This page is for the City of Portsmouth College class on Tuesday evenings for Intermediate (Improvers) French. Classes run from 19:30 - 21:00
A shortened link to this page is rebrand.ly/copcfri24
N.B.
Links in blue will work for you, but if they are red, then they will only work for me while in class.
The classes will run from January to March from 19:30 to 21:00 on Tuesdays.
16th, 23rd & 30th January
6th, 20th, & 27th February (13th is half term)
5th, 12th, 19th and 26th March.
Classes are now available to book for the Summer Term.
French for Intermediate/Improvers will be a continuation of this class, we will only repeat the grammar regarding tenses and verb conjugation, but we may add other grammatical issues, should they arise.
The classes are due to run on Tuesdays from 7:30 to 9:00 pm. Just 8 weeks.
Tuesday: 16th, 23rd and 30th April
7th (14th) and 21st May
4th and 11th June
Sometimes, the start is delayed if there are many applications for all classes in at the last minute. On the 14th of May, I may be involved in Mayor Making; if I am, that week's class will be postponed until June 18th.
To check verb conjugation - particularly while you are learning all those irregular verbs - this tool could be of use to you.
To improve your listening and speaking skills in a social setting, visit the evening or afternoon events organised in the city.
Would anyone like to host with a view to returning to Caen in 2025, the year of Caen's 1000th Birthday? The French Exchange visit from Caen coming here in June 2024. (14th to 17th).
Tips for refreshing and reinforcing your French
Listen to French Music - Watch French TV series and films (or at least videos/news in French)
There is a lot of stuff online for the French language and learning (not all of it, correct!) The sites below are usually accessible for free and have French-language content.
Free sources for TV
All 4 (Walter Presents on Channel 4 has some French Series among the many foreign series)
France 24 (online news 24/7 in French)
TV5 Monde (an online bank of Francophone TV and Film)
BBC iPlayer (often under BBC 4 programming)
France.info also has a live stream on YouTube
Free Sources for Radio
Radio.Garden (Sadly, since October 2022, there's a block on this website for working outside the UK). However, click on the ellipsis (...).
You can see the option to visit the website - click there, and you can go to the website - click on 'écouter la radio', and it gives all the France Bleu regional stations in France... then you can listen (this option will work on most radio stations based on 'Radio.Garden'.
This website has some useful articles in both English and French; watching both versions can certainly improve your vocabulary, intonation and grammatical structure knowledge.
In order to help you with your grammar, you can go to this post on this blog.
We should also be looking at Grammar, particularly verb formation.
I have a blog here that will take you step by step through verb formation.
If you are serious about mastering French Grammar a good place to start is the verb formation and this book will certainly help. (see here for an older version)
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mardi, 26 mars
Pâques
Dossier Culturel - From this, we will look at Lyon and Corsica, noting new vocabulary.
This is a bit of fun to learn animal names and the noises animals make in French... Definitely not the height of French Culture, though!!
mardi, 19 mars
We will look at some French cities, regions, and parts of the world where French is spoken. (Paris is included, of course). Traduction Anglaise
These two songs are older songs reworked by Zaz to give them a more up-to-date feel.
mardi, 12 mars
A look at everyday routines and how to talk about them in French (some of the group began to look at this before).
We will look at an example of a daily routine, and you can use this to talk about your day-to-day routine. Poster Online Clock Face Time Worksheet
A recap of how to tell the time in French.
A recap of the most common daily routine phrases
Mylène Farmer - Rallumer Les Étoiles
Culture et Actualité
News from Bénin - Tuesday, 27 February (the language tends to be slower than most and quite well pronounced).
This is because in Bénin, French is the langauge known by everyone, but not necessarily their mother tonugue.
You can probably find the previous night's news on this YouTube Channel.
It could be suitable as a starting point to ease yourself into the news from l'Hexagone.
Une petite blague bretonne
mardi, 5 mars
We knew by 7:30 that many of you would be missing, so today, we looked at La Francophonie, in particular, Nouvelle Calédonie, Guadeloupe, Bénin, St Pierre et Miquelon, and, of course, Québec.
We did not watch this one, but it explains what the DOM and TOM are...
And this one goes into a little more detail.
Can you detect the difference between French and Canadian French?
This one takes us around Québec City and includes some real Québecois accents!
This is an authentic Québécoise accent at play...
and of course their ecclesiastical based curses!
mardi, 27 février
From EN1 p71-76. Piste 42
We will discuss some of the many hobbies and pastimes people like.
You ought to be collecting together some information in French about yourself. in a document such as a Google Doc - You could now write an introduction to yourself and where you live, what is local to you, who is in your family, what they do, like to do, what is near to your home in your town, what there is to see and do in your town... Foods/drinks you like, do not like, etc.
mardi, 20 février
We can look at the formation of the future tense and the conditional mood tonight.
Verbs blog post
From EN1
We will look at reasons for learning various things. use of « parce que » and « pour »...
TV5 Pourquoi? Skill building - listening for detail and correct verbal conjugation following the rules covered these last weeks...
HALF TERM (13 Feb)
mardi, 6 février
Chandeleur/mardi gras/La Saint Valentin
Le chandeleur - le 2 février
le mardi gras - le 13 février (cette année)
la Saint Valentin - le 14 février
We should also look at the formation and use of the imperfect tense in French. We could also look at the pluperfect tense, as this is a mix of an auxiliary verb in the imperfect and perfect past participle!!
We will continue to look at family and discuss families. We will also look at musical tastes and what motivates you to choose to do activities. EN p.69-71.
This is the singer featured in our reading exercise. This is his only UK hit... (No 25.)
He has had a LOT of songs outside the UK in the charts.
This is further cultural information on mardi gras...
mardi, 30 janvier
Tuesday, 30th January
We will continue tonight focusing on getting to grips with verbs in French.
It gets more complicated when you want to talk about the past.
As in the present tense, the equivalent tense commonly used in French is just one, whereas in English, we have three versions. In English, we call this tense the Perfect Tense.
In French, it is known as 'le passé composé'.
Revision of the Present and Perfect Tenses in French.
mardi, 23 janvier
Tuesday, 23rd January
We will begin tonight focusing on getting to grips with verbs in French.
We will begin with regular verbs in the present tense and look at the three families of French verbs and how to conjugate them. This blog page is where I go through French verb formation step by step.
From Entre Nous 1 Chapter 4, we will talk about the family and interpersonal relationships.
We can go into basic detail about the members of the family and their personality traits.
Do you know how to describe people? (We did cover this in beginners class)
There's a list of adjectives here
If you wish, you could try these exercises at home.
Or these
Revision of talking about the family...
A 90s BBC for Schools and Colleges designed to bring all the beginners/intermediate level vocabulary together in a 15-minute revision package.
mardi, 16 janvier
Tuesday, 16th January
Tonight is the first lesson. We will look at what motivates you to improve your French, why you have signed up and what you want to get from the class (so I can best prepare for the next nine weeks). It is also how we can get to know each other (for any people who were not in this class before).
Voici quelques questions pour vous faire parler aujourd'hui:
Qui êtes vous?
Pourquoi voulez-vous améliorer votre français?
Parlez-nous d'une visite en France ou dans un pays francophone... (see below for information )
Que faites-vous dans la vie?
Quels sont vos passe-temps préférés?
Parlez nous de votre famille...
Parlez nous de votre ville...
... et vos passe-temps qu'est-ce que vous aimez faire dans votre temps libre?
La Francophonie
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