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How to Teach French Relative Pronouns QUI, QUE, OÙ and DONT – A French Teacher’s Guide When I teach French relative pronouns, I don’t start by asking students to memorize a complicated list of rules. I start with the basic purpose of a relative pronoun. It connects two parts of

How to Teach the French Present Conditional – A French Teacher’s Guide When I teach the French present conditional, I start with the meaning because students can make sense of the tense much more easily when they connect it to familiar English words would, should, and could. The present conditional

How to Teach the French Third Conditional Si Clauses – A French Teacher’s Guide When I teach French si clauses, I like to introduce the three conditional patterns separately. Once students understand the first and second conditionals, the third conditional gives them a way to talk about situations that could

How to Teach French Second Conditional Si Clauses – A French Teacher’s Guide When I teach French second conditional si clauses, I start by reminding students that they already know what a si clause is. The word si means if, and a conditional sentence has two parts: The biggest difference

How to Teach French First Conditional Si Clauses – A French Teacher’s Guide When I teach French si clauses, I want students to understand one basic idea first: si means “if,” and the sentence describes a condition and a result. A conditional sentence has two parts: Students have to follow

How to Teach the French Futur Simple – A French Teacher’s Guide When I teach le futur simple, I want students to see that the tense is much more manageable than it may initially appear. There are two things students need to learn: the future stem and the future endings.

How to Teach French Comparisons – A French Teacher’s Guide French comparisons are useful from the very beginning of a student’s French learning because they allow students to say that something is more, less, or equal to something else. When I teach comparisons, I focus on one thing first: what

How to Teach French Bon, Bien, Meilleur and Mieux – A French Teacher’s Guide Bon, bien, meilleur, and mieux can be confusing for French students, especially because English doesn’t always make the same distinctions between adjectives and adverbs. When I teach this group of words, I don’t start by giving

How to Teach the French Passé Composé and Imperfect Together – A French Teacher’s Guide When I teach the French passé composé and imperfect together, I want students to understand that these two past tenses have different jobs. Students often learn each tense separately, but the real challenge comes when

How to Teach the French Imperfect Tense – A French Teacher’s Guide When I introduce the French imperfect tense, or l’imparfait, I don’t begin right away with conjugation charts. Students need to understand why they are using the imperfect before they worry about how to form it. By this point,

How to Teach French Savoir vs. Connaître – A French Teacher’s Guide When I teach savoir and connaître, I don’t start by giving students a long list of rules to memorize. Both verbs mean “to know” in English, but they are not interchangeable in French. I want students to understand

How to Teach the French Imperative with Pronouns – A French Teacher’s Guide The French imperative is used to give commands, orders, or express wishes. It is a very direct way to tell someone what to do, and students usually understand the basic idea fairly quickly. What becomes more challenging