In French Spelling Unpacked 1, I suggested that the French like their spoken language to flow, and their written language to be as precise as possible. The two elements introduced in the first posting - knocking the vowel off a short word when followed by another vowel, and not pronouncing some consonants at the ends of words – pose big problems for English speakers, though children as young as six or seven can understand the idea if it is carefully explained and practised.
This posting covers two elements that give precision– adding letters, often not pronounced, to make agreements between verbs and subjects. Accents and the cedilla will make French Spelling Unpacked 3.
To understand agreements, we need to understand verb, subject, and the use of gender in languages. Children also need to be able to transfer and adapt to French their knowledge of singular and plural.
Verbs are the most important words in languages, as they give focus to what would otherwise be a heap of words. We can rarely make a sentence without one. A verb is usually described to children as a “doing word”. This which unfortunately excludes the verb to be, which is the most common verb, but doesn’t do anything.
I say to children that:
· Most verbs do things – I play, swim, work, eat etc.
· Some verbs just feel – I feel ill. I don’t want to do anything today.
· Some verbs don’t feel or do anything – the table is old.
French grammar calls the last two types verbes d’état.
Subject, in common language, means whatever a sentence happens to be about. To linguists, it means, broadly, whoever or whatever does, is or feels what the verb says. The confusion with the common meaning makes life difficult for all of us, and needs to be explained. We could do with a better term, but children can learn this with practice. It is fundamental to later understanding, in English as well as other languages.
Gender is used in almost all languages in respect to people. In most European languages, it is also attached to objects that have no gender at all. Adapting to this takes a big shift in the way we think, and children are often flummoxed by it. Explanation often has to be recast and rehearsed several times before children understand the idea, but it can’t be glossed over or avoided. A child growing up speaking a European language has their own gender and the attribution of gender to everything around them reinforced in all the language they hear and use. This is the approach I use in explaining it to English speakers, in French and Spanish.
· When we learn a new language, we’re not just learning new words, but new ways of putting them together. Other people do things differently. The main prayer day in Islam is Friday, in Judaism is Saturday, in Christianity is Sunday. People, including people in large groups, such as nations or religions, do as they choose. We need to understand how other people think.
· If we go back to the ancient world, people worshiped gods and goddesses. The idea of male and female ran through everything, and not just people. Most modern religions have one god (not all, but most). In English, we’ve got rid of the idea of attaching gender to most objects (except ships). Other languages have kept the idea. There’s no right or wrong about it – people do as they choose. Other people learning English have to adapt to our spelling, and we, as we learn their languages, have to adapt to the idea of words having a gender.
These basic explanations use words and ideas children understand, and don’t take long to give. They do need to be practised and reinforced, though, and I suggest that this needs to happen from the beginning, so that children do not bump into things they don’t understand.
Adding s for a plural noun usually operates in the same way in French as in English, although in French the s is usually not pronounced. But, to tie everything together, the French put s on all of the words connected with the noun (articles and adjectives.) And les is the same for girl's and boys' words. This takes practice, and I'd only introduce it after basic gender agreement is clear. Once children get used to it, it becomes straightforward and even amusing.
La jolie dame est partie
Le jeune garçon est parti
Les jolies dames sont parties
Les jeunes garçons sont partis
Additional forms can be taught as they arise - as long as we have emphasised that this is what usually happens, there is no need to go into every variety and exception at this stage. These are better learned once the main pattern is established.
So, how to practise? I begin with singing the verb song written by Joseph Biswell and slightly adapted by me for the less musical. We point with our whole hand as we do so (one hand for singular, two hands for plural) and sing it in negative as well as positive, using Ruth Miskin’s techniques of closed questions with alternative answers to make sure everyone understands. As we sing the negative – je ne suis pas, tu n’es pas - we shake our heads as we point, which children find entertaining.
Once children can sing the song fluently, we knock off the verb and just sing the pronouns, making a cutthroat gesture after each one. Pronouns are explained as shortcut words, that save us time, with some examples. We can then add any verb we like to the pronouns, in negative and positive, and begin to see patterns in them. French second person singular seems always to end in s, and third person plural in nt. Other patterns work most of the time, but not always. Just as children behave most of the time, and not always. Practising and singing verbs in this way helps children to adapt their thinking to the way the verbs work, the actions make it fun, and children enjoy being able to do it. As verbs and subjects are always presented together, in the context of people they know, children gradually build up their understanding of how they are linked together.
As they practise, I put the written version of the verb on a board (I usually use a word document, with a pale green background to avoid glare, and the verb in bold blue letters and a friendly font, comic sans ms). After we’ve sung a verb, I ask the children to spot what letters we don’t pronounce – they enjoy this and, after a bit of practice, become quick to see them.
For gender, I begin with the idea of girls’ words and boys’ words, and that une tells us a word is always a girls word. I'll then say some words with une, reinforcing the idea that gender is nothing to do with people - I wear une cravate and une chemise, for example, and my shoe is une chaussure, though I have big feet and no woman would ever wear my shoe. I then will say some words with un and une, and have them put their hand up when they hear a girls' word. Children at Queensbridge primary school were interested in animals, so I made a Clicker grid with animals, and had them pick out animals that had girls' words. Identifying the girls' word first had certain advantages - the feminine article, une, is pronounced with more emphasis than un, and so sticks in the mind more clearly. Once children can identify une easily, we can introduce and explain un, and they can pick out boys' words as well as girls'.
I then repeat the process with la and le, again beginning with the feminine. Once the idea is established, we can apply it to everything else involving gender. The idea of adding e to make une is central to the whole question, and it almost always involves increasing emphasis when the word is pronounced, so we are teaching pronunciation at the same time as spelling. Recently, Year 5 children at Harrington Hill; reading my French translation of Not Now Bernard, have been able to understand the role of gender in possessive pronouns - son père, sa mère:
tbc