Beginners’ French: Learn French Language / الفرنسية للمبتدئين: تعلم اللغة الفرنسية

Learn French Language: The old method of teaching modern languages was training only the eye. The new methods aim to train the ear, the tongue, and the eye.

The author has tried to bring together a set of exercises giving each of these organs a fair field of activity.

Up-to-date teachers are anxious to use French in their classes as soon as possible, but very few elementary books, if any, help them to carry out their cherished ambition.

It is the aim of the present volume to enable such masters, however inexperienced they may be, to make use of the conversational method 

 from the very start. A glance through the book will suffice to understand its arrangement. It is simple and methodical.

Rules. — The book contains all grammar rules that first and second-year high school students or first-year college students are expected to be familiar with. 

Every lesson begins with a few general rules, the examples coming first for obvious reasons.

It was decided to write the rules in English for the convenience of the learner.

However, as early as possible and especially when reviewing, the teacher is advised to translate them into easy French and to require his pupils to recite them in the same form.

May it also be suggested here that teachers of languages should make more general use of the Socratic or in- ductive method? Instead of giving detailed grammatical explanations to which nobody listens, let the teacher write on the board a few well-chosen examples, underlining words parts of words illustrating the rule to be worked out, and let him have the students themselves find it out as if it were the solution of a problem. It is an easy matter if the teacher prompts them by well-directed questions.

Such a fine opportunity should not be missed. First, this method accustoms the pupils to think, to argue logically, and to express themselves intelligibly in their mother tongue, results which are the first we should aim at even in the teaching of foreign languages. Secondly, it makes interesting and attractive a subject which is otherwise dull and repulsive, for it never fails to create a lively spirit of emulation in the classroom, which is most beneficial.

Thirdly, the student remembers better and for a longer time rule which he himself has found out or helped to work out. 

The arguing about the rules should be done in French as soon as the progress of the class allows it.