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Magic Recipe for Learning Verbs (Fr)?


CaitlinC
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Well I guess the title says it all.  My dd12, who was previously in an English school, is now at school in French and needs to do some catching up with verbs (present, imparfait, future simple), and fast.  I was not very efficient at learning verbs when I was in school so I'm wondering if anyone can recommend any methods and resources that could help us get it done?  I am willing to coach her, or buy her an app ... if any exist!

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Haven't found a good app, unfortunately!

 

Does she understand how the verb system works?  That is, verbs are grouped by how they are conjugated- group 1 is the ____er verbs, group 2 is the regular ____ir verbs, and group 3 is everything else.  Verbs are conjugated by adding an ending to the radical- she needs to be able to figure out the radical and then she needs to memorize the endings.  

The two verbs she must know cold are avoir and etre, because she'll need those to do all of the composed tenses (tenses that use auxiliary/helping verbs).  They are the only two auxiliary verbs, so that's encouraging.  :-)  

 

To memorize regular verbs, we do the following, spending as much time as necessary on each step:  

 

- First, we memorize the verb endings for a group and a tense (ex. present tense for group 1).  For certain ones, we sing them to a tune, for others, they are just chanted... depends on how creative we were that lesson...

These should be recited in order je, tu, il, nous, vous, ils.  

- Next, write the pronouns up in standard verb chart form, and point to them out of order and have child call out the endings.

- Do exercises such as filling in missing verb endings or filling in a missing pronoun when the ending is given.

- Dictations

- Exceptions (radicals that end in c, g, y, etc.)

- Go to the next tense.  I recommend doing 1 regular verb tense per week while staying with just one verb group until you have most of the basic tenses, the move on to the next verb group and keep reviewing... PLUS one irregular verb in the present tense.  Most irregulars are relatively simple to conjugate for the other tenses.

 

For Irregular verbs:

Same process as above, except I will also have the kids go through the verb orally for a day or so just to be sure they know how to conjugate in spoken form for all pronouns.  So, they would say out loud, "Je vais, Tu vas, Il va.  Nous allons, vous allez, Ils vont."

- Then I move to spelling them correctly, similarly to above.

 

I'm still waiting on that perfect app...  But I must say I think the classic "schoolroom style" oral verb chanting is a good method- there's a reason it's lasted so long!

 

 

 

 

 

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Thank you so much!  I did think a magic recipe was a bit of a stretch :-) , but having a method all written out for us is the next best thing.  I will definitely incorporate oral chanting into the routine.  

 

I will also take a look at the notebook chart, which looks like it could be a good all-in-one quick reminder.

 

Many thanks!

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