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Eighth Grade French - Not For High School Credit
  

Eighth Grade French- Not for Credit (year-long)

Recommended Prerequisite: None

Grades Offered: 8th

Credit: None

State Code: 0804

MNPS Course Code: FLA10684

 

Course Description

The French program for the eighth grade is a basic introduction to the language and people of the French-speaking world.  This course explores fundamental conversational, listening and pronunciation skills with some instruction devoted to reading and writing.  These skills provide a solid foundation for French I in high school.  Relevant culture, geography, and history are taught as integral parts of each lesson, not as disciplines in isolation.  This course is offered as a year long program.

 

Course of Study: Students are expected to use and understand the following topics.

·        Cognates

·        French alphabet

·        Accent marks

·        Use of articles

·        Greetings, farewells and courtesies

·        Nationalities and talking about age

·        Colors

·        Ordering/Paying in a café

·        Time

·        Weather

·        Seasons

·        Months and days

·        Use of subject pronouns

·        Present tense of –er verbs

·        Negation of present tense –er verbs

·        Verb + Infinitive

·        Yes/No questions

·        The verb être

·        Interrogative expressions

·        Information questions

·        The verb faire

·        Adjectives

·        Adjective agreement with singular and plural nouns

·        Placement of adjectives

·        The verb avoir

·        Differences in definite and indefinite articles

·        Singular and plural articles

·        Expressions with c’est

 

These cultural topics should be covered with these units of study. 

  • Numbers: Using the numbers, students can talk about telephone numbers in France and learn different vocabulary for phone etiquette.
  • Café: Etiquette and different types of café food can be explored.  Trying the food or having a “café day” can be beneficial to students’ understanding.
  • Colors; Art can be included with colors.  A suggestion is to have students study one particular artist or movement.  For example, Monet can be studied along with Impressionism.
  • Months of the year: Holidays relating to French culture can be covered, including, but not limited to:
    • Bastille Day
    • Mardi Gras
    • Fête des Rois
  • Time: 24-hour clock
  • Geography: Some traditions of French speaking countries and their connections to common practices in the United States

 

Standards

Standards are based on the American Council of Teachers of French (AATF), the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language (ACTFL) Standards, and the Tennessee Standards.

ACTFL:

http://www.actfl.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3392#standards

Tennessee standards:

http://www.state.tn.us/education/ci/ciforeignlang/ciflmodern1.htm

 

Recommended Textbook

No MNPS purchased textbook is available.

 

Text Resources

Discovering French Nouveau! McDougal Littell, 2004

 

Internet Resources

Textbook Website: http://www.classzone.com

Discover France (includes topics such as education, pastimes, food, culture etc…): http://discoverfrance.net/

French Cognates: http://french.about.com/library/vocab/bl-vraisamis.htm

Geography: http://french.about.com/od/geography/