Marianne Connors

October 2014 to March present

French Beginners Fast Track (Evening Class)

Foreign Language Centre Tutor

This module is offered to students, staff and the public as part of the Evening Language Programme at the university's Foreign Language Centre (FLC). Classes are designed to be fun and interactive, and cover all four areas of language learning (listening, reading, writing and speaking) in each two-hour session. We also help students to discover the target culture, by discussing news stories and cultural practices.

The Beginners Fast Track Course is aimed at students with proven aptitude for language learning, taking them through material from French Beginners and Post Beginners in the space of one year. In 2014-5 I covered for teacher absence in term one, then taught a short version of the course in term two. In 2015-6, I will be responsible for delivering the full version of the module.

The course textbook Palgrave Foundations French 1, but materials are also drawn from news agencies, DVDs, and language-learning websites.

September 2013 to June 2014

MLF1001 French Language

Graduate Teaching Assistant

This compulsory first year module develops French reading, writing, listening and speaking skills. Students have four weekly classes: one grammar lecture, one Anglophone class, one Francophone class and one oral class, each being one hour long. I taught on the Anglophone team, covering:

  • revision and practice of lecture grammar topics
  • development of vocabulary, reading comprehension and analytical skills, using the novel Un secret by Philippe Grimbert.

This is a large module, and in 2013-14 had ten groups, of which I took three (two in semester one and one in semester two), with classes composed of 13-14 students. All materials were provided from previous years (weekly worksheets), but the team worked together to find and share new ideas to keep lessons as engaging as possible for students.

I was also involved over the course of the year with the following marking:

  • formative: two dictations, one translation, one reading comprehension (13-14 copies of each, with detailed feedback)
  • summative: one reading comprehension (28 of 163 scripts)