Beyond yoUrself In Language Development

This week in class we reviewed numbers. English speakers usually find French numbers to be difficult to remember and say quickly, especially higher numbers. This website is useful to review: http://www.woodwardfrench.com/lesson/numbers-from-1-to-100-in-french/

We talked about how numbers might come up in conversation:

Quelle âge as-tu?

J’ai trente ans. 

Dans quelle année es-tu né?

Je suis né en 1986. (mille neuf cent quatre-vingt-six)

Quelle heure est-il?

Il est 4h45. (quatre heures quarante-cinq)

Good numbers to know are: the year you were born, the current year, and how old you are!

Nous sommes en 2017 (deux mille dix-sept).

There are two ways to say years. Take 1992, for example:

• mille neuf cent quatre-vingt-douze (one thousand nine hundred ninety-two)
• dix-neuf cent quatre-vingt-douze (nineteen ninety-two)

Week 0- the basics (1)

Pronunciation is key: practice it by looking up words in the example section or others at http://www.wordreference.com/

Week 1- the basics (2)

• Révision de pronoms et phonétique
• Mots typiques du prof
  • Très bien= very good
  • D’accord ? = agreed ?
  • Ça veut dire quoi ? = what does it mean
  • Compris ? = understood ?
  • On va= we are going to
  • Alors= so
  • Répétez après moi= repete after me
  • Voilà
  • Oui/non= yes/no
• Be familiar with the meaning of these sentences as the professor will use them very often

• Present tense of

• Know how to conjugate (auxiliary) verbs by heart

• Presentes-toi (introduce yoursel)

Today in class we talked about 4 common French verbs: être (to be), avoir (to have), aller (to go), and faire (to do, to make). We conjugated these verbs, created sentences with them, and then practiced writing and speaking the verbs quickly with a game. The conjugations are below:

Etre:

Je suis

Tu es

Il/Elle/On est

Nous sommes

Vous êtes

Ils/Elles sont

Avoir:

J’ai

Tu as

Il/Elle/On a

Nous avons

Vous avez

Ils/Elles ont

Aller:

Je vais

Tu vas

Il/Elle/On va

Nous allons

Vous allez

Ils/Elles vont

Faire:

Je fais

Tu fais

Il/Elle/On fait

Nous faisons

Vous faites

Ils/Elles font

Then we talked about the “futur proche,” or “near future.” You use this tense to talk about something that will happen fairly soon or at a definite point in the future (tonight, this weekend, next week, at the end of the month, etc.). This tense is formed by using a conjugation of aller plus the infinitive of a verb. Some examples include:

• Je vais pratiquer le français. (I am going to practice French.)
• Tu vas aller à la plage. (You are going to go to the beach.)
• Qu’est-ce que vous allez faire ce week-end? (What are you going to do this weekend?)

For homework, if you have the time, you can do one or more of the following:

• Ecoutez une émission de RFI français facile: https://savoirs.rfi.fr/apprendre-enseigner
• Regardez une vidéo de Comme une Française: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-ZFVrf5NVlmgZ0hItLT0pg
• Utilisez Clozemaster pendant 15 minutes: https://www.clozemaster.com/languages

FYI: Holland Center and Morse are right next to each other on Van Buren St.

Monday:

Advanced Arabic             3:00- 3:50 pm      Holland Center

Conversational Arabic       4:00- 4:50 pm      Holland Center

Beginning Spanish          5:00-5:50 pm        Morse B207

Intermediate Japanese        5:00- 5:50pm     Morse B107

Intermediate Chinese          6:00- 6:50 pm    Morse A201

Tuesday:

All Levels Farsi            12:00- 12:50 pm      Morse A200

Beginning German           4:00- 4:50 pm      Morse B108

Beginning Japanese          6:00- 6:50 pm      Morse A201

Wednesday:

Beginning Arabic        4:00- 4:50 pm       Morse A2o2

Advanced Chinese       4:00- 4:50 pm      Morse A200

Intermediate Spanish        5:00- 5:50 pm  Morse B107

Intermediate Korean        5:00- 5:50 pm     Morse A202

All Levels Hebrew        6:00- 6:50 pm      Morse B107

All Levels Tagalog        6:00- 6:50 pm      Morse A201

Beginning Kazakh        6:30- 7:20 pm     Morse A202

Beginning Korean        7:00-  7:50 pm    Morse A201

Intermediate Arabic        7:00- 7:50 pm   Morse A101

Thursday: 

Intermediate French      4:00- 4:50    Morse A200

Conversational  French  4:00-4:50    TBA

Friday:

Beginning Chinese      9:00- 9:50 am      Morse A200

American Sign Language    2:00-2:50 pm      Morse A200

Intermediate Russian     4:00- 4:50 pm    Morse A200

All Levels Cantonese       5:00- 5:50 pm    Morse B107

Saturday: 

Beginning French    11:00- 11:50 am   Morse B107

Salut!

1. Aujourd’hui on a commencé avec une dialogue qu’on a fait le semaine passé: Dans un restaurant:

(Today we started with a dialogue that we did last week: In a restaurant): BUILD French 3.9.12 At the restaurant

2. Puis, on a revisé/pratiqué les chiffres 1 à 60, afin de dire l’heure):

(Then we reviewed/practiced the numbers 1 to 60, to be able to tell time):

3. On a practiqué l’heure avec l’horaire de vol, attaché ici):

(We practiced telling time with the airline schedule, attached here): BUILD French 3.16.12 chiffres

4. Enfin, on a commencé avec les mots de vocabulaire: Dans une aéroporte, basé sur ce vidéo:

(Finally, we started learning vocabulary: In an airport, based on this video):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh57D6uDoME

We won’t have class next week, because of Spring Break, but we’ll see you on Friday, March 30!

A la prochaine!

Thank you to everybody for your attendance- physical and mental- this semester.  It has been a real pleasure to work with this class.

Today’s lesson focused on the holidays.  We learned the vocab for Christmas, Hanukkah, and for New Year’s celebrations.  Everyone also took a turn describing their plans for the Thanksgiving holiday.  We ended by reading a couple of short stories written by French school children about snowmen (bonhommes de neige). If anyone who missed would like to have the handouts, please email me and I’ll happily send them along to you.

Hope everyone has a great fin de semestre and wonderful holidays.

Leslie

Today we started by playing a fun game where we matched jokes with the punchlines. Some examples:

-Quatre singes sont dans une voiture.  Qui conduit la voiture?  Celui qui a le permis.

-Une maman dit à une autre maman: Moi, mon bébé il marche depuis trois mois.  Et l’autre lui répond: Oh la, il doit être loin maintenant.

Then we watched a Professeur Gamberge cartoon on the topic of the flu.  We read along with the text while watching it again and then we talked about the vocab.  You can watch the short, two minute cartoon here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Om55b4Kdwk

Last Friday we reviewed the passé composé from the prior week and started talking about the imparfait.  We discussed the differences between the two tenses and the usage of both.  To review Dr. Mrs. Vandertrampp verbs, we watched a cute little YouTube video that you can see here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARq57Ux9Ikc&feature=related

In our Friday class this week, we started putting together our own recipes. We constructed sentences to go in a recipe for cake, sandwiches, crêpes and stir-frys! All the new vocabulary words that we used can be found here.

Now let’s try making more sentences, and seeing if we can guess what type of recipe they would be in! I’ll start in the comments below with a sentence that would appear in a recipe. The next person can guess what the person above them might be cooking, and then add a sentence of their own! On y va…

For those of you who have missed class recently, we have been digging our hands deep into food words and recipes! BUT this past week, we took a bit of a detour to learn some numbers (because how can we write recipes without numbers?!).

Check out this little video and try to sing along with the numbers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB6TBnWIGm8

This week, on Tuesday, we’ll be learning numbers again, for those of you who missed it. And then on Friday, we’ll jump back to recipes!