COURSE CONTENTS

Read and Speak French - step1 - / CDROM teaches French Vocabulary, Basic Grammar, Pronunciation and Reading to beginner students.  The course is contained in a CDROM that is installed on the student's computer and is designed to teach adults or children.  This French course is easy and fun to use, requires only the mouse and employs hundreds of custom-made color pictures, native speaker pronunciation and illustrated printouts.

The course assumes no prior knowledge of French and covers the language material taught in about 200 school hours.  Course format provides the presentation of learning material using multicolor French text to highlight dinstict word parts, illustrating custom-made color pictures, clickable French sound and explanatory English text.  Understanding of the material is evaluated through interactive exercises that enhance comprehension and incorporate multicolor French and English texts, pictures and sounds.  The course teaches about 1000 words, phrases and sentences using 100 lessons that take about 50 hours to complete.

This course is designed to be useful to children or adults (age greater than 5 years).  Course is suitable for use at home or in schools.
 

Introduction

Provides French words that appear in English

Presents the origins of the French language and its occasional resemblance with English. (1 exercise)

Alphabet

Teaches alphabet letters and their sound

Presents the French alphabet letters with their sound.  Also, a word that starts with the selected letter is presented alongs with its picture.
Exercise 1 focuses on the recognition of the alphabet sounds. (1 exercise)
Exercise 2 focuses on the spelling of words where each letter is pronounced as an alphabet letter. (15 exercises)
Handwriting exercise focuses on writing the alphabet letters. (1 exercise)

Phonetics

Teaches the basic sounds and how to pronounce letters and letter combinations

All basic sounds and letter combinations are provided along with (a) their pronunciation, (b) their phonetic spelling and (c) example words. Example words are broken into syllables, each syllable can be heard individually and the individual syllables are slowly fused together to make the word pronunciation. (180 exercises)

Reading and Vocabulary

Teaches vocabulary, reading, pronunciation and how to relate text to its pronunciation

There are 46 lessons and each lesson focuses on 12 texts (nouns with their articles, verbs, phrases or sentences). The texts introduce to the learner various contexts and situations: days, months, seasons, names, relatives, professions, numbers, and many more.
Each text has its color picture, its French pronunciation, its French text, and its English translation.
Each lesson has 6 exercises. The exercise score is increased if the response is correct with the first try. (3312 exercises)
Exercise 1 ("Match Sound with Picture") tests and teaches sound comprehension.
Exercise 2 ("Match Sound with Text") tests and teaches sound discrimination.
Exercise 3 ("Match Text with Picture") tests and teaches reading comprehension.
Exercise 4 ("Find the Article") tests and teaches introductory understanding of gender.
Exercise 5 ("Find the Sound") tests and teaches basic sounds and their spelling.
Exercise 6 practices handwriting.

Accents and Punctuation

Teaches the marks of the language

For each of the Punctuation marks and Spelling marks of the French language you find the following: (4 exercises)
(a) spelling of the mark name,
(b) pronunciation of the mark name,
(c) mark symbol,
(d) brief description of mark usage,
Exercise 1 ("Fill in the Blanks") tests and teaches understanding of French sentence structure.
Exercise 2 ("Unscramble the Words") tests and teaches Sentence Generation.

Structure of the Language

Summary of how French differs from English

Thorough illustrated explanation of the major differences between French and English. Many explanatory French sentences are provided. The sentences have a color picture, an English translation and you can click to hear their sound. (168 exercises)
Key chapters are:
(a) gender and number (articles, adjectives and nouns)
(b) conjugation patterns
(c) the basic tenses: present, imperfect, present perfect, simple future.
Exercise 1 ("Fill in the Blanks") tests and teaches understanding of French sentence structure.
Exercise 2 ("Unscramble the Words") tests and teaches Sentence Generation.

Audio-visual words

For each word of this mini-dictionary (about 500 entries), you find the following:
(a) spelling
(b) picture
(c) phonetic spelling
(d) sound
The mini-dictionary works both ways: French-English or English-French.

Construction of Numbers

You learn the French numbers system.

Course Review

Tests the following competences: (120 exercises)
(a) Phonetics and spelling
(b) Reading comprehension
(c) Listening comprehension

un crayon (a pencil)	écrire (to write)	l’enveloppe (the envelope)
un journal  (a newspaper)	des lettres (some letters)	lire (to read)
le livre  (the book)	le papier (the paper)	réfléchir (to think)
savoir (to know)	le taille-crayons (the pencil sharpener)	le timbre  (the stamp)