French (Beginner)

What this covers

• Greetings and politeness in context: bonjour vs. salut, ça va?, comment tu t'appelles?, and when a child would use tu with a friend versus vous with an adult
• Numbers 0-100 with the tricky pattern from soixante-dix through quatre-vingt-dix-neuf, plus telling age (j'ai neuf ans) and simple counting games
• Nouns learned with le / la / un / une — classroom objects, family members, pets, food — and the plural les with the silent -s
• Sound work: nasal vowels (on, en, an, in, un), the French r, silent final consonants, and the accents é, è, ê and ç with what each one does to the sound
• Present-tense être and avoir plus a handful of -er verbs (parler, aimer, habiter) used in first-person sentences about themselves
• Adjective agreement and placement in short descriptions: un chat noir, une voiture bleue, and the colour words that change spelling

Where learners get stuck

Pronouncing final consonants — saying 'PET-it' for petit or 'FRON-suh-say' with a hard s in français

English rewards sounding out every letter. French usually drops the final consonant unless it's c, r, f or l, and children need many spoken repetitions before their eyes stop overriding their ears.

Treating le and la as random labels, or translating 'the' and picking whichever comes to mind

English has one word for 'the', so gender feels like an arbitrary extra step. Once a child has stored 'porte' alone in memory, the article is very hard to attach afterwards — which is why we always drill the pair together.

Saying 'je suis neuf ans' for 'I am nine years old'

A direct word-for-word swap from English. French uses avoir for age (j'ai neuf ans), and the same trap appears with hunger and thirst (j'ai faim, j'ai soif).

What a session looks like

A session runs about 20-30 minutes and is spoken, not typed. The tutor opens with a short French warm-up the child already knows — greetings, the date, counting — then introduces four to six new words or one new structure, using them in questions the child answers aloud. Mispronunciations are modelled again slowly and repeated back together. The last few minutes revisit vocabulary from earlier sessions in a quick spoken round so it isn't lost, and the child is asked to say two or three sentences about themselves in French without prompting.

Helpful to know first

• No prior French needed — sessions start from bonjour
• Comfortable reading aloud in English at roughly a third-grade level
• Willing to speak out loud and repeat sounds that feel unfamiliar at first

Questions

My child has never studied a language before. Is grade 3 too early for French?

No. Beginner sessions assume zero background and work mostly through listening and speaking, which suits this age well. Reading and writing in French are introduced slowly, after the sounds are familiar.

Will the accent be correct if my child is learning from an AI?

The tutor speaks French at a steady, learner-friendly pace and models each sound as many times as needed. It can hear your child's attempt and tell them, for example, that the n in 'bon' should not be pronounced as a separate sound. It will not sound identical to a native speaker in every phrase, so pairing sessions with French songs or shows is worth doing.

Does this follow a school French curriculum?

It isn't tied to any specific school program or exam board. The vocabulary sets — greetings, family, numbers, colours, food, classroom — match what most elementary introductory French courses cover, so it supports school work without being built around one syllabus.

How often should we schedule sessions?

Two or three shorter sessions a week hold up better than one long one at this age. Vocabulary fades quickly without spoken recall, and each session begins by pulling back words from previous ones.