Discover university-level education and life at UNamur while reviewing the essential subjects for your future program.

To help you start your first year of studies on a solid foundation, the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters offers courses and exercises at the end of August that will allow you to: 

• assess your proficiency in French, your ability to take notes, and your ability to summarize an oral presentation or a text; 
• engage in activities specific to Latin and French languages and literatures; 
• discover the demands of university life and the role of a student; 
• become familiar with the methodological principles of your discipline; 
• evaluate your choices regarding your academic focus.

Test your knowledge and skills with the “Passports to the Bac.”

Starting in the first year, the “Passports to the Bac” allow you to compare your knowledge and skills with your teachers’ expectations.

Following these tests, the Faculty offers sessions and workshops to help you strengthen your:

• reading strategies;
• ability to analyze questions and formulate appropriate answers.

This helps you fill in any gaps in your knowledge and sets you up for success.

To succeed in your first year, you need effective strategies.

Every Wednesday, two-hour study skills sessions are held to help you become familiar with university learning techniques:

• taking clear and comprehensive notes;
• summarizing and synthesizing course material;
• gaining a deep understanding of the material;
• developing your study tools;
• memorizing large amounts of information;
• manage your time during the semester and exam periods;
• organize your work;
• anticipate instructors’ expectations.

In addition to these study skills sessions, your faculty’s Academic Support Unit organizes individual feedback sessions after your tests and exams. If you request it, you can also receive personalized support throughout the year.

If you’re having trouble with your study methods in general, the Interfaculty Academic Support Unit also offers individual support. Throughout the year, an advisor is available to review your study methods and techniques and help you improve them.

Finally, just before the first intensive study period, you can participate in a discussion and advice session with second- or third-year students under the supervision of the Academic Support Unit.

Learn how to express yourself clearly in writing and deepen your understanding of texts.

Your faculty’s Academic Support Unit helps you improve your skills in various areas:

• writing papers and exam answers
• reading and understanding university-level texts
• through language tests at the beginning of the year that assess spelling, vocabulary, and syntax;
• through workshop-style reinforcement sessions and online exercises;
• through guidance on some of your written assignments: annotated corrections, both individual and group;
• through the organization of mock exams (November tests);
• through individual follow-up (via email and in person);
• a reading test at the beginning of the year;
• through sessions focused on reading strategies;

Special support is provided for students whose native language is not French.

The central and departmental libraries, the computer lab, and the e-learning platform: invaluable resources.

At the central library (“BUMP” for Bibliothèque Universitaire Moretus Plantin), you can access: catalogs, dictionaries, encyclopedias, bibliographies, literary works, databases, and more. Rarer or specialized journals and books can be obtained upon request.

At the department library, located on the floor of your section, you have free access to most of the resources you need for your studies: journals, specialized grammars and dictionaries, overview collections, scholarly studies, exemplary monographs, collections of edited or manuscript sources, and sometimes even microfilm readers.

You’ll also benefit from practical advice from upperclassmen and even professors in the adjacent offices.

And that’s not all! Thanks to the WebCampus e-learning platform, you can download the materials that instructors make available to you, access discussion forums with other students, and ask questions in real time...

Study regularly, develop good study habits, and familiarize yourself with your teachers’ expectations and their testing styles.

In the first year, formative assessments are held in early November in most subjects. Your exams are returned to you with corrections and comments, and the teachers then explain orally the expected answers to their questions.

These tests do not factor into the grades that will be assigned at the end of the year. They are solely a learning tool that gives you an idea of the teachers’ expectations and allows you to assess the effectiveness of your work.

January, June, and, if necessary, August… three sessions to demonstrate your mastery of the material.

In January, you take exams on the material covered in the first quadrimester. If you fail, you can retake the exam in June and/or August. That means you have three chances to pass, but only during your first year of the bachelor’s program. Starting in the second year, any exam failed during the January or June session is automatically rescheduled for the August session.

Depending on the professors’ discretion, courses may be assessed through written or oral exams. The assessment procedures are explained during the first class and are detailed on the university’s website.

Throughout your program, the knowledge and skills developed in technical courses are assessed on an almost continuous basis; this assessment relies primarily on quizzes and exercises completed during the year.

You will complete your program by demonstrating, through your final project, your ability to conduct independent research and analysis.