Learn French Beginners (Full Syllabus)
Short course
Master basic French with our year-long French Beginners course. Taught in the evenings, you’ll start from scratch and build your knowledge over three terms.
Course overview
Learn French for travel, working abroad or just for fun with our French for Beginners evening course.
You'll cover basic topics, useful for everyday conversation, including talking about yourself and your profession and making hotel or dinner reservations. You'll start to understand the use of regular verbs -er, -ir and -re in the present tense and irregular verbs, être avoir, aller and faire.
As you progress throughout the year, you'll learn to talk about last weekend or discuss a recent trip using the past tense, passé composé, and use the near future tense to express your plans.
You’ll develop essential speaking, listening, reading and writing skills with group exercises and weekly homework.
This three-part French for beginners course will give you a solid understanding through online learning, working towards CEFR A1/2 of the Common European Framework Reference of languages, when combined with the Beyond Beginners course.
Who is it for?
Anybody looking to take the first step towards learning French. This course is for complete beginners.
Timetable
The full French for Beginners syllabus includes 60 hours of learning and is taught across three terms, starting in October and finishing in July.
October – December (part 1)
One evening per week (two-hour lessons) for ten consecutive weeks.
Christmas Break
January – March (part 2)
One evening per week (two-hour lessons) for ten consecutive weeks.
Easter break
April/May – July (part 3)
One evening per week (two-hour lessons) for ten consecutive weeks.
Missed the October start date? We have other beginners options in January or in April/May.
Benefits
- Learn the full French for Beginners syllabus (parts 1-3) at the lowest price, ideal for a solid understanding of French
- Taught by qualified native speakers
- Gain a certificate from an Mauritian institute.
Throughout the year, you’ll learn to
- converse with others about yourself, jobs, interests and leisure activities
- master pronunciation
- converse using stock phrases
- deal with travelling, outings and French food culture
- explore the culture of French-speaking countries
- describe past events and future plans,
- write an email and text messages.
Grammatical structures
- present tense
- regular verbs ending in -er -ir -re, basic irregular verbs including être, avoir, aller, faire, reflexive (se verbs)
- use of aller for the near future
- introduction to perfect tense (passé composé)
- direct and indirect pronouns le, la, l’, les and lui, leur
- personal, definite and indefinite and partitive articles
- possessive adjectives
- masculine and feminine, singular and plural of nouns
- interrogative forms
- basic negative forms
- adjectives, comparatives, superlatives
- basic location adverbs.
Assessment and certificates
If you attend over 70% of your classes, you’ll receive an official City certificate. Our short courses are not accredited.
Assessment
Any assessment will be informal to help you evaluate your own progress.
Teaching
Your progress will be assessed on an on-going basis through homework and performance in class. You will receive feedback from your tutor throughout the course. All evaluation will take place in a relaxed and informal setting.
Classroom activities during this evening course will include roleplay, discussion and pair and group work. Lessons will involve work on pronunciation and intonation and learning about grammar in context
Listening to audio clips and watching videos are an important element in our lessons. More comprehensive grammar exercises and reading texts are generally set as homework.
Eligibility
This course is aimed as those who are completely new to French.
Have a little experience? Skip the very basics and enrol onto part 2 or part 3 of the French Beginners course.
Studied French before but feel a little rusty? Try our French Beyond Beginners (Year 2) course instead.
English requirements
You will need a good level of spoken and written English to enrol on this course.