French Language Program only $19.95

Speaking French

The French Language Program contains 73 hours of audio, and two textbooks in PDF file format with 1045 pages.

Planned in two volumes, the French Language Course has been designed to help students reach a level of proficiency which will enable them to participate effectively in most formal and informal conversations.

For beginning students, the twenty-four units are designed for a six-month intensive training program. Each unit presents a situational topic introduced in a dialogue, and usually five grammar points. Each grammar point is preceded by grammar notes which generally are expressed in non-technical terms.

Other units include materials of the following kinds.

A dialogue to provide a body of natural French conversation as a source for subsequent drills and exercises.

Useful words to supplement the vocabulary with a limited number of additional words, usually related to the topic of the dialogue.

Vocabulary awareness to enable the student to better identify the elements of the utterances he learned as a whole and to regroup and review vocabulary.

Drills of six different kinds, each type designed for a specific purpose.

• Lexical drills to manipulate already acquired vocabulary and improve fluency.
• Learning drills to introduce new grammar points (with reference to the corresponding grammar notes).
• Practice drills to give the student an opportunity to illustrate in sentences the grammar points just covered.
• Questions
• Answer
• Review Drills

Situations to improve comprehension and serve as a basis for questions and elementary conversation.

Narrations to provide reading material and introduce a very limited number of vocabulary items.

Written exercises to offer to the student opportunity to relate the spoken language to the writing system.

Drills are recorded first for listening, then for familiarization through repetition, and finally for participation. During the participation step, when the student performs the required manipulation, his utterances are confirmed on the audio immediately following the space provided for his participation.

Drills are generally in two groups in any unit: a) variation drills on pattern sentences, which provide opportunities for the student to develop flexibility in the use of patterns already memorized, and b) grammar drills, which are intended to provide practice for the student in the operation of the patterns explained in the immediately preceding grammar notes.

About the French Language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language by most people from France, French speaking Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, and the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, as well as minorities elsewhere. Second language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts of the world, the largest numbers of which reside in Francophone Africa, and the highest proportions being situated in Gabon (80%), Mauritius (72.7%), and Côte d'Ivoire (70%).French is estimated as having 110 million native speakers and 190 million second language speakers. Additionally, French is the second-most studied foreign language in the world, after English.

French is a descendant of the spoken Latin language of the Roman Empire, as are languages such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Sardinian and Catalan. Its closest relatives however are the other langues d'oïl and French-based creole languages. Its development was also influenced by the native Celtic languages of Roman Gaul and by the (Germanic) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders.

It is an official language in 30 countries, most of which form what is called, in French, La Francophonie, the community of French-speaking countries. It is an official language of all United Nations agencies and a large number of international organizations. According to the European Union, 129 million, in 27 member states speak French, of whom 65 million are native speakers and 69 million claim to be able to speak French either as a second language or as a foreign language, making it the third language in the European Union that people say they are able to speak, after English and German. Twenty-percent of non-Francophone Europeans know how to speak French, totaling roughly 145.6 million people in Europe alone.