Year 8 French - I have to wade in and help - what books?

[gramercy]

Ds is the best at French in his year, according to his teacher.

Well, if he's the best, I'd really hate to see the worst.

I was just testing him last night and... his level of knowledge is awful . He can say things like "Je mange une pomme" or "J'ai mange une pomme" (with acute accent, of course) but when I said, ok, say "they ate two apples" or "we eat ten apples" he was completely floundering.

I am determined to intervene and teach him some grammar myself. I have seen the Galore Park books. Would anyone recommend them? Do I need the answer book as well (I did O Level French ahem several decades ago). Is level one too easy?

Any help very much appreciated.

This could be me and my daughter. She looked shocked when I said to go through in french ' I have, you have ,we have etc.
Seems rather random, thought knowing basic verb formations was vital, well i remember them from 30 years ago!!!!

can he understand though? If he watches French films with subtitles, can he more or less get the gist?

Yes get something with grammatical explanations and more than just a handful of exercises. More exercises than explanations I should think. I have heard GP is ok but very dull on French. Have not seen the books though. Why don't you go on their website. They have a facility whihc allows you to look inside the books, read the index and some sample pages, might give you an idea.

Btw they are also very helpful, you can call up and ask what they recommend if the sample pages still leave you a bit confused.

Thanks v much - didn't think to look at something so modern as a website !

I was growling with irritation in that ds can say "Je voudrais une glace" but gave me the "parents are so stupid" death stare when I suggested he tried asking me if I wanted an ice cream. "We don't do things like that." Hmmmpph.

lol we don't do things like that!

GP books are rigorous and excellent for grammar. However, they aren't as bright/colourful/dumbeddown as other textbooks. There aren't any listening exercises - just the dialogues that are in the book. So if your French is OK, I wouldn't bother with the CD - we just read them aloud (I teach a mixed age home ed book using GP). The grammar explanations and exercises are excellent.

I just wish my head of dept would get a set for school! I have just rewritten the scheme of work for Spanish in year 9 (top set only 2nd FL) to ensure that grammar is taught, in a logical sequence and I use the textbook around my ideas, with some work from GP Spanish (my own copy) to extend and reinforce.

Now for the year 10/11 scheme of work! The book introduces grammar points but gives no practice whatsoever in actually applying the rules. So consequently they forget.

Common entrance french is much more orally focussed, so GP books would probably be good for you. We have "so you really want to learn" books for lots of subjects, but not french. DS's prep uses the Equipe books (there are text books and cahier d'activities), he is currently on Equipe 3 and he does lots of extra work as well. DS could certainly answer the questions you ask, he is year 6, but probably working at a year 8/9 level.

Thanks - actually ds has an Equipe book from school for exercises; I'm not sure how much they do, though. Well, clearly not a lot!

At the risk of making it seem boring for him, I would concentrate mainly on grammar since that's what the schools seem to totally ignore.

I'm 17 now and did French GCSE last year. At the end of five years of teaching, I doubt over half the class could conjugate Avoir and Etre when asked. Some people in my A-Level French class still struggle conjugating common, completely regular verbs in the present tense.
I fail to understand how the system teaches us so little. It's only this year that I've really been able to construct proper sentences, as opposed to regurgitating random phrases that are never in anything but the first person.

Get any simple, entertaining(it's possible!) grammar books, and some French DVDs/CDs. He'll learn ridiculously specific topic-based vocabulary at school, but probably little else.

Whitmarsh was used in my day and despite the passage of nearly 30 years, I still seem to have a better knowledge of french grammar than my son who is currently in year 10.

These reviews seem to suggest it dates from the 60s but I well remember my father (71) talking about using this textbook.

Grammar is the main difference we've noticed between the way French is taught to DS1 and his friends at private secondary schools and the way it's taught to those who went to a local state secondary. DS1 learned how to conjugate avoir in his first lesson, etre the next week (apols for lack of circumflex), but a friend had a very similar story to the OP's - son couldn't say "You have a small bedroom" for example, only "I have a small bedroom".

Oh it drives me to distraction that DC are taught so little grammar.

They can say little sentences without having any understanding of the structure and how that can be changed.

I know it's dull (that bete noir of modern teaching) but of you just learn the verb endings of all the tenses you can conjugate pretty much anyhting.
Repeat after me...e, es, e, e, ons, ez, ent, ent.

FFS they do it in Latin, why not French?

Ds's French lesson yesterday consisted of learning the names of European countries in French. A double lesson.

The best way to learn the countries' names is a Eurovision Song Contest habit. La France: un point! La Royaume Uni: douze points! L'Allemagne: nul points!

I'm with you: by the end of Yr 7 the only thing dd had got from the teacher is that French grammar is really too difficult for English children to master.

This is really depressing to read. My ds is only 4, so it's not something I'm worried about yet, but did languages degree. My sil teaches French at a Russell group university and says they need to run a course every year in the kind of basic grammar we would have needed to pass o level French. So much more difficult to learn and apply the rules when you've been learning the language for 6 years, plus I really am made to wonder what A level grades are awarded FOR?
Really impressed you are being so proactive about this! (sorry there was nothing useful in my post at all!)

It must have changed in recent years - I went to a 'bog-standard' comprehensive back in the 90s and we definitely learned grammar. I remember well writing out verbs, categorising them into types, learning the irregular ones etc.

When I first read this I was going to say don't worry too much about him knowing formal grammar if his speaking/understanding is good. For example lots of children wouldn't know what you were talking about if you asked them to conjugate a verb in English, but that doesnt' mean they can't speak/read/write/understand English. But unfortunately it doesn't sound as though that's the case here, more like they've just been made to memorise a list of sentences and their translations without any real understanding how they're composed :(

These days they learn MFL in pockets (units), so they might do a section on ordering food in a restaurant.

So they learn Je voudrais un pizza/sandwich/tasse de cafe.

They don't see the verb and how it has been conjugated and therefore that it can be conjugated in so many other ways.

I've got a French tutor in for this exact reason who I've asked to make my DS chant verbs as I did at school - je suis, tu es, il est, elle est, nous sommes, vous etes, ils sont, elles sont etc. I think it's the only way to learn/remember them. He only costs £12 an hour too so I think he's a bargain.

£12 an hour ? Bargaintastic!

I know gramercy, and he's a native French speaker. Always worth trying to find someone at the local university that just wants some spending money rather than someone trying to make a living at it. He's got my DS actually chatting in French which he doesn't do at school.

Not sure where you are gramercy but if you look at the First Tutors website even in London you can get a French tutor for £15 per hour which is pretty good. I'd teach my DS myself like you but he won't take it from me and will work better with someone else.

Yes, the problems are

1. trying to teach your own dcs is... at best rather fraught and more often than not a war zone

2. my French is very, very rusty and although I still know my grammar (and that of a few other languages, too) my accent is and always was dire. I sound like Joyce Grenfell...

I don't want to teach languages without grammar, honest!! It's 'normal practice', textbooks, etc. I make my classes sing verbs to 'The Mexican Hat Dance'!! They get all embarrassed but they do remember them!

And then I come home to DD (who is 9) is likely to be singing latin conjugations to it as well!

I live in south london, and have just seen this french immersion camp taking place in sydenham during the long vacation: www.campfrancais.com/index.html

I thought to share it here if anyone's been looking for this type of thing, like I have been.

When I want to feel depressed about the state of language teaching in this country (or better about the fact that my EHE daughter was admitted to European Law (German) at a good university), I read the TES MFL forum. To understand why your DC have no grammar, you might like to start with CAs are pants, so how should we assess MFL at GCSE?

The fact that native speakers learn their language without grammar rules is neither here nor there: native speakers have mums, dads, grannies, playmates, playschool teachers etc all hanging around them modelling the language throughout their waking hours and it still takes them 4/5 years of pretty well constant exposure to get the grammar right: who could provide constant exposure like that for another language for a teenager? Grammar is basically a shorthand for what we could all learn if we had 4-5 years of doing nothing else and surrounded by native speakers 24/7.

It's not just the lack of grammar that's a problem though: it's the low expectations. How many English people of our generation do actually speak some French? Even of the ones who have done GCSEs? Very few that I know, but a fair few of the Swedes I know speak 3 or 4 languages- not because they had more native teachers or more exchange trips or more chance of exposure to French or German but because it was expected of them.

Dd's school does work with material designed to teach the tenses, but how much effect does that have when they have a teacher who cheerfully tells parents that she expects the imperfect tense to be too difficult for the pupils to actually learn? Can you imagine the effect if the maths teachers went around saying the same about time tables or equations?