Archive for March, 2016
The Prisons of Nantes – French Celtic Music Posted by John Bauer on Mar 16, 2016
Drapeau de Nantes (Flag of Nantes) by Ec.Domnowall, CC BY 3.0. La fête de la Saint-Patrick est à l’approche (St. Patrick’s Day is around the corner) and that means a lot of green, music, and Guinness. The holiday brings up thoughts of Ireland and its culture with des bars et des restaurants (bars and restaurants)…
French Interrogatives: Inversion Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Mar 14, 2016
Jumping off my post from last week, I’ll spend more time this week describing how you can use inversion to create an interrogative sentence (a question) in French. Inversion is when you change the order of the subject and verb in a declarative sentence to create a question. Thus, the order in the interrogative…
Line by Line Lesson: “Le droit à l’erreur” by Amel Bent Posted by Josh Dougherty on Mar 10, 2016
Don’t you love it when a song you hadn’t heard in a long time comes on and you can sing along like a pro? This recently happened to me with a song I listened to when I started learning French. I didn’t know the lyrics well – it was always a song I had on…
Twice As Nice With Two Sixes – Leap Years In French Posted by John Bauer on Mar 9, 2016
If you are chanceux (lucky), or maybe malchanceux (unlucky), last week was the first time in quatre ans (four years) that you were able to celebrate your anniversaire (birthday). Tous les quatres ans (every four years) there is a leap year, but it wasn’t until last week that I realized I did not know how…
French Questions (interrogative sentences) Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Mar 7, 2016
In English, we often speak about the five Ws when teaching English language learners: who, what, where, when, and why. These words are added on to the beginning of a sentence in English to ask questions (in English, you can also change word order to ask a question). In French, asking a question is different…
Learning Through Music – “Rien qu’une fois” by Keen’V Posted by Josh Dougherty on Mar 3, 2016
Elizabeth, John, and I have all written about the benefits of music as a language learning resource. They’re a great source of current vocabulary, expressions, and even pronunciation. The fact that they’re catchy only makes it easier for you to remember words you may otherwise not learn in class or even in most conversations. Regardless…
Voici Jean Guromarc’h – Real French Series Posted by John Bauer on Mar 2, 2016
Living in a language can sometimes be hard to understand. It’s difficult to imagine des personnes réelles qui vivent une vraie vie, travaillent, font les courses, etc (real people living real lives, working, grocery shopping, etc), when you’re staring at des tableaux de conjugaison (conjugation tables) for hours on end. I recently thought about making…