French with Flo

French Made Simple - Chapter 3 Meet Mr. Brown!  I recorded the dialogue twice: a first time at normal speed, and a second time a little slower, with space for students to repeat. Dialogue pp.15-16: Qui est Monsieur Brown ? 🔊FMS 03-01 Pronunciation and Spelling Aids p.16: 🔊FMS 03-02 Note: in #1, the book recommends to pron ounce the liaison between " affaires " and " américain " in the phrase " un homme d'affaire s a méricain ". However, in this case the liaison is optional and, actually, it is very often omitted. I demonstrated both possibilities in the recording. Vocabulary p.17-18: 🔊FMS 03-03 Exercise 1 p.18: Completion of Text 🔊FMS 03-04 Say the right answer after I call the question number, then listen to the answer. Exercise 2 p.21: 🔊FMS 03-05 Exercise 3 pp.21-22: 🔊FMS 03-06 Some Common Verb Constructions p.22: 🔊FMS 03-07 Exercise 4 p.22: 🔊FMS 03-08 Exercise 5 p.23: Questionnaire 🔊FMS 03-09 You can ei...

French Made Simple - Chapter 2, Part 3 The third part of chapter 2 starts with a few grammar / pronunciation notes. ©Amberly Maxwell at https://slideplayer.com/slide/10293639/ The liaison : 🔊 FMS 02-10 (For more information on the liaison, see this blogpost .) The élision : 🔊 FMS 02-11 The stress in words and sentences: 🔊 FMS 02-12 Chapter 2 then concludes with three short dialogues. Dialogue 1: 🔊 FMS 02-13 Dialogue 2: 🔊 FMS 02-14 Dialogue 3: 🔊 FMS 02-15 Congratulations, you've finished the introductory chapters! 🙌 You're now ready to start with the book's main story in the next chapter.

On February 2nd, the French celebrate  la Chandeleur (Candlemas in English). For Catholics, this Holiday commemorates Jesus' presentation at the temple, but it also corresponds to very old folk rites celebrating the beginning of Winter sowing and the lengthening of daylight. But first of all, for everyone in France, la Chandeleur is Crepes Day ! This video, produced by FrenchPod101.com , explains what you need to know about this Holiday, with both French and English subtitles. We also practiced listening with the next video, aimed at young French speakers. The class handout  that goes with this second video includes Chandeleur-related vocabulary, as well as a fill-in-the-blank exercise and comprehension questions. Finally, after talking about crepes so much, you may feel a bit hungry.  If that's the case, here's the Crepes Recipe ! With pictures and in French, of course... (document created by crisbarto at ISLCollective .)

French Made Simple - Chapter 2, part 2  And now we can start speaking French! In this section, you will learn some simple, useful phrases. Here is the vocabulary: 🔊  FMS 02.05 Exercise p.10-11: Combien coûte...? 🔊  FMS 02-06 Exercise p.11: Pardon Monsieur. Où est...? 🔊  FMS 02-07 (Note: in France, the word "toilette" - restroom - is usually used in plural form: les toilettes. The verb "être" needs to be plural, too: Où sont les toilettes?) Exercise p.11: Je voudrais... 🔊  FMS 02-08 Image: Eulalie Lopez at slideplayer.fr/slide/173343/ Numbers from 1 to 21: 🔊  FMS 02-09 (Note: as an example, I also added the words "dollar" and "euro" after the numbers. Note the liaison before the word "euro".) In class, I also handed out this sheet that expands on the vocabulary and exercises of this section, as well as the Color Adjective List (document created by  Nathalie74160 on ISLCollective.com .)

The grammar point for FMS chapter 10 is the demonstrative adjectives. To make things more complicated , err, more comprehensive, I've also added some explanation about the demonstrative pronouns in the class handout. Hopefully, the explanations make sense. Here is my  Demonstrative Adjectives and Pronouns handout, as well as the Exercise Sheet (adapted from a document created by Silac on ISLCollective .) To practice the demonstratives in a fun way, we can also make up little skits using the Bureau des Object Trouvés drawing, created by Tkdana on ISLCollective . Have a look at the Vocabulary/Example sheet for inspiration, and have fun!

Using properly the casual address "tu" or the formal address "vous" is very important when you speak French. Use "vous" at the wrong time and you'll sound strange and overly formal ; use "tu" wrongly and you might very well offend the person you're talking to... which is what happened to Boris, a young French learner, in the video above. Poor Boris, he learned the hard way! This text comes from the book "Je vis en France : vingt lectures faciles pour découvrir la civilisation française" by Marie Barthe and Bernadette Chovelon. Here is the class handout (slightly reformatted from the original.) There are many, many resources on the Internet about this topic. Here is one I like:

To my knowledge, our classroom textbook " French Made Simple " doesn't come with an audio version, which makes things difficult for beginners who try to study on their own. To help them, I intend to record the French examples, texts and (possibly) exercises as we progress in our study of the book. Tall order! Wish me luck... And now, let's start at the beginning. French Made Simple - Chapter 1 This is a general presentation of the French language, including many words that are very similar between French and English. Page 1: Words with same spelling, same meaning, different pronunciation 🔊 FMS 01-01.mp3 Page 1-2: Words with same meaning but slightly different spelling 🔊 FMS 01-02.mp3 Page 2: Words directly borrowed from French, with similar pronunciation 🔊 FMS 01-03.mp3 French Made Simple - Chapter 2, Part 1 : Pronunciation Pages 4-6 - Introductory section: some basic French vowel sounds 🔊 FMS 02-01.mp3 Pages 6-7: French Vowe...

As we've seen, feasting takes a prominent place in Christmas and end-of-year celebrations in France. So, after all these excesses, in early January, what do French people do? They eat cake! 😂 The "fête des Rois", or Épiphanie, is a popular holiday for French people, no matter their religion (or absence thereof.) The video shown in class, from FrenchPod101.com, gives a very good overview of the subject. Our first handout this week was a crossword puzzle with accompanying vocabulary (adapted from this webpage .) We also worked on a fill-in-the-blanks exercise . You can find here the audio document the exercise above is based on. Scroll up and click on the first video to hear the text. Just under the video is a multiple-choice exercise you may find entertaining, and a little below is the full transcript of the text. And, by the way, how do you make this famous galette des Rois? Well, apparently, it's child's play. Enjoy! 😋

As we end 2018, here are some handouts and links that, for some reason (such as me being absolutely terrible with anything having to do with the Internet) never made it to the blog after I taught the corresponding class. This is material we studied between June and September 2018. Hopefully, posting this, even late, will be useful for returning and new students alike.       Texts / Dialogues La fête des voisins: Neighbors Day      1. Text and exercises:  Voisins, voisines      2. Learn more about France's Neighbors Day  here Booking a Table      1. Dialogue:  Réserver une table au restaurant      2.  Dialogue in pictures  (both documents created by  carolebim  at  Tes )       Exercises Crosswords to Practice the Present Tense      1. Mots Croisés:  présent des vacances  (created by  dodeuil  at ISLC...

Another Old Chestnut... This song by Joe Dassin came out in in 1969 and has been popular ever since. Here are the lyrics .