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French 1-1st Period

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Why bring a pencil to class?
Please read this carefully so that every time you come to class without a writing utensil, you will be fully aware of the possible consequences later on down the road...

Debunking the myth that French isn't a useful language..

The study of French is “de rigueur” on 5 continents!

French is the official language of 32 countries.

French is the only other language, besides English, to be spoken on 5 of the world’s continents.

With French, students will be understood in more than 56 countries by more than 200 million people who use French in their daily lives.

French, along with English, is an official working language of the United Nations, UNESCO, NATO, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the International Labor Bureau, the International Olympic Committee, the 31-member Council of Europe, the European Community, the Universal Postal Union, the International Red Cross, and the Union of International Associations (UIA).

French is an official or shared language of the 56 countries that comprise the International Organization of French-Speaking Countries (la Francophonie).

French is the dominant working language at the European Court of Justice, the European Tribunal of First Instance, and the Press Room at the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium.

A list of languages deemed as critical was developed by the U.S. Department of Defense, and French was among them because it is spoken in countries which have a strategic importance.

French is among the top five languages in terms of web pages used on the Internet.

Debunking the myth that French is difficult!

The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center has established the following classification of languages according to their level of difficulty for English-speaking learners to reach a high level of speaking proficiency; the lower the category, the easier for English-speakers to master:

--Category I level of difficulty: French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

--Category II level of difficulty: German, Dutch, English

--Category III level of difficulty: Greek, Hebrew, Moro, Persian-Farsi, Persian-Afghan, Pushtu-Afghan, Russian, Serbian/Croatian, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Uzbek, and Vietnamese.

--Category IV level of difficulty: Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

FRENCH (and the other Romance languages) requires approximately 720 hours of instruction to enable a learner to reach an advanced level of speaking proficiency. By contrast, it requires approximately 1000 hours of instruction to reach a low level of speaking proficiency in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, or Korean.

--Therefore, it is more likely that American students will reach communicative, linguistic proficiency in Category l or II languages within the academic time period of grades 7-12 (approximately 857 hours of 40-minute instruction over 180 days for 5 years of study). The study of Category lll or lV languages for the same time period would lead to minimal linguistic proficiency at best.

It is estimated that someone who has never studied French already knows approximately 15,000 words and expressions in the language. This is due to the fact that the Duke of Normandy, William the Conquerer, landed in England in 1066 and became king after defeating the Saxons. The Anglo-Norman dynasty, followed by the French House of Plantagenets (Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lion-Hearted), reigned over England for centuries and approximately 10,000 French words were incorporated into English.

French provides the base for more than 35% of modern English vocabulary.