French Language Proficiency: Oral and Written Communication
This domain assesses your own French - the language you will model, correct, and explain in a French immersion classroom on PEI. Items probe grammatical accuracy, lexical precision, register, pronunciation, and metalinguistic control: can you not only write correct French but also name and teach the rule to a Grade 4 student? Read every item as a teacher, not as a sympathetic listener.
Two profiles of proficiency
Examiners typically separate la langue de communication - fluency, coherence, prosody, the ability to sustain an exchange - from la langue outil - agreement, spelling, syntax, lexicon. Candidates often speak fluently while controlling written morphology poorly. Both are scored, and the metalinguistic question ("what would you tell the student?") is where strong speakers lose marks.
High-yield structures
- Accord du participe passé: with avoir, agreement only when the direct object precedes the verb (les lettres que j'ai écrites); with être, agreement with the subject (elles sont parties); pronominal verbs: elle s'est lavée (direct object) versus elle s'est lavé les mains (indirect object).
- Subjunctive after il faut que, bien que, avant que, pour que: qu'il fasse, qu'il aille, qu'il soit, qu'il ait, qu'il sache.
- Register: Tu viens? / Est-ce que tu viens? / Viens-tu? - all three belong in class; the written exam expects the standard form.
- Meaning-changing homophones: a/à, ou/où, ce/se, ces/ses, c'est/s'est, du/dû, sur/sûr.
Interference from English
Prendre une décision (not faire une décision), assister à un cours (attend), éventuellement (possibly, not eventually), actuellement (currently), demander (to ask), librairie (bookshop).
Worked example
Sentence to correct: Les élèves que j'ai donné les livres sont partis. Reasoning: agreement with avoir depends on a preceding direct object. The verb is donner quelque chose à quelqu'un; les livres is the direct object and follows the verb, while les élèves is the indirect object. No agreement on donné. Correct: Les élèves à qui j'ai donné les livres sont partis. Contrast Les élèves que j'ai vus sont partis, where que is the direct object and vus agrees. Partis agrees with the subject in both.
Traps that cost marks
- Applying agreement with avoir whenever a noun precedes the verb, without testing whether it is direct.
- Accepting an anglicism because it translates neatly.
- Answering the correction question only with the fix, not the rule and the example.
- Using English metalanguage when the student needs le participe passé and le complément d'objet direct.