French as a Second Language (Core French)

Bienvenue en 7e année ! This is your fourth year of Core French, and the start of the Intermediate grades. In Grade 6 you discussed ideas, described your routine, made plans, told what you did, shopped, talked about health, weather, jobs and Canadian French, and recorded a podcast. In Grade 7 the French you hear gets longer and more real: school announcements, sports reports, ads, podcasts, travel announcements and debates.

In this unit you'll build a listening plan (before, during, after), ask questions three ways, describe personality and feelings, compare and say what's the best, tell stories about the past, follow and give instructions, figure out the purpose of media texts, travel with polite requests, explore accents and customs across la francophonie, debate respectfully, and give your own oral presentation.

Every new word has a sound-it-out spelling so a grown-up who doesn't speak French can help, model dialogues come with English translations, and expressions used mostly in Canada are labelled used in Québec and other parts of Canada. The sibling unit covers reading and writing.

Curriculum expectations covered: A1.1, A1.2, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3 (The Ontario Curriculum: French as a Second Language, Core French, Grades 4–8, 2013, Grade 7). Specific codes are given for A1.1 and A1.2; the other expectations are listed by their overall codes.

Welcome to Grade 7 reading and writing in French! In Grade 6 you told what happened with the passé composé, used reflexive verbs, comparisons and possessives, wrote a formal letter and explored the francophonie in Canada. This year you will read longer texts with a full toolbox of reading strategies, think critically about what you read, and write for more purposes and readers.

You will read an informational article, a time capsule letter, a grandparent's memories, a short story, a how-to text, a biography, an opinion letter, an infographic, formal emails, pen-pal profiles from around the francophone world and a song, and you will write your own versions. Along the way you will learn the futur simple (je jouerai), the imparfait (je jouais) and how it works with the passé composé in stories, the pronouns le, la, les, the relative pronouns qui and que, the conditionnel of politeness (je voudrais, pourriez-vous), adverbs in -ment, prepositions with places, and figures of speech. You will finish by taking a short story through every stage of the writing process. Canadian French words are labelled as you go.

Explanations are in English so a child and a parent can learn together, even if no one at home speaks French. The companion unit Listening and Speaking covers the oral strands.

Curriculum expectations covered: C1, C2, C3, D1, D2, D3 (The Ontario Curriculum: French as a Second Language, Core French, Grades 4–8, 2013, Grade 7 overall expectations).