Course description

You can hold a conversation in French. You understand a lot and people understand you. But the same mistakes keep coming back: avoir or être, the passé composé or the imparfait, le or lui, agreement you're never sure of, and the subjunctive that you avoid whenever you can. This course is for that stage. It takes the grammar points that trip improvers up, one by one, and explains them properly, with the reasons behind the rules, so that you can get them right without guessing.

There are 11 sections and 55 written lessons, organised by grammar point so that you can work through from start to finish or go straight to the point that's bothering you. Each lesson explains the rule in plain English, shows it in tables and examples, corrects a real-looking piece of writing, lists the common traps and answers the questions learners ask. You follow Gervase, a practice manager in Taunton who has learnt French for six years, as his conversation partner Huguette, a retired primary school teacher in Angers, corrects his messages before, during and after his first visit to the city. Every section has a practice pack with a worksheet of graded exercises, a full answer key and a cheat sheet, plus verb tables and original diagrams, including a past tenses timeline, a pronoun order chart and a subjunctive decision chart. The course ends with a final project: correcting and then rewriting Gervase's blog post about his week in Angers.

What you'll learn

• Nouns, articles and adjectives: gender and the endings that point to it, le, un and du, de after negatives and quantities, adjective agreement, and where adjectives go.
• The present tense and reflexive verbs: regular patterns and spelling changes, the irregular verbs you use every day, and reflexive verbs.
• The passé composé: avoir or être, the participles to know by heart, and past participle agreement, including the preceding direct object.
• The imparfait and the plus-que-parfait: background or event, the verbs that change meaning, and what had already happened, with a timeline.
• The future, the conditional and si clauses: the futur proche and the futur simple, the conditionnel for requests, advice and regrets, and all three kinds of si clause.
• Object pronouns: le, la and les, lui and leur, y and en, the order when there are two, and the stressed pronouns.
• Relative pronouns: qui, que, dont and où, and the lequel forms after prepositions.
• Negation and questions: every negative and where it goes, and the three ways to ask a question: intonation, est-ce que and inversion.
• The subjunctive: how to form it, the triggers after wishes, feelings, doubt and conjunctions, when not to use it, and how to avoid it with an infinitive.
• Prepositions and comparisons: à, en and au with places, verbs with à and de, comparisons, and the le plus forms.
• False friends, register and the final project: the false friends that catch English speakers, tu and vous and spoken French, and a final project correcting and rewriting a longer text.

Who it's for

Improvers who can already talk in French, roughly A2 to B1, and want to be accurate: in conversation, in emails and messages, and in anything you write. It teaches standard French as it's used in France, and shows you how everyday spoken French differs. It's a written course with no audio. You practise with graded exercises and check your own answers with the answer keys.

What will I learn?

• Get gender, articles and the partitive right, including de after negatives and quantities
• Make adjectives agree and put them in the right place, including the BANGS adjectives
• Form the present tense of regular and irregular verbs, and use reflexive verbs in every tense
• Choose avoir or être in the passé composé and make the past participle agree, including with a preceding direct object
• Choose between the imparfait and the passé composé in stories, and use the plus-que-parfait
• Use the futur proche, the futur simple and the conditionnel, and build all three kinds of si clause
• Use direct and indirect object pronouns, y and en, and stressed pronouns, in the right order and place
• Use qui, que, dont, où and the lequel forms, and handle negatives and the three ways to ask a question
• Form the subjunctive, know when it's needed and when it isn't, and avoid it with an infinitive
• Use the right prepositions with places and verbs, make comparisons, avoid the common false friends and choose the right register
• Check and rewrite a longer piece of your own French with a reliable eight-step method

Frequently asked questions