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I need suggestions for a high school level French curriculum for my son.  He's in 10th grade with no prior experience with French, but did take Latin for several years.  

 

Bon Voyage was recommended to me and a few others I am unfamiliar with.  I'd prefer a standard textbook/workbook/quizzes/test type of curriculum as ds will be doing his French study independently.   We will not conversing with tutors or studying French abroad. We just need to check this off the list for his high school requirements!  

 

Thanks!

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There really is little to no difference between the standard US high school French 1 and 2 texts. Bien Dit, Bon Voyage, Discovering French, Allez, Viens!, etc. are all standard texts w/ the accompanying materials (quizzes, tests, workbooks) that you're looking for.  I know that Bon Voyage and Bien Dit are easy to implement because every chapter follows the same pattern, making it easy to get into a routine. I assume it's the same for any standard US high school French 1/2 text. Just pick whichever one you can get most easily or economically. 

 

If the student just wants to check boxes, any of the standard texts would work for French 1 & 2. It might still be useful to have the audio cd's/dvd's. I would think it would make it easier to learn if you knew what the words were supposed to sound like.

 

If a student were serious about learning French and wanted to be able to use it at some point, any of the standard texts would be good, too, but s/he would definitely also want the audio cd's/dvd's and a live, native French tutor (local or Skype.) 

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I need suggestions for a high school level French curriculum for my son.  He's in 10th grade with no prior experience with French, but did take Latin for several years.  

 

Bon Voyage was recommended to me and a few others I am unfamiliar with.  I'd prefer a standard textbook/workbook/quizzes/test type of curriculum as ds will be doing his French study independently.   We will not conversing with tutors or studying French abroad. We just need to check this off the list for his high school requirements!  

 

Thanks!

 

We have used Breaking the Barrier and French in Action.

 

I just found out Middlebury has an online program. They are supposed to be the best. I plan to use them in the future.

 

Your might want to read reviews.  The ones I have read are mixed.

 

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/548779-middlebury-interactive/

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/555732-middlebury-interactive-foreign-languages-any-reviews/

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My 12yoDD has been using Discovering French with a native speaker tutor for two years. I found the used textbook, and CDs from Ebay quite affordable.

We use French in Action as a supplement. I learn it along with her. She is not the best in her class but we both enjoy learning it together.

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My college class is using Francais Interactif. It's open source (free) with audio from native speakers. We did chapters 1-4 in the first semester and will do 5-8 in our second. 

 

I do not know how hard it is to access teacher materials as a homeschooler. 

 

A nice grammar workbook is Schaum's

 

Duolingo is a good supplement for pronunciation. 

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One of my kids did Bien Dit!, another did French in Action; I was not the primary teacher.  I have a wee bit of bad French in my background, and found Bien Dit easy to use - the Teacher's Manual was very straight forward.  FIA has the advantage for your dc of having significant video content, so pronunciation instruction will be built-in.

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When I purchased Bien Dit! I did get the audio cds too.  I am still going to have her use the Tell Me More program in the future but once she has a little more of a foundation under her.  I wish there was a little more out there for the upper levels of French.   They have them for Spanish but not so much for French unless you want the traditional school textbooks.  Well at least dd did not want to learn something like Chinese or Arabic, that we really would have needed a tutor for.

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/french/

The BBC has some French language learning tools.  They might be fun for a supplement.

 

We watched the video course for Spanish and found it amusing and somewhat helpful.

 

We've also done French in Action.  As the videos are free online, they work as a nice supplement for whatever text you decide on.  Or you can go with FIA as a course itself if you buy the materials.  However, the grammar workbook needs audio tapes to go with it or it isn't any use.  That's the most useful part, I found.  The textbook is mostly useful in that it has the transcripts of the videos but you might be able to get by without it if you have the grammar book and tapes.

http://www.learner.org/resources/series83.html

 

We used Destinos for Spanish (similar to French in Action) and my kids did learn a lot.  However,  they couldn't make heads or tails of it in the first go round.  They quit Destinos, did all the courses of Pimsleur Spanish (from the library -- no way we've got that kind of money), then went back to Destinos and could suddenly understand things. 

 

Pimsleur has a lot of painful repetition, which is what one needs to actually learn a language. 

 

Duolingo is also fun as a vocabulary builder and for hearing/seeing the words.

 

I'd suggest you use several programs (particularly if you can get a few free ones) because there are gaps in all of them and they all get dull at times.

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When I purchased Bien Dit! I did get the audio cds too. I am still going to have her use the Tell Me More program in the future but once she has a little more of a foundation under her. I wish there was a little more out there for the upper levels of French. They have them for Spanish but not so much for French unless you want the traditional school textbooks. Well at least dd did not want to learn something like Chinese or Arabic, that we really would have needed a tutor for.

French in Action goes to a high level and is not a traditional school textbook.

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