French Beyond Beginners (part 1)

Part 1 revisits topics taught in the beginners syllabus with an added emphasis on fluency, while expanding your vocabulary and basic grammar.

You’ll continue to develop a good level of beginners French, learning to express opinions, talk about past actions, give compliments and make complaints. You’ll practice using present and past (perfect) tense in a range of situations.

Taught by trained and native tutors and work as part of a small group, using a mix of role-play, games and discussion to practice your French.

Who is it for?

If you’ve completed our beginners course or have a rusty French GSCE, this is the next step. See our eligibility section for more information.

Timetable

This course takes place one evening a week at 18:30 for 10 weeks. Teaching starts in October.

Benefits

• Part 1 allows you to give learning a try without the commitment of the full year
• We guarantee small class sizes and use creative methods of learning
• Login to our e-learning platform, Moodle, to access materials from home.

By the end of this course, you will be able to

• perfect pronunciation of basic French sounds
• recognise sounds in short French clips
• express opinions
• agree and disagree
• talk about past actions
• give small presentations
• make complaints and compliments
• make plans for the future
• express nuances.

Grammatical structures

• consolidation of the present
• complete revision of the past tense (Perfect)
• mastering future tense
• relative clauses
• complete review of all partitives and prepositions (du, de la, des; au, à la, aux)
• imperative and negative imperative
• consolidation of recent past, near future and progressive present
• adjectives revisited, regular and irregular.

You will be awarded an official City St George's, University of London certificate on completion of the course. You must attend over 70 per cent of the classes to be eligible for the certificate.

There is no formal assessment but there is homework consisting of comprehensive grammar exercises and reading texts, and it is important to do this between lessons to keep up.

Throughout the term your progress will be assessed through homework and performance in class.

Teaching

All our language courses are designed to develop your skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing. This course has a “flipped learning” approach which lets you practice the next lesson’s content in advance, so you can spend more time in class practicing real-world scenarios.

Newspapers, audio and video clips will be used in class not only to help you learn the language, but to gain an insight into French culture and current affairs.

You’ll need some basic French knowledge to enrol on this course.

It is the right level if you:

• have completed our full French Beginners course, or equivalent course elsewhere (approximately 60 hours of formal study)
• learnt French at school to GCSE level.

You should already know how to:

• give directions and talk about travel
• write basic emails and text messages
• describe places and journeys
• order meals and talk about your daily routine.

English requirements

You will need a good level of spoken and written English to enrol on this course.