Designing a French for specific purposes course for the agrifood sector

Abstract

Unlike the learning language methods of general French, which have as topic everyday life, designing French for Specific Purposes (FSP) courses involves, for the teacher-designer, the processing of new contexts that he discovers and which must become familiar to him. In the situation where there isn't already a manual for that area, the teacherdesigner of FSP courses has to set up an activity of investigation, research, collection and processing of information and knowledge necessary to fulfil a course, these information and knowledge constituting the core of the communicative situations targeted by that training program. The designing of a FSP syllabus follows a five-step approach: identification of the training request needs analysis, data collection, data processing and elaboration of didactic activities. This article is a result of the experience gained in designing FSP worksheets for the agrifood sector within the context of an international partnership developed between five universities, from Romania (the "Ion Ionescu de la Brad" University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Iaşi, the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Cluj-Napoca, the "Dunărea de Jos" University of Galaţi), Croatia (the University of Zagreb) and Republic of Moldova (the "Alecu Russo" State University of Bălţi) and financed by the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie – Bureau pour l’Europe centrale et orientale, entitled “Strengthening of French Language and of Research in French for the non-specialist students in a multicultural and French-speaking environment” (November 2011-March 2014). The article presents the five-step approach for FSP supports and illustrates the description of each step by concrete examples taken from the educational sheets designed for the learners trained in agrifood sector