French is spoken on all continents and by more than 220 million people in over 40 countries. An estimated one-third of English words are derived from French, and if you speak English then you may already know some 15,000 French words without having studied the language! This course uses an academic French curriculum with great multimedia resources, making the class ideal for a range of student needs, including students who just want to meet high school foreign language requirements for college, and also for students who may want to go further — even to AP French. The students learn vocabulary for greetings and descriptions of people, the family, school, hobbies, food, weather, and celebrations. They also learn the three main verb families and some irregular verbs in the past, present and near future tenses. Throughout the course, students learn about French-speaking countries and their culture.
Note: TPS offers French 1 in two levels: standard and honors, where the “standard” course is one day of live class per week and this “honors” course is two days of live class per week. How do you choose between them? The workload and level of difficulty are similar, but the honors class has more dedicated opportunity for instruction and speaking, so your proficiency will be higher after the honors course. If you are seriously considering going to French 3 or higher — or if you just love the idea of learning French from a world-class expert teacher — then you will want to take the “honors” course with two days of live class per week. If you are not as concerned with greater proficiency for French 2 and higher, then you may prefer the excellent “standard” course with one live class per week.
Note: This high school credit course allows grade 8 enrollment. However, the rigor, pace, and workload are high school level and no accommodation is made for students who are not ready to work at a HS pace with HS standards of evaluation. Students seeking a more relaxed pace French 1 course are encouraged to consider French 1A/1B instead.