Session 7 - 20th November 2007 - apologies for absense sent
I have been preoccupied with other projects recently and therefore any record of my improving French granmar, pronunciation and vocabulary is sadly off track. I will attempt to remedy this now.
The past four sessions have seen us encouraged to work hard on our reading and pronunciation of "La chenille qui fait des trous".Session 3 provided a plethora of information and instruction on the formation and pronunciation of verbs in the masculin, feminin, singulier, pluriel, first person, third person etc. My french lessons of 30 years ago came flooding back as we chanted Je coupe, tu coupes il/elle/on coupe, nous coupons, vous coupez, ils / elles coupent.
1st person singular : -e
2nd person singular : -es
3rd person singular : -e
1st person plural : -ons
2nd person plural : -ez
3rd person plural : -ent
2nd person singular : -es
3rd person singular : -e
1st person plural : -ons
2nd person plural : -ez
3rd person plural : -ent
Then of course, as with all things grammatical, there is the irregular set! eg pouvoir, svoir, devoir, vouloir etc.
In French, there is no neuter pronoun (" it " in English). That means that things can be either masculine or feminine. In English, the 2nd person pronoun is " you " whether in singular or plural. Formally, in French, if you talk to one single person, you use " tu " and if you talk to a group of people, you must use " vous ". In fact, the " tu " form is commonly used between people of same age, or same social rank. When talking to an older person or to somebody above you in rank or someone you do not know very well you should use vous form. " tu " marks familiarity while " vous " marks respect.
Session 4 started with a quick survey (Faire un sondage). Collated data was then presented using bar charts etc - good cross curricular links for FL, Maths and ICT. Also a great activity for practising verbs in the imperative is "Jacques a dit". Much of this session looked at how to write / give instructions for simple tasks which would easily link to instructions work in literacy. The grammar is the same in that the inperative verb comes at the beginning of the sentence and is in the vous form (you formal). The following are my instructions - can you follow them?
Instruction une Carte Noel
Prenez un fueille de papier
Pliez en duex
Decoupex ine etoile d'or
Collez l'etoile au milieu du papier
Ecrivez "Joyeux Noel" au dessus l'etiole
Ecrivez votre message dans la carte
A suggested website with useful instructions was the cookshow.com where simple french recipes can be accessed along with video. Once in the site, select recipes and the french as the language.
Tarte aux Pommes
Session 5 was very interesting as we spent time considering the pronunciation of l'alphabet and how letters can be grouped to help learn the pronunciation.
A H K (ah, ash, kah)
B C D G T V W (bay, cay, day. jhay, tay, vay, doublevay)
E (eu)
F L M N R S Z (ef, el, em, en, air, es, zed)
I J X Y (ee, ghee, iks, ik-grek)
O (o as in hot)
Q U (koo, oo)
A good game to reinforce the correct pronunciation of l'aphabet is Le Pendu (Hangman).
In reading "La Chenille..." there are many liaisons where once silent letters merge with those which come after eg. mais elle a, un petit oeuf etc
Session 6 started with considering when to use a, en and chez for example a Paris, en France, chez LeLerre.
a + le = au, a +les = aux
A good game to use for reinforcing vocabulary is Kim's game " Qu'est-ce qu'il manque?" (what's missing?)
Possesive Pronouns in French les adjectifs possessifs
In French, they agree with the following noun. But in the plural, there is no difference between masculine and feminine.
For example son cheval = his / her horse. The possessive pronoun refers to the masculin horse (le cheval) C'est le chat de Marie ; c'est son chat.
Mon père travaille dur.
Nous avons trouvé tes chaussures.
Nous gardons leurs enfants.
Nous avons trouvé tes chaussures.
Nous gardons leurs enfants.
1 comment:
Your blog is really awesome. It is informative for french language learner. I am french language learner. I am going to france
for study. But my language command is weak. So i have searched online and found many helpful resources to learn french..I am trying to speak confidently with proper pronunciation . I have learnt many things from you. Thanks for sharing with us.
Post a Comment