Le premier cours magistral — The First Lecture

Lectures, seminars and taking notes

French university teaching rests on two formats. The cours magistral, or CM, is a lecture to a large group in an amphithéâtre, often with little interaction; the TD, travaux dirigés, is a smaller seminar where students work on exercises, texts and presentations, and where much of the grading happens. Lecturers are usually addressed as Monsieur or Madame, not by a title, and the main academic ranks are maître de conférences and professeur des universités. Taking notes is treated as a skill in its own right, and French students arrive at university having practiced it at the lycée. Many write in a shared shorthand: càd for c'est-à-dire, qqch for quelque chose, pb for problème, ds for dans, tjrs for toujours, bcp for beaucoup, cf. for see, and arrows and symbols for cause, consequence and contrast. Recopying notes neatly in the evening, au propre, is a common habit, and lending or borrowing notes is a normal part of student life. The department store story Alex missed is a real landmark of the field: in the 1960s, the American linguist William Labov studied how salespeople in three New York department stores of different prestige pronounced the r in a set phrase, and showed that pronunciation varies with social position in measurable ways. It is told in almost every introductory sociolinguistics course, often, as here, as if it were only an anecdote.