French, a curricular component of the Department of Languages and Linguistics, occupies a unique position in our bi-national, multilingual southwestern location.  The French program and its faculty contribute to the teaching and research function of the University in various areas including language acquisition, language variation, cultural awareness, international business, literary studies, and promotion of study abroad.  It provides students pursuing an undergraduate major or minor in French with the unique opportunity of learning and practicing the world language spoken on five continents by more than 28 countries.  French studies complement course work in related disciplines such as history, linguistics, political science, psychology, and Spanish.  Moreover, the French curriculum supports UTEP’s mission of training teachers for the future.

    Our undergraduate program in French, oriented towards the development of communicative competency in the language, includes courses in conversational language, phonetics and phonology, civilization and culture, composition, general and genre-specific literature, and business French.  Genre-specific French literature, at the advanced level, is often offered according to a particular theme or predominant issue in the francophone world, such as the status of immigrants in France.  The French faculty works collaboratively with other areas at the University: the Registrar’s Office, the Women’s Studies Department, the College of Education, and the Office of International Programs, to name just a few.