3 Minute French - Course 7 | Language lessons for beginners

Build on from the knowledge you learnt in Courses 1-6, and learn how to communicate in even more situations.

What you'll learn:

• Learn about some new grammatical features in French
• Add some very useful vocabulary
• Look at some ways that French language structures differ from English and can't always be translated word for word
• Learn some time phrases to enable you to talk about the past, present and future
• Learn the French words for languages and countries, and the differences between "en" and "à"
• Look at a new way you can use the phrase "il y a"
• Meet a very useful phrase that makes asking questions easy
• Learn an enormous list of useful French adjectives
• Add some new location adverbs to your French repertoire
• Look at some useful words and phrases linked to travel and transport
• Start to look at the present tense in French, how to turn it negative and how to form questions using it
• Learn a handful of very useful irregular verbs in the present tense
• Look at the imperative in French

Welcome to course 7 :-)

On dit que le sept est un numéro chanceux, et en France, le chiffre 7 est parfois considéré comme un « chiffre magique » ou sacré.

It is said that seven is a lucky number, and in France, the number 7 is sometimes considered a "magic number" or as sacred.

Well, that might be going a bit far, but I do think course 7 is a wonderful addition to the 3 Minute French series, although I am obviously biased since I wrote it!

In this course, which contains lessons 54 to 62, we're going to be looking at lots of useful language features and further building our French vocabulary to enable us to speak in even more situations.

To begin with, we'll be looking at more areas where French and English differ slightly, and why you can't always translate things word-for-word. The word "d'où" for instance, is a new question word we can use when we want to say "where ... from" in English.

We're going to get quite a few new Vocabulary Expansion Sheets in this course, which will give us the opportunity to add more description to our language. We'll learn the words dernier and prochain, as well as lots of new adverbs such as depuis, jusqu'à and il y a (you'll learn another meaning for this phrase that we have met before).

Course 7 comes with a new tense; we've looked at the present perfect tense in quite some detail now, so in this course we're going to move on and look at the present tense. As the name suggests, this tense will allow us to talk about what's happening in the present. We'll look at how to form the present tense for "vous" using regular verbs and then we'll have a look at the group of irregular verbs who do their own things. We'll also look at another tense that is linked to the present tense: the imperative.

The imperative is the grammatical term for "commands", so you can use it to tell people what to do, or equally what not to do. This is quite a simple tense to learn once you've got to grips with the present tense.

So, that's a little bit about what you'll be learning in this seventh course, but of course there's lots more, including new verbs, new adjectives and adverbs, talking about the calendar in French and looking at some new structures as well as revamping some old structures involving our friend "est-ce que".

I hope you enjoy :-)