One of the benifits of being a substitiute teacher is that you are exposed to a wide variety of educational settings and teachers. In a recent two-week assignment in a high school, I had the fortune of having my desk in the teacher's office placed across that of a French-language teacher. I was able to borrow some instructional materials, including a set of old lessons I hope to reproduce here in a series of posts about French pronunciation.
For me (since I don't feel I have time to learn the whole language) I am most concerned with being able to look at French text and be able to pronounce it correctly (mainly so I can learn Alizée lyrics and be able to sing along
). However, these lessons should be helpful to any English-as-a-first-language beginning student of French, which is why I am reproducing them here. They have certainly been helpful to me.
All of the lessons are extracted excerpts (taken word for word) from a small and old book of duplication masters for an old printing machine that was in use in schools prior to photocopy machines! I intend to reproduce the text of the lessons here but not the flashcard-like practice dittos. I'm almost certian the book is no longer in print. Even so, I know the copyright issues may be a little bit "iffy" and I will ultimately leave the judgement call to Brad; if he feels their presence is unwarranted I will understand if they are removed, no hard feelings. In anycase, APA citation information is below:
Badino, M. J. (1968). French sounds. St. Louis, Missouri: Milliken Publishing Co.
The lessons in this series are:
1. French Sounds
2. au, eau, oi, ez, er
3. Final Consonants that are Pronounced
4. More French Consonants
5. French Nasal Vowels
6. Open o and Closed o – The Letter u
7. Accent Marks; é, è
8. Vowel Combinations
9. c, s, g, gn, j, x
10. Endings; Remaining Sounds
11. Syllabication; Unstable e
12. Elision, Linking
I hope others find these useful! I will try to post a new lesson each day or every other day until finished, but we'll see how schedules interfere.