Learning French as an adult is not the same as learning it in school. First, there is no compulsion – we learn because we wish to, because we are interested, and perhaps also because we would like the children we teach to have a better chance of learning than we had. Second, we have different knowledge, skills and understanding from children aged fourteen to sixteen. Our literacy skills are generally more secure, we’ve been through the examinations mill, and our training and teaching experience have taught us lessons about learning – and snags in learning – that we can apply to our own work. We know how to learn, and understand the importance of regular practice and attention to detail. GCSE French itself is designed to be accessible at a range of levels, from foundation level, which is an adequate preparation to teach most primary classes, to A* - achieved by some Hackney teachers last year – which shows high levels of understanding and accuracy and is a very good foundation for further study.
The first thing we need is a personal “game plan”, beginning with an informal audit of what we already know, and setting realistic targets for the GCSE. In the early stages of learning a language, we progress from understanding individual words and phrases – chunks, below – to being able to compose simple sentences – networks. For GCSE, we need to be able to use simple networks to compose sentences about ourselves, interests, family and similar topics. For grade C and above, we need to extend these to some sentences written in the third person, and to future and past time, though again at a simple level.
After the audit, the question to ask is, whether to take GCSE over one or two years? It is not realistic for a beginner to attempt it in one year, especially starting in November. If you are confident with basic French, though, this possible. Otherwise, plan to develop a good basic understanding during this year, to practise as much as you can over the summer holiday – apply, if possible, for a British Council grant for a course in France – and to take GCSE next year. There is a revise syllabus for examinations starting in 2011, with a broader range of topics.
The GCSE syllabus changes in 2011. The new syllabus is here
http://store.aqa.org.uk/qual/newgcse/pdf/AQA-4655-W-SP-10.PDF
The overall mark scheme is 20% each for reading and listening, 30% each for speaking and writing. I recommend that everyone download and print off the specification for reference.
Resources. I recommend Collins Easy Learning French Grammar (£4.35 Amazon.co.uk ). Dictionaries are available online, free, but a dictionary is a good investment. Collins Easy Learning Complete French is a good buy (Amazon £6.56), as it has the full grammar, verb tables and dictionary. Michel Thomas’ French Course is available via The Learning Trust, and may be worth buying for beginners, though not at its full price of £70. It costs £19.99 at Costco, and I will happily purchase one for you if you don’t have a card. BBC Bitesize is invaluable for beginners, as is the Australian site http://www.education.vic.gov.au/languagesonline/ for beginners.
In addition, the course refers to the published DVDs Zim Zam Zoum (Taught by Song) and Little Tails (Beelingua). Both can be very highly recommended for primary schools.
French is the most frequently taught language in British schools – if we have only learned one language at school, it us usually French. Discussions with Hackney primary teachers show a very mixed picture of this experience, but with negative feelings outnumbering positive ones by roughly 3 to 1. Complaints included poor teaching, boring exercises, spoken language presented too fast, and sometimes a combination of the three. Introducing French to primary schools offers teachers another chance to learn the language, this time with the benefit of hindsight. We know what doesn’t work, and have a growing idea of what does, partly from the successful work of the late Michel Thomas, and partly from the practical experience we are gaining in work with children.
Put simply, everyone can learn French. Not everyone wants or needs to become bilingual, but everyone can equip themselves with the knowledge, skills and understanding needed to give a class an enjoyable introduction to French that will mean that they do not have to start from scratch in Year 7. At the same time, you can either lay the ghost of an earlier bad experience, or to build on a better one that may have taken place some time ago. It is also never too late to start. Michel Thomas showed that a carefully thought out approach can give an interested adult learner a grasp of the fundamental networks underlying a language in hours rather than years, and his methods are accessible to anyone with a CD player. As a teacher, your understanding of teaching and learning processes gives you a head start, whether or not you see yourself as “good at languages”. I know this myself from learning Spanish from scratch as part of my work with Hackney – they key to effective learning and retention is not grinding, but understanding. As Thomas put it, “What you understand, you don’t forget.”
Getting Started: Chunks and Networks.
As we learn a language, we set up new connections in our brain, that we add to those formed by the language or languages we already know. It is often useful to think of these connections in terms of chunks and networks.
Chunks are self-contained snippets of language that we know automatically, without necessarily paying much attention to their literal meaning. The most obvious ones in French are bonjour, s’il vous plait and merci – three of the most important words in any language. Chunks are useful, but limited – they do not allow us to put our meaning into words.
Networks allow us to put words together to make sense, and can be extended infinitely by changing the vocabulary we use. In European languages, the largest networks often centre on the verb to have, J’ai. In French, this lets us say not only what we have, but how old we are, how we’re feeling, whether or not we’re hungry. Networks are at the core of communication at the sentence level, and can be extended in various ways, using the grammatical structures of the language. Michel Thomas’s breakthrough was putting these structures at the centre of his teaching, and using very restricted vocabulary, so that the learner built structures, and not chunks.
William the Conqueror and the Latin Link
The Normans left more than castles. From1066 to around 1300, English was flooded with French words, to the extent that almost a third of all of the vocabulary in the Collins-Robert dictionary was found to be identical, or to have only one different letter. This is extremely useful for teachers learning French – we already know these words, so just have to change the way we pronounce them – and for pupils, as much of this vocabulary is used in the books they encounter in later primary and secondary education. Here are some examples (Fr, exemples)
-anger manger, danger, stranger (fr étranger) (estrange)
-age: bandage, image, page, message, usage, voltage, passage, garage
-ance: chance, balance, finance, alliance, tolérance, ambulance,
-ence: confidence, évidence, intelligence, providence, licence
-tion: nation, action, attention, adaptation, administration
-al: animal, normal, signal, cardinal, final, original, national
ain: gain, grain, refrain, train, quatrain, certain, vain
-ent: accent, récent, innocent, précédent, incident, président
-ant: vacant, élégant, éléphant, extravagant, descendant
-ive: offensive, initiative, tentative, co-operative, intensive
-ine: discipline, machine, morphine, Vaseline, routine, sardine
-ible: possible, compatible, sensible, invisible, terrible.
French pronunciation.
French pronunciation is a problem for people of all other nationalities. The root of the problem is in the origins of the language, which grew out of Spanish, where all letters are pronounced, and that can be cut down to size if it is properly understood. It takes practice, but its features are fairly regular, and become a lot easier once you get past the initial stages. The following are key points
· The French like their language to flow, and so run words together, sometimes inserting or omitting letters to enable this to happen. There is a limited range of techniques used to do this, and they are used in fairly regular ways.
· e and a in short words are often dropped when they are followed by a vowel, and replaced by an apostrophe, as we do in English when we take out a letter: This impromves flow by removing a clash, or glottal stop, between the vowels.
le été the summer becomes l’été
la école the school becomes l’école
· The French often do not pronounce consonants at the ends of words. The letters that are most often seen and not heard are t, s and d. They do pronounce these letters when the next word begins with a vowel. Getting used to this can be achieved once you form a mental picture of what you are doing and practise by going over the words or phrases in your mind.
· The French pronounce words in a more even way than the British, who tend to accentuate one syllable in a word. The name Domino, from Petit Pont, is a good example. Going through the first stages of Petit Pont is a good way of getting used to this pattern of pronunciation. This scheme has a good teachers’ book, and teachers have used it to start French from scratch with Year 6 classes.
· Accents in French most often occur with e, and change its pronunciation.
An acute accent stretches the sound of the e, giving a sound a little like the English ay - école, été
A grave accent makes it heavier and keeps it short, une grève (a strike)
Un élève, a pupil, has the two accents in one word.
· The cedilla is a clever device that softens a c and saves having to put another letter after it, as in face. Ça va? Is the most frequent use, and français – French.
· The circumflex accent is a curiosity and a relic. It shows where the letter s was omitted following Cardinal Richelieu’s reforms in the mid seventeenth century. So, estre, to be, became être. It causes more spelling mistakes in French schools than any other feature of the language, and is probably retained as a fashion statement, to make a text look French.