NB Francophone G7 French common mistakes
NB Francophone G7 French · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
When asked to identify the theme or main idea of a short story, the student retells the plot events in order ("d'abord il arrive, ensuite il rencontre...") instead of stating a general idea the events support.
Plot is the most concrete, easily retrieved layer of a narrative, and students often equate "what happened" with "what it means"; retelling feels safe because it can be verified from the text, whereas abstracting a theme requires inference and risks being wrong.
What to do instead
Teach a two-step routine: (1) write a one-sentence plot summary privately, then (2) ask "qu'est-ce que l'auteur veut nous faire comprendre à travers ces événements?" and force the answer into an abstract noun phrase (l'amitié, la persévérance, la peur de grandir). Have students test candidate themes by asking whether the theme could still be true if the characters and setting changed; if not, it is still plot.
The student answers an inference question by copying a sentence from the text verbatim, even when the question asks what a character probably feels or why an event happened.
Students conflate "finding the answer in the text" with "answering the question"; copying is reinforced because literal questions reward it, and students have not learned to distinguish "dans le texte" from "dans ma tête" question types.
What to do instead
Practise sorting questions into three categories before answering: explicit (answer written in the text), inferential (clues plus reasoning), and evaluative (opinion plus justification). For inferential items, require the formula "Indice du texte + ce que j'en déduis = conclusion", so the copied sentence becomes evidence rather than the answer itself.
On informational texts, the student reads the title only and then answers questions about the author's purpose or the structure of the text without locating the relevant paragraph or section heading.
Informational texts feel familiar and students assume prior knowledge covers them; also, scanning for headings and topic sentences is a taught strategy that many students have never practised under time pressure.
What to do instead
Require a 60-second "cartographie" pass before answering: number the paragraphs, underline the title and any subheadings, and circle the topic sentence of each paragraph. Then, for each question, have the student write the paragraph number where the answer lives before writing the answer.
In an informational text, the student treats the author's opinion as an established fact and cannot distinguish it from the data or examples presented alongside it.
Expository prose mixes facts and judgments in the same paragraph, and markers of opinion (selon, il semble que, heureusement, malheureusement, devrait) are subtle for grade-7 readers who focus on content words rather than stance words.
What to do instead
Run a highlighting exercise with two colours: one for verifiable facts (dates, numbers, named sources) and one for evaluative language. Build a class list of "mots qui trahissent l'opinion" and require students to justify any claim about the author's viewpoint by quoting one such marker.
The student writes a narrative or explanatory text as one undivided block, with no paragraph breaks, no opening that establishes the situation, and no closing.
Under exam time pressure, students draft linearly and run out of time to restructure; many also believe paragraphing is cosmetic rather than a signal of ideas, so they never plan a skeleton before writing.
What to do instead
Enforce a five-minute plan before any writing: a horizontal line with cases for situation initiale, élément déclencheur, péripéties, dénouement, situation finale (narrative) or introduction, deux idées, conclusion (explanatory). Require one paragraph per case and one connecting word (d'abord, ensuite, cependant, finalement) at the start of each new paragraph.
The student uses the same connector (et, puis, après) repeatedly and writes sentences that are grammatically correct in isolation but do not logically follow one another, so the text reads as a list rather than an argument.
Connectors are taught as vocabulary items to be recognized, not as tools for signalling logical relations (cause, opposition, consequence, illustration); students default to the few they are certain how to spell.
What to do instead
Give students a small functional grid of connectors grouped by relation (cause: parce que, car, en effet; opposition: mais, pourtant, en revanche; conséquence: donc, c'est pourquoi; illustration: par exemple) and require at least four different connectors, drawn from at least three columns, in every produced text.
The student applies the wrong ending to verbs: writing "ils parlent" for "ils ont parlé", "je manger" for "je mangerai", or confusing the imparfait and the passé composé when narrating past events.
French verb endings carry tense and person information that is often silent in speech (parlé/parler/parlez), so students who write by ear have no auditory cue; and the imparfait/passé composé distinction (background versus event) is conceptually difficult.
What to do instead
Have students say the sentence aloud in a version where the ending is audible ("ils ont parlé" versus "ils parlent" becomes "il parlait"), and drill a tense-decision checklist: is this a completed event (passé composé), a description or habit (imparfait), or something not yet happened (futur)? Require underlining every verb and labelling its tense during revision.
The student makes agreement errors within the noun phrase - "les chevaux noir", "une fleur bleu", "des enfants fatigué" - and forgets agreement of the past participle with avoir or with pronominal verbs.
Agreement is silent in most spoken French, so students rely on spelling memory rather than on a rule; and the exceptions (participle with avoir agreeing only with a preceding direct object) are applied mechanically without checking the object's position.
What to do instead
Teach a physical marking routine: circle the noun, draw an arrow to every adjective and determiner that must agree, and write the gender/number above it. For past participles, require the question "y a-t-il un COD placé avant le verbe?" to be written in the margin with oui/non before the ending is chosen.
The student guesses the meaning of an unfamiliar word from its shape or from a false friend ("actuellement" read as "actually", "éventuellement" as "eventually", "assister à" as "to assist"), or ignores it entirely and loses the sentence's meaning.
French and English share many cognates, which encourages over-generalization, and students lack a repertoire of context-based strategies, so they either guess by resemblance or skip the word.
What to do instead
Teach a three-step word-attack routine and practise it on authentic sentences: (1) identify the word class from its position and ending, (2) look for a familiar root or prefix/suffix (in-, dé-, -ment, -tion), (3) substitute a guess and check whether the surrounding sentence still makes sense. Keep a running class list of faux amis encountered in readings.
During a listening task, the student tries to transcribe every word as it is spoken, misses the next sentence while writing, and then answers questions from a partial, scrambled memory.
Students treat listening as dictation and are anxious about losing information; they have not learned that comprehension requires selective attention to key words, and they do not use the pause or second listening strategically.
What to do instead
Train note-taking by symbol and keyword rather than full sentences: names, numbers, places, and verbs only, with arrows for cause and consequence. During a first listening, students listen without writing; during the second, they fill a pre-drawn grid (qui, quoi, où, quand, pourquoi). Require the answer to be justified by a note, not by memory alone.