Lessons and grinds available in French for Leaving Certificate, Junior Certificate and Third Level
students. Classes are also available for adults at all levels from beginner onwards or indeed French for business.
Individual weekly feedback given to each student PLUS weekly testing to measure progress, identify where the student is going wrong and correct it.
You will NOT just pay money to be given piles of notes…you will be TAUGHT as an individual by someone who is in your corner and you will LEARN as an individual. A systematic thought process is vital to avoid error and that is a priority with us.
GRAMMAR
We place emphasis on verb structure, pronoun position, adjective agreement and the elimination of common errors which represent 90% of mark loss. You will learn ‘must know’ grammar in an individually based setting and will be tested on a weekly basis to assess progress. This is often brushed over in large school classroom or grind environments but will be explained in detail as many times as is necessary with us by means of a systematic thought process. When this grammar is confidently understood then written work grades will jump significantly.
ESSAYS AND READING COMPREHENSION
Comprehension techniques will be taught in depth coupled with an extension of vocabulary and from past papers and the French press eg. Le Monde, Le Figaro, Le Nouvel Observateur. We will exam journalistic style as guide to essay construction. Most essays are based on a social topic and that requires a certain vocabulary and structure. This will be gone through thoroughly so that any potential topic can be tackled with confidence.
LISTENING
For aural work we use past papers and online sources from amongst others www.rfi.fr www.france3.fr www.france-info.fr to accustom the ear to French spoken with correct accent at full pace. The pieces are broken down sentence by sentence and as the student improves and confidence grows whole pieces are understood giving the student the confidence to know that there will be nothing in the exam that he or she will not be able to handle.
ORAL FLUENCY AND CONFIDENCE
On average 20 minutes of each class is dedicated to oral practice with the systematic examining of exam topics of discussion using brain-storming and spider charts to stimulate spontaneous conversation and fluency. We will also work on the documents to be presented during the oral to ensure an in depth fluency on the topic chosen. You will learn to put ideas into words with confidence in a setting NOT available in school classrooms or large scale grind environment because of class size and time constraints. This is not the case with Shankill Languages. As the weeks progress fluency improves and speech gradually becomes full pace which means that there should be nothing that an examiner will say in the exam that should be a problem for any student who comes to us.
As well as past Leaving and Junior Cert papers, UK A level, German Abitur, Spanish Selectividad and Italian Maturita past papers are also used to lift the standard in comprehension, listening and written work.