their abilities in semantic, pragmatic and lexicological analysis. Students will engage in the discussion of contemporary semantic, pragmatic and lexicological theories and how they may be applied to the analysis of French. Of critical importance will be the interaction between encoded meaning and contextual factors in the communication process. Particular attention will be paid to French discourse markers, and the various linguistic units that generate online meaning. 

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

This course ushers students into the world of terminology as a discipline. Students will learn about terminology developments from earlier records to date, the relationship between terminology and translation, the relationship between terminology and vocabulary and key concepts and terms in terminology. The second component comprises issues of types and perspectives of terminology research, term identification and extraction methods, search engines, search modes etc. 

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

This course will focus on the various stages of the research process, from issues of the discourse style of scientific research, choosing a research topic, writing a proposal, stating a research problem and hypothesis, data collection, analysis and discussion etc. The course will also discuss the use of appropriate research tools such as quantitative and qualitative software (NVIVO, SPSS…). 

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

This course will focus on the general tendencies in sociolinguistics and their application to French. The course offers a comprehensive study of linguistic practices, such as code switching, code mixing, bilingualism, multilingualism, borrowing and appropriation of French, and a description of different kinds of languages, such as Creole, pidgin, slang, vehicular language, lingua franca. The course will also focus on language attitudes, language variations and language policies especially in Francophone countries. 

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

In this course, students will be exposed to the field of public service interpreting and translating with a focus on the public services of health, the judiciary, immigration, peace and security, among others. The challenges faced in this field in Africa will be addressed and perspectives on how to meet some developmental needs through PSTI will also be critically assessed.

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

During the second year in the programme, and after passing the comprehensive examination, each student in French and Francophone Literature, Linguistics, Didactic and Translation shall make an oral presentation of his/her research proposal. The student shall submit the written proposal to the Head of Department for assessment by his/her Principal Supervisor. The oral presentation will be assessed by a panel of Faculty members.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

This course is a continuation of the survey of linguistics theories from the first semester.  It concerns essentially linguistic theories that are generally classified as cognitive linguistics approaches shall be the main topics of discussion. Thus, theories such as Cognitive grammar, Head Driven Phrase Grammar, Radical Construction Grammar, Natural Semantic Metalanguage etc. will be studied. The concentration will be on theories of syntax, semantics, pragmatics and sociolinguistics. The idea is to equip students with contemporary theories necessary for them to undertake research in linguistics.     

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

All PhD candidates shall be required to spend 6 to 12 months of the PhD Year 2 in an internship or experiential learning programme. For the Department of French, students in the second year of the PhD programme shall be required to spend the whole or part of the PhD Year 2 in an internship/experiential learning programme undertaking various activities. The Department, in consultation with the candidate, shall provide details of what the student will do within the internship Year to the School of Graduate Studies. This must be submitted before commencement of the experiential research learning programme.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

This course has two components: a pragmatics component, and a discourse analysis component. The pragmatics component focuses on the interpretation of various constructions and on several pragmatic approaches to grasping meanings as they are expressed in French. It covers how French speakers may approach conversation, interpretation of language and strategies of communication under various topics that include Presupposition, Deixis, Speech acts theory, Implicature etc. The discourse analysis component examines different approaches to understanding the meanings expressed in different French texts. 

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

At the end of the third year in the programme, each student in French and Francophone Literature, Linguistics, Didactics, and Translation shall make a presentation on the progress made on the thesis. In addition, he/she will present a second publishable paper one month after the presentation of the progress made on the thesis. In both cases, the hard copies of the presentations will be submitted to the Head of Department for assessment by the student’s Principal Supervisor. The oral presentations will be assessed by members of the student’s Supervisory Committee and other Faculty members.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

This course focuses on the necessary fundamental tools for research in didactics and second language acquisition. Topics that shall be treated in this course will range from classroom interaction and the specifics of language teaching, goals of language teaching, teaching methods and techniques, learning strategies, motivations for learning a foreign language, input and errors. Students will be encouraged to read various articles and books that dwell on these topics. Regular article summaries and presentations will be a regular feature of the course. 

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

In the course of the fourth year in the programme, each student in French and Francophone Literature, Linguistics, Didactics and Translation shall make a presentation on the findings from the research work and their practical implications for scholarship and human development. In addition, the student will present a third publishable paper one month after the presentation of the findings from the thesis. In both cases, the hard copies of the presentations will be submitted to the Head of Department for assessment by the student’s Principal Supervisor. The oral presentations will be assessed by members of the student’s Supervisory Committee and other Faculty members.

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

This course interrogates practices in French as a Foreign Language classroom in Ghana. Students of this course will be led to understand what Communicative language teaching (CLT) as well as the action-oriented approach to teaching is. They will be guided to compare their understanding of these two methods with actual practice in French as a Foreign Language classrooms for various publics. Their observations will lead to practical suggestions to implement and bring change in the Foreign Language classroom as well as prepare lesson notes that take these approaches into consideration for maximum outcome

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

This course is designed to train students on how to decode literary information that is not openly expressed and which is superimposed on explicit information in the story. The linguistic analysis shall be carried out as a method of penetrating a literary work. This technique is expected to lead to deeper understanding and the detection of discovery of themes and issues in literary texts that consequently turn out to be richer.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content 

This course is designed to equip students with the necessary theoretical tools needed to undertake research in second language acquisition. Students shall be introduced to linguistic theories of second language acquisition, psychological theories of second language acquisition, and social theories of second language acquisition. Other factors such as the role of input, errors and the role of first language in the language acquisition process shall also be extensively discussed. 

Credit Hours - 3

Course content

This course involves an in-depth study of literary theories. Literary theories are as old as literature itself. We will analyse how questions on literature were asked and answered over the ages, questions like what is literature, how to read literature, why some texts become canonical. Students will be required to read and make presentations on the works of major theorists such as Aristotle, Georg Lukács, Hans Robert Jauss, Claude Duchet and Jacques Derrida in order to demonstrate their understanding of the theories.

Credit Hours - 3

Course Content

This course presents an overview of various ICT tools and how they can be harnessed by the foreign language teacher. From tools for teaching phonetics, recording audio, apps for teaching and learning the language and even with social media, students will be led to explore the vast opportunities that a mastery of basic ICT techniques can have in the language class. They will also be encouraged to research the creation of new ICT tools for teaching and learning French in the Ghanaian context.