7 Summary of Week 2

This week, your language notebook will probably contain notes about how to ask for directions, and you may also have started building up some useful vocabulary with all the new words you’ve been learning for different places and for prepositions. Think about the way you might group the words you learn. You might have a section for useful phrases such as all the different ways to ask for directions. This week you can add a section on giving instructions as you have discovered that you can use the present tense, the imperative or the verb devoir and il faut followed by the infinitive (the verb as you find it in the dictionary). You could also start a new section with the words you have learned for putting a series of events or instructions in sequence (d’abord, ensuite, puis, enfin). It takes practice and repetition to learn a language, and in order to remember vocabulary, French expressions and structures you’ll need to revise frequently and regularly.

One good way for you to remember vocabulary is through the listening activities. Go back to the tips on ‘Listening in steps’ and ‘Listening for detail’: listening to the whole recording to concentrate on the context, then listening in various stages to eventually focus on key words. Reading the transcripts out loud while listening to a recording will also help you to memorise language and to become familiar with pronouncing the sounds. By doing the pronunciation activities – this week it was the letter ‘r’ – you’re also adding to your store of vocabulary and expressions. You can also improve your intonation by varying your pitch when you imitate the voices of the speakers in the recordings.

Before you move on, take some time to check that your language notebook is up-to-date, and reflect a little on what you’ve been doing this week.

You can record your reflections here.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University badged course - Beginners French 3: absolument! [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .