French 5: Maupassant : une vie, une œuvre
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- Start Date: 04 Nov 2025End Date: 25 Nov 2025Tue (Daytime): 14:15 - 16:15OnlineFull fee £119.00 Senior fee £95.00 Concession £77.00
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What is the course about?
Vous découvrirez les multiples facettes de la vie d’un auteur dont la courte carrière littéraire (1880-91) n’en fut pas moins prolifique et lui apporta un très grand succès de son vivant. À présent compté au nombre des grands auteurs classiques de la fin du XIXème siècle, il a laissé une œuvre riche et variée, faite de romans (Une vie, Pierre et Jean, Bel-Ami…) et d’un nombre presqu’incalculable de nouvelles (Boule de Suif, Les Contes de la bécasse, Le Horla, le Rosier de Mme Husson, etc.) dont vous lirez des extraits et des textes intégraux. Qu’elles soient empreintes d’humour, de mélancolie ou parfois même d’horreur, les histoires que Maupassant nous a laissées présentent presque toujours un pessimisme latent dont l’auteur a fait la « marque » de son œuvre. Certains de ses ouvrages ont été aussi adaptées pour le cinéma et la télévision, et vous aurez donc aussi l’occasion de regarder des extraits de films et téléfilms et d’en discuter.
What will we cover?
Le cours vous amènera à en apprendre plus et discuter de la courte vie et tragique fin de l’auteur . Vous serez amené(es) à lire et étudier des textes extraits de différents livres. Vous en dégagerez les thèmes variés et caractéristiques des différentes périodes de sa carrière littéraire. Vous discuterez et échangerez également vos impressions et points de vue personnels sur ce que vous aurez lu et appris.
What will I achieve?
By the end of this course you should be able to...
À la fin de ce cours, vous devriez avoir envie de lire un ou plusieurs livres de Marcel Pagnol. Vous devriez en outre être capable :
- de parler d’un auteur célèbre et de son œuvre ;
- d’apprécier son style et la qualité de ses talents de conteur / narrateur ;
- de comprendre la place de cet auteur dans la littérature française de la fin du XIXème siècle.
What level is the course and do I need any particular skills?
The course will be delivered entirely in French, so you should have studied French to our level 4 or 5.
Active participation is expected.
For further details of the specific foreign language skills required for this level, please see the languages self-assessment chart, using the link at the top of this page. You can also find the chart at the start of the languages section in our course guide.
It is also essential that you have knowledge of more complex grammar terminology such as: the past tenses, the future tense, the subjunctive, the conditional, pronouns.
How will I be taught, and will there be any work outside the class?
You will discuss and analyse texts in pair and group work.
Reading outside the class is encouraged but not necessary to participate in classroom discussion as we will do close readings of excerpts in class.
The course is based on the communicative approach with:
- active student interaction
- emphasis on reading, speaking and listening skills
- pair and group work
- use of realia, pictures and authentic material
- use of audio-visual resources.
Are there any other costs? Is there anything I need to bring?
No. Based on tutorr's own material.
When I've finished, what course can I do next?
More workshops about authors and history. See website.
Pierre studied towards a "Licence de Langue, Littérature et Civilisations anglo-saxonne" at Grenoble University in the early 1980s. He moved to Paris in 1986 where he worked in the field of Corporate and Financial Communication, first as an editor-in-chief for a specialised publishing company, and later as an executive in charge of Corporate and Financial Communication for a large national financial institution. In the early 1990s, he gave it all up and moved to the UK (an ambition since I was a teenager) and started teaching French in a private language school, then as a secondary school classroom teacher. He then went on to study and in 2010, he gained the Dip Trans IoLET (the Chartered Institute of Linguists Diploma in Translation). In 2013, he decided to resume his teaching career, albeit choosing to do so in the Life Long Learning sector. Pierre believes that learning and teaching a foreign language is (but not limited to) about having fun, expanding personal communication skills, seeing and understanding things from a different cultural perspective.
Please note: We reserve the right to change our tutors from those advertised. This happens rarely, but if it does, we are unable to refund fees due to this. Our tutors may have different teaching styles; however we guarantee a consistent quality of teaching in all our courses.