Literacy and Language Arts in French
This domain covers how reading, writing, and oral language are taught in French - how French orthography differs from English, what balanced literacy looks like in an immersion class, and how comprehension strategies are made explicit.
Foundations in French
- Conscience phonologique: syllables, rimes, then phonemes, before letters.
- Correspondances graphème-phonème: ou, oi, au/eau, eu, in/ain/ein, on, an/am/en/em, ch, gn, qu, ph. French is relatively regular for reading and far less regular for spelling.
- Silent final consonants, accents, elision (l'école), and liaison.
Reading
Strategies taught explicitly and named: prédire, se poser des questions, visualiser, faire des inférences, résumer, faire des liens. Genre and text structure: récit, descriptif, procédural, texte d'opinion. Guided reading in small, flexible groups at instructional level; read-alouds above the class level for vocabulary and cultural range.
Writing
Le processus d'écriture: planifier, rédiger, réviser, corriger, publier. Mini-lessons on a single focus, modelled and shared writing, mur de mots. Draft errors are data, not misconduct - correct selectively against the lesson's focus.
Oral language
Vocabulary, complete sentences, and listening are the base for reading and writing in French and deserve planned instructional time, not leftovers.
Worked example
Grade 2 sentence: le chat manj du poisson. Analysis: manj shows the student hears /ʒ/ and knows a letter can represent it, but the convention before e is ge; the verb also needs the third-person singular ending. The mini-lesson is narrow: the -ge spelling before a and o (nous mangeons), plus the silent third-person ending. Do not mark all errors in the piece; the child is decoding the sound system, which is progress.
Traps that cost marks
- Applying English phonics rules ("sh", "igh") to French words.
- Testing comprehension with texts students cannot yet decode.
- Correcting every draft error and suppressing fluency.
- Postponing oral language work until writing is "ready".
- Treating a vocabulary list as literacy instruction.
- Ignoring liaison and elision when diagnosing oral reading fluency.