Stupid French

I'm getting a bit fed up of my French courses. Sitting here, at 11:30 pm, the night before a French lecture, attempting to stick together 600 odd words about 2 articles I care very little about, I wonder what the point of these French courses is. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to be studying French, however the modules that I have to do offer very little...of anything.
I have 2 hours a week of French from 2 half unit modules: Pratique de l'Ecrit and Pratique de l'Oral, a writing and a speaking class. Every year the structure of the courses is the same. For Ecrit we have to read an article/text or 2 and write some sort of summary or synthesis by following a strict format. There is very little chance to express anything in the way of personal opinion and the courses offer very little in the way of useful skills.
The speaking class fares little better. The first 2 years were quite good as they involved analysing adverts in the 1st year and films in the 2nd. This year we are focussing on written texts but, as with the writing class, we are forced to follow a particular format in order to gain the marks.
Our coursework for this module revolves around a presentation on a text as well as a debate. The debate this year will be a bit of a farce I expect. There are only 3 people in my class. One person will "chair" the debate while the other 2 of us argue our various points. I can only hope that we have opposing views otherwise the debate will be very short!
The upside to having just 3 people in the class means we all have to speak. In this way, my oral class contrasts nicely with my writing class in which there must be about 16 people...and no-one speaks. We all sit there with our work in front of us and the teacher asks a question about it. I contribute in classes however I don't like to always be the first one to say something.
So, we all sit there until I or one of the few other contributors gets fed up of the silence and answers the question.
I'm certainly not brilliant at either of the classes but it's difficult to feel enthusiastic about these classes especially when the material is so uninspiring.
Ah well, back to work.