Writing Process, Composition, and Language Conventions
What this domain tests
This domain covers how writing develops in French Immersion and how you teach composition and conventions. Expect questions on the writing process, genre and text organization, sentence fluency, and French grammar and orthography, including the conventions that differ from English.
Core rules and concepts
- Process: prewriting, drafting, revising (content and organization), editing (conventions), and publishing. In immersion, revision and editing need scaffolding in French: word banks, mentor texts, and checklists. Conferencing and peer response build both language and ideas.
- Genres and organization: narrative, descriptive, persuasive, explanatory, and procedural texts each have structures. Teach paragraph unity, topic sentences, transitions (d'abord, ensuite, enfin, cependant, par conséquent), and cohesive devices.
- French conventions: agreement of adjectives with nouns in gender and number; subject-verb agreement, including with on; passé composé with être verbs and past participle agreement; a versus à, ou versus où, ce versus se, son versus sont; accents that change meaning (a/à, ou/où, des/dès); plural formation; and punctuation spacing (a space before : ; ! ? in French typography).
- Sentence craft: vary sentence length and type; combine sentences; avoid run-ons and fragments. Model sentence combining in French to build syntactic complexity.
Worked example
Student sentence: Les élèves ont arrivé à l'école et ils ont mangé leur déjeuner. Reasoning: arriver is a verb of motion taking être in the passé composé, so the auxiliary is wrong; the participle must agree with the plural subject: Les élèves sont arrivés à l'école. The second clause is correct with avoir. Revised: Les élèves sont arrivés à l'école, puis ils ont mangé leur déjeuner. Adding puis improves cohesion. The reasoning names the auxiliary rule, applies agreement, and improves flow.
Traps that cost marks
- Editing conventions before revising ideas; this freezes weak structure.
- Ignoring past participle agreement with être verbs.
- Missing homophone errors (a/à, ou/où, ce/se) that spell-check will not catch.
- Applying English punctuation spacing to French text.
- Teaching grammar in isolation without applying it to students' own writing.