NYSTCE French (121) cheat sheet

Phoneme: smallest unit that distinguishes meaning (French /p/ vs /b/ in 'pain' vs 'bain'); allophone: positional variant that does not change meaning (clear vs dark /r/, voiced vs voiceless final consonants).

French oral vowels: /i e ɛ a ɑ ɔ o u y ø œ ə/ plus nasals /ɛ̃ œ̃ ɑ̃ ɔ̃/; 'un' (/œ̃/) is merging with 'in' (/ɛ̃/) in Parisian and many varieties.

French nasal vowels are phonemic: 'beau' /bo/ vs 'bon' /bɔ̃/, 'pas' /pa/ vs 'pan' /pɑ̃/; a following nasal consonant or vowel blocks nasalization (e.g., 'bonne' /bɔn/).

Semi-vowels/glides: /j/ (fille, yeux), /ɥ/ (huit, lui), /w/ (oui, loi); 'u' + vowel yields /ɥ/, 'ou' + vowel yields /w/.

Liaison is obligatory after determiners, pronouns, and monosyllabic prepositions (les_amis, vous_avez, chez_elle); forbidden before 'et', after 'et', and before h-aspiré (les héros /le eʁo/).

Morphology: French verbs carry tense, aspect, mood, person, number; the imparfait encodes imperfective aspect, the passé composé perfective aspect, so 'il lisait' vs 'il a lu' differ in aspect, not just time.

Syntax: French is SVO with a verb-second-like constraint in interrogatives (inversion: 'Parles-tu?'); clitic pronouns (le, la, lui, y, en) precede the finite verb in a fixed order.

Historical layers: Gaulish substrate, Latin base, Frankish superstrate (h aspiré, /h/ from Germanic), Norse in Normandy; the 17th-century Académie codified spelling and usage.

Register cues in listening: 'tu' vs 'vous', contractions ('t'es' vs 'vous êtes'), and dropped 'ne' ('je sais pas') signal informal spoken French.

Spoken French reductions to decode: 'qu'est-ce que' → /kɛskə/, 'il y a' → 'ya', 'je suis' → 'chuis', 'je ne sais pas' → 'chais pas'.

Reading strategy types: skimming (idée générale), scanning (détail précis), inference (sens implicite); identify which the item demands before rereading.

Cognate and faux ami traps: 'actuellement' = currently (not actually), 'éventuellement' = possibly, 'assister à' = to attend, 'demander' = to ask.

Text-type markers: 'd'abord, ensuite, enfin' (chronology), 'cependant, toutefois' (contrast), 'donc, par conséquent' (consequence), 'en effet' (confirmation).

Discourse markers in listening: 'bref' (in short), 'en fait' (actually), 'du coup' (so/therefore), 'quand même' (all the same) convey stance, not literal content.

Numbers and dates: 'soixante-dix, quatre-vingts, quatre-vingt-dix'; 'mil neuf cent' vs 'deux mille'; 'le premier' vs 'le deux' for dates.

Interpersonal = two-way, negotiated, unrehearsed (conversation, email exchange); presentational = one-way, rehearsed or planned for an audience (essay, speech, report).

Formal address: 'vous' with titles (Monsieur, Madame), 'je vous prie d'agréer, Madame, l'expression de mes salutations distinguées' closes a formal letter.

Informal closings: 'Bisous', 'À bientôt', 'Amicalement'; formal: 'Cordialement' (semi-formal), 'Veuillez agréer...' (very formal).

Email structure in French: 'Objet:' line, salutation ('Bonjour Madame,' or 'Madame,'), body, formule de politesse, signature.

Politeness strategies: conditional for requests ('Pourriez-vous...?'), 'je voudrais' over 'je veux', softening with 'peut-être', 'un peu'.

Presentational coherence: thesis, developed arguments with connectors, conclusion; use 'en premier lieu, en outre, en revanche, pour conclure'.

Register consistency: mixing 'tu' and 'vous' in one exchange, or slang ('bosser', 'bouffer') in a formal essay, is a register error.

Francophonie: French is official in 29 countries; major varieties include Québec, Belgian, Swiss, Senegalese, Ivorian, and Haitian Creole-adjacent usage.

Key literary periods: Moyen Âge (chansons de geste, 'La Chanson de Roland'), Renaissance (Rabelais, Montaigne), classicisme (Molière, Racine, Corneille), Lumières (Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot).

19th century: romantisme (Hugo, Lamartine), réalisme (Balzac, Flaubert), naturalisme (Zola); 20th century: Proust, Camus, Sartre, Césaire (négritude), Beckett.

Cultural practices: 'laïcité' (1905 separation of church and state), 'le baccalauréat', 'la fête de la musique' (21 June), 'le 14 juillet' (Fête nationale).

Francophone Africa: Senegal (Senghor, négritude), Côte d'Ivoire, Mali; Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) with Arabic-French bilingualism.

Québec: Charter of the French Language (Bill 101, 1977) makes French the official language; 'dépanneur', 'fin de semaine', 'char' are Québécois usages.

Cross-cultural note: French 'bise' (cheek kiss) count varies by region (2, 3, or 4); handshake in professional settings; 'Monsieur/Madame' without surname is standard.

Krashen's input hypothesis: comprehensible input at i+1 drives acquisition; the affective filter (anxiety, low motivation) blocks intake.

Swain's output hypothesis: production (speaking, writing) forces syntactic processing and noticing gaps, which input alone does not.

Long's interaction hypothesis: negotiation of meaning (clarification requests, recasts) promotes acquisition; pair and group tasks create this.

ACTFL proficiency levels ascending: Novice (Low/Mid/High), Intermediate (Low/Mid/High), Advanced (Low/Mid/High), Superior, Distinguished.

Backward design (Wiggins & McTighe): identify desired results → determine acceptable evidence → plan learning experiences; assessment drives instruction.

Formative vs summative: formative is ongoing and feedback-oriented (exit tickets, thumbs up); summative measures achievement at the end (unit test, portfolio).

Interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational modes are the three ACTFL communicative modes; IPA (Integrated Performance Assessment) tests all three in one thematic unit.

Rubrics: analytic scores separate criteria (grammar, vocabulary, fluency); holistic gives one overall score; reliability rises with explicit descriptors and rater training.

Phoneme: smallest unit that distinguishes meaning (French /p/ vs /b/ in 'pain' vs 'bain'); allophone: positional variant that does not change meaning (clear vs dark /r/, voiced vs voiceless final consonants).

French oral vowels: /i e ɛ a ɑ ɔ o u y ø œ ə/ plus nasals /ɛ̃ œ̃ ɑ̃ ɔ̃/; 'un' (/œ̃/) is merging with 'in' (/ɛ̃/) in Parisian and many varieties.

French nasal vowels are phonemic: 'beau' /bo/ vs 'bon' /bɔ̃/, 'pas' /pa/ vs 'pan' /pɑ̃/; a following nasal consonant or vowel blocks nasalization (e.g., 'bonne' /bɔn/).

Semi-vowels/glides: /j/ (fille, yeux), /ɥ/ (huit, lui), /w/ (oui, loi); 'u' + vowel yields /ɥ/, 'ou' + vowel yields /w/.

Liaison is obligatory after determiners, pronouns, and monosyllabic prepositions (les_amis, vous_avez, chez_elle); forbidden before 'et', after 'et', and before h-aspiré (les héros /le eʁo/).

Morphology: French verbs carry tense, aspect, mood, person, number; the imparfait encodes imperfective aspect, the passé composé perfective aspect, so 'il lisait' vs 'il a lu' differ in aspect, not just time.

Syntax: French is SVO with a verb-second-like constraint in interrogatives (inversion: 'Parles-tu?'); clitic pronouns (le, la, lui, y, en) precede the finite verb in a fixed order.

Historical layers: Gaulish substrate, Latin base, Frankish superstrate (h aspiré, /h/ from Germanic), Norse in Normandy; the 17th-century Académie codified spelling and usage.

Register cues in listening: 'tu' vs 'vous', contractions ('t'es' vs 'vous êtes'), and dropped 'ne' ('je sais pas') signal informal spoken French.

Spoken French reductions to decode: 'qu'est-ce que' → /kɛskə/, 'il y a' → 'ya', 'je suis' → 'chuis', 'je ne sais pas' → 'chais pas'.

Reading strategy types: skimming (idée générale), scanning (détail précis), inference (sens implicite); identify which the item demands before rereading.

Cognate and faux ami traps: 'actuellement' = currently (not actually), 'éventuellement' = possibly, 'assister à' = to attend, 'demander' = to ask.

Text-type markers: 'd'abord, ensuite, enfin' (chronology), 'cependant, toutefois' (contrast), 'donc, par conséquent' (consequence), 'en effet' (confirmation).

Discourse markers in listening: 'bref' (in short), 'en fait' (actually), 'du coup' (so/therefore), 'quand même' (all the same) convey stance, not literal content.

Numbers and dates: 'soixante-dix, quatre-vingts, quatre-vingt-dix'; 'mil neuf cent' vs 'deux mille'; 'le premier' vs 'le deux' for dates.

Interpersonal = two-way, negotiated, unrehearsed (conversation, email exchange); presentational = one-way, rehearsed or planned for an audience (essay, speech, report).

Formal address: 'vous' with titles (Monsieur, Madame), 'je vous prie d'agréer, Madame, l'expression de mes salutations distinguées' closes a formal letter.

Informal closings: 'Bisous', 'À bientôt', 'Amicalement'; formal: 'Cordialement' (semi-formal), 'Veuillez agréer...' (very formal).

Email structure in French: 'Objet:' line, salutation ('Bonjour Madame,' or 'Madame,'), body, formule de politesse, signature.

Politeness strategies: conditional for requests ('Pourriez-vous...?'), 'je voudrais' over 'je veux', softening with 'peut-être', 'un peu'.

Presentational coherence: thesis, developed arguments with connectors, conclusion; use 'en premier lieu, en outre, en revanche, pour conclure'.

Register consistency: mixing 'tu' and 'vous' in one exchange, or slang ('bosser', 'bouffer') in a formal essay, is a register error.

Francophonie: French is official in 29 countries; major varieties include Québec, Belgian, Swiss, Senegalese, Ivorian, and Haitian Creole-adjacent usage.

Key literary periods: Moyen Âge (chansons de geste, 'La Chanson de Roland'), Renaissance (Rabelais, Montaigne), classicisme (Molière, Racine, Corneille), Lumières (Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot).

19th century: romantisme (Hugo, Lamartine), réalisme (Balzac, Flaubert), naturalisme (Zola); 20th century: Proust, Camus, Sartre, Césaire (négritude), Beckett.

Cultural practices: 'laïcité' (1905 separation of church and state), 'le baccalauréat', 'la fête de la musique' (21 June), 'le 14 juillet' (Fête nationale).

Francophone Africa: Senegal (Senghor, négritude), Côte d'Ivoire, Mali; Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) with Arabic-French bilingualism.

Québec: Charter of the French Language (Bill 101, 1977) makes French the official language; 'dépanneur', 'fin de semaine', 'char' are Québécois usages.

Cross-cultural note: French 'bise' (cheek kiss) count varies by region (2, 3, or 4); handshake in professional settings; 'Monsieur/Madame' without surname is standard.

Krashen's input hypothesis: comprehensible input at i+1 drives acquisition; the affective filter (anxiety, low motivation) blocks intake.

Swain's output hypothesis: production (speaking, writing) forces syntactic processing and noticing gaps, which input alone does not.

Long's interaction hypothesis: negotiation of meaning (clarification requests, recasts) promotes acquisition; pair and group tasks create this.

ACTFL proficiency levels ascending: Novice (Low/Mid/High), Intermediate (Low/Mid/High), Advanced (Low/Mid/High), Superior, Distinguished.

Backward design (Wiggins & McTighe): identify desired results → determine acceptable evidence → plan learning experiences; assessment drives instruction.

Formative vs summative: formative is ongoing and feedback-oriented (exit tickets, thumbs up); summative measures achievement at the end (unit test, portfolio).

Interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational modes are the three ACTFL communicative modes; IPA (Integrated Performance Assessment) tests all three in one thematic unit.

Rubrics: analytic scores separate criteria (grammar, vocabulary, fluency); holistic gives one overall score; reliability rises with explicit descriptors and rater training.