Our French Lessons

Dear Friends,

We just completed our second of four weeks of French lessons with our fabulous teacher.  She is a young mother whose child is just 2.  She and her husband live in Villefranche just about a block from us.  Her English is great, although she very seldom uses it, except to test us on vocabulary.  Her teaching style is fantastic.  She has a curriculum which she designed for us based on our ability level.  We meet with her at our apartment for three hours a day four days each week.  The time goes racing by.

Each day starts with what appears at first to be a warm-up time of just chatting, but she has an ulterior motive of forcing us to use the imparfait and the passé composé.  As a result, we must remember when to use which tense and then conjugate the verb correctly.  She keeps excellent notes of each day's lesson in very clear handwriting in a notebook. Whenever we stumble on a vocabulary word that she thinks is important she writes it on a page reserved for that day's vocabulary words.

While she always has a particular point of grammar in mind, les articles, les adjectifs possessifs, les pronoms possessifs, verbs indirects, etc., she does not hesitate to deviate if we are using an incorrect construction that she feels she should teach us.  Sometimes she decides not to teach us at that moment and tells us that we will get to it later.  She takes very good notes on each point of grammar including examples.

A couple times a week she has us watch a news program (actually just the headlines) on the computer.  Usually the first time through we can just barely get the sense of what is being said.  She then gives us a print out with some words, usually verbs, missing and we listen again, trying to fill in the missing words.  We are getting better at figuring out the missing words.  In fact yesterday between the two of us we got all of them on the first try.

She also gives us homework exercises that are very good for practicing.  Today we corrected a two page assignment on the use of de, d', de la, du, des, le, la, les, un and une.  You need to remember masculin ou feminin, negatif ou positif et si le verbe est un verbe comme aimer, détester, préférer, etc.  How could we have missed any of them, but we did.  The key is to remember that a verb of preference takes priority over the negative.

Today we  had a detailed pronunciation lesson on the quatre voyelles nasales - an/en, in/ain/ien, on and un.  The lesson included how to make the sounds with various parts of you lips, mouth, nose and throat.  Do not expect me to demonstrate these four sounds.

Next week we start the subjonctif as we have already worked on the présent, imparfait, futur simple, futur proche et passé composé.  Unfortunately for me, I do not know all the tenses in English and there are tenses in French that have no comparable tense in English.  I suppose all of this is really good for my brain.  In any case, these lessons are the highlight of our day.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal