This workbook was developed for an intermediate French taught at the University of California, San Diego. The course is organized around the reading of Leila Sebbar's novel Sherazade. The structure and themes of the novel lend themselves very well to an intermediate level course as each chapter can be discussed as a text in itself.
In addition to teaching composition techniques, the course offers a review of selected grammar points: past tenses, future and conditional, subjunctive, relative pronouns, passive voice, and present participle. It also stresses reading activities that can be used as a point of departure for in-class discussions of social issues in contemporary France. Vocabulary exercises, comprehension questions on many chapters of the novel, and grammar exercises based on the vocabulary and themes of the novel are included.
Because students at the intermediate level are not always ready to carefully read the entire novel, the workbook offers helpful chapter-by-chapter summaries of the novel. It allows the instructor to choose which chapters to concentrate on while allowing students to still follow the plot.
Catherine Ploye is a lecturer in the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and won the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award in 2011.
