<p>I am entering Brown as a sophomore transfer in the fall and interested in majoring in comparative literature. Ideally, I would like French Literature to be one of my tracks. My problem is that I have no background in French (although I do have a solid foundation in Italian and Latin, which I’m hoping will help with learning French). </p>
<p>My goal is to be able to take an 1000 level French course by first semester of my junior year, which means I need to take FREN 500 before then. </p>
<p>Here’s what a traditional French sequence looks like:</p>
<p>(Semester 1 and 2) FREN 0100-0200 (a year course)
(Semester 3) FREN 0300
(Semester 4) FREN 0400
(Semester 5) FREN 0500 (prerequisite for 1000-level courses)</p>
<p>I have two plans at the moment:</p>
<p>A) Accelerated track -> FREN 500 the summer going into my junior year: According to the French Department’s website, “Freshmen enrolled in FREN 0200 accelerated may be able to take FREN 0600 as early as 2nd semester sophomore year and to study abroad in their junior year.” Does anyone know about how this accelerated track works? Is it a special class (because I can’t seem to find it, if this is the case), or, if you do particularly well in FREN 100-200, are you just allowed to skip FREN 300-400? </p>
<p>B) Self study this summer -> place into FREN 300 for the fall semester -> FREN 500 the summer going into my junior year: The difficulty in with this plan would be pulling off a high enough score on the placement exam. </p>
<p>Sorry that this became so long. If anyone could offer help of any sorts, especially when it comes to the accelerated track, I would really appreciate it. I tend to unnecessarily freak out/lose sleep when it comes to planning this sort of stuff. Opinions on how realistic I am being would also be greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>Although I didn’t take French, I did place into French 300. You would have little trouble placing into 300 with a background in Latin, Italian, and minimal study (I had Latin, Italian, and German at that point). The issue, however, is that the placement scores are inflated if you’ve studied another romance language. The placement exam at the level needed to get into 300 involves no speaking, listening, or writing. It’s reading and multiple choice grammar stuff. I would be somewhat worried about trying to take French 300 without having the repeated oral and aural aspect like the other students will have had. I’d imagine it would be hard to get that through self-study (though the writing won’t be too bad, as the grammar doesn’t differ substantially from Italian).</p>
<p>I’d advise against the second option.</p>
<p>I was most worried about getting my speaking and listening down, but I wasn’t aware that the placement exam would not test that. So I guess it would be more of a question if I should go into FREN 300, not if I could place into it. Thanks for the advice, Uroogla. I think I might email the department and see if they can offer me anymore information on the accelerated track.</p>
<p>The accelerated class is not for credit, so it doesn’t show up on banner. While in French 100, your professor will evaluate your skill, and when you move onto French 200 he/she may recommend you take accelerated. The accelerated class runs tandem with French 200 as a replacement for the regular conversation section, plus one more reading discussion class. In all, it’s only an hour more of class than normal French 200 (which is a pretty intense class to begin with - meets four days a week plus section, totaling around 6 hours), but there is much more outside work. It’s definitely a time commitment, but it’s doable. In the end, you’ll be placed into either French 500, 400, or 300 as determined by your French 200 grade. 500 = A, 400 = B, 300 = C. I’m pretty sure you can get into 300 and 400 without accelerated, but it’s necessary to have been in it to place into 500. </p>
<p>I don’t know that French 500 is offered in the summer. If not, you might have some luck looking for equivalent courses offered at other universities, but I don’t know what the French department’s policy is. I imagine it’s a good idea to keep up with it during the summer, though, and a French course would do the job.</p>
<p>Thank you, tstong. That seems like it will work really well for me. I think I’ll still self-study over the summer to make sure that I’ll be able to do well enough in my first and second semester of French to place into French 500, though. And Brown’s offering French 500 this summer at least, but, yeah, taking an equivalent course at another university is always an option too.</p>