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French Verbs – To Take, To Learn, To Understand Posted by Tim Hildreth on May 1, 2018
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m hoping – despite the challenges – to one day teach French full time. In order to be ready for that eventuality, I have gone back to school myself to get a Master’s degree in Education. A recent assignment on learning and understanding got me thinking about those verbs in French… and…
French Music – Mylène Farmer Posted by Tim Hildreth on Apr 24, 2018
Last week’s song from Calogero, evoking as it did Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s history of airmail and his novels Vol de nuit and Le petit prince, led me to another song that captures a similar spirit… and is from one of my favorite French singers. Mylène Farmer was already famous in France when I first went there over…
French Music – Calogero Posted by Tim Hildreth on Apr 17, 2018
Before becoming a writer, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry had a very different professional life. A new song from the French chanteur (singer) Calogero, celebrates that previous career as well as some of Saint-Exupéry’s most famous works. While he may be best known outside France for his charming novella Le petit prince (The little prince), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote…
French Grammar – What happened? Posted by Tim Hildreth on Apr 10, 2018
To wrap up this latest series of grammar posts, here is a little story for you to practice your reading comprehension and to test your ability to recognize the different verb tenses. Mon fils vient de partir. Nous avons diné ensemble. On était censé diner chez mon frère, mais il a décommandé au dernier moment…
French Grammar – Past imperfect Posted by Tim Hildreth on Apr 3, 2018
Welcome to lesson 3 in our mini French Grammar series. After le passé récent and le futur proche, it’s time this week to look at the French tense known as l’imparfait. L’Imparfait (The imperfect) Like le passé composé, le passé simple, and the passé récent, l’imparfait is a tense for talking about things that…
French Grammar – Back to the future Posted by Tim Hildreth on Mar 27, 2018
Last week I kicked off a short series of posts on useful French grammar topics that sometimes get ignored. This week we head back to the future* with a look at a way to talk about upcoming actions and events that is as easy as the passé récent that we looked at last week. Le…
French Grammar – The Recent Past Posted by Tim Hildreth on Mar 20, 2018
This week I’m starting a mini-series to address some useful ways for talking about actions and events in time that don’t always gets as much attention as other tenses. First up, an easy way to talk about things that happened in the past without resorting to the passé composé or the more literary passé simple…