Unlocking French with Paul Noble: Your key to language success with the bestselling language coach. Paul Noble
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Название: Unlocking French with Paul Noble: Your key to language success with the bestselling language coach

Автор: Paul Noble

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Хобби, Ремесла

Серия:

isbn: 9780008209544

isbn:

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       c’était

       (set-ay)

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      So, how would you say “it was fantastic”?

       C’était fantastique.

       (set-ay fon-tass-teek)

      The word for “and” in French is:

       et

       (ay)

      So, how would you say “…and it was fantastic”?

       …et c’était fantastique

       (ay set-ay fon-tass-teek)

      Putting what you’ve learnt together, say “I spent the weekend in Paris and it was fantastic.” Take your time to work this out, bit by bit, there’s no rush.

       J’ai passé le week-end à Paris… et c’était fantastique.

       (zhay pass-ay luh weekend a pa-ree… ay set-ay fon-tass-teek)

      Of course, perhaps you would prefer to describe your weekend in a different way. Perhaps it was more “lovely” than it was “fantastic”, so let’s try that. The French might express the idea that such a weekend was “lovely” by saying that it had been “very agreeable”.

      “Very agreeable” in French is:

       très agréable

       (trez ag-ray-arb-luh)

      So, how would you say “it was very agreeable” / “it was lovely” in French?

       C’était très agréable.

       (set-ay trez ag-ray-arb-luh)

      Finally, how would you say “I spent the weekend in Paris… and it was lovely”?

       J’ai passé le week-end à Paris… et c’était très agréable.

       (zhay pass-ay luh weekend a pa-ree… ay set-ay trez ag-ray-arb-luh)

      You can now construct the sentence with which we started the chapter – and, as you will soon discover, this is just the very beginning of your journey into French!

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      Building Blocks

      You just learnt how to say (amongst other things) “I spent the weekend in Paris… and it was lovely”.

      Now that you can do this, you are going to move on to expanding what you can say through the use of additional “building blocks”.

      The new building blocks you are going to learn will allow you to begin instantly expanding your range of expressions in the French language.

      So far, some of the building blocks you have already learnt include:

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      You already know how to use these building blocks to construct a sentence. Once again, how would you say “I have spent the weekend in Paris”?

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      As you can see, you already know how to build the four building blocks above into a sentence. Take a look now at the six new building blocks below. Just have a glance over them and then I’ll show you how you’re going to add these into the mix of what you’ve learnt so far.

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      Okay, first things first: please don’t try to memorise them. No, no, no! Instead, I simply want you to play with your building blocks. After all, that’s what building blocks are for, isn’t it?

      The way you’re going to play with them is like this: below, they have been put in four piles and all I want you to do is to make sentences with them. You’ll do this by using one building block from the first pile, one from the second, one from the third and one from the fourth.

      You will find that you can say a lot of different things using them in this way and it’s up to you what sentences you make. The only thing I want you to make sure you do is to use every building block at least once. Also, please don’t bother writing down the sentences you make. Instead, say them out loud. Or, if you’re not in a place where you can do this, say them in your head. Now, off you go – make as many sentences as you can!

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       image Remember, of course, that “J’ai passé” means “I have spent”, “I spent” and “I did spend”. And this means, of course, that “vous avez passé” means “you have spent”, “you spent” and “you did spend”. And therefore “nous avons passé” means not only “we have spent” but also “we spent” and “we did spend”. Don’t forget, you get three English past tenses for the price of one in French and this applies whether you’re saying “I…”, “you…”, “we…” or whatever.

      The Checklist

      You have now reached the final part of the first chapter. Once you have finished this short section you will not only have completed your first chapter but you will also understand how this book works. All the other chapters follow the same pattern, with your French becoming ever more sophisticated as you complete each chapter.

      The section you are now on will be the final part of each chapter and is what I call “The Checklist”. It involves nothing more than a read-through of a selection of the words or expressions you have so far encountered.

      You will actually see The Checklist twice. The first time you will see that the French words are written in black (on the left-hand side) and that the English words are written in blue (on the right-hand side) – and you know what blue means… cover up!

      So, what I want you to do here is to cover up the English words (which are written in blue on the right-hand side) while you read through the list of French words on the left. Read through them all, from the top of the list to the bottom, and see if you can recall what they mean in English (uncover one blue word at a time to check if you’ve remembered the meaning correctly). If you can go through the entire list, giving the correct English meaning for each of the French words / expressions without making more than three mistakes in total, then you’re done. If not, then go through the list again. Keep doing this, either working from the top of the list to the bottom or from the bottom to the top (it doesn’t СКАЧАТЬ