French Book 2

Author: Department of French, Beijing Foreign Studies University
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-02-01
Features: This book retains its original principles, format, and system: it emphasizes fundamental language training, ensuring beginners build a solid foundation in both basic French knowledge and skills. The book is designed to address the specific difficulties Chinese students encounter when learning French, enabling them to develop preliminary oral and written expression through repeated practice, with particular focus on oral communication.
Books 1 and 2 include an eight-lesson pronunciation tutorial and a twenty-six-lesson basic tutorial. Based on the typical class schedules in higher education institutions, each lesson in the pronunciation tutorial takes about half a week, while each lesson in the basic tutorial takes about one week, plus additional activities such as reviews, quizzes, and exams. The entire content is suitable for two semesters of first-year study. The primary task of the pronunciation tutorial is to provide phoneme and intonation training. Within specific sentence patterns, students learn pronunciation through connected speech, with emphasis on intonation training as well as phoneme exercises. The book includes a substantial number of phoneme contrast exercises tailored to the pronunciation challenges faced by Chinese students, such as distinguishing between voiceless and voiced consonants, rounded vowels, and consonant clusters. Under the principle of prioritizing listening and speaking, the tutorial also focuses on teaching students to master pronunciation rules, reading, spelling, and introduces some basic grammar. The basic tutorial continues to adhere to the principle of prioritizing listening and speaking while promoting comprehensive development in all four language skills. Each lesson is divided into sections such as text, vocabulary list, expressions, text notes, grammar, exercises, and reading materials. At the end of the book, there are a few French folk songs and short poems.
Books 1 and 2 have undergone the following revisions: The pronunciation tutorial, which previously occupied too much time, has been reduced from twelve lessons to eight. The grammar focus in the basic tutorial remains largely unchanged, except that the present subjunctive is introduced earlier in Book 2 and the simple past tense is removed, to be covered in Book 3. The texts have been significantly revised, with Book 1 entirely updated. The content now includes more information about French society and culture. To facilitate listening and speaking training and develop communicative competence, the texts are primarily dialogues, with an increased number of texts per lesson to provide richer language materials and contexts. When writing the texts, special attention was paid to using appropriate expressions based on different situations and the social roles of the communicants. For example, in more casual settings, the book uses rising questions with inverted word order instead of formal subject-verb inversion to avoid stiffness. In teaching, however, students should receive sufficient practice with inverted questions to handle various linguistic contexts correctly. Each lesson now includes a "Expressions" section, systematically organizing and expanding various ways to express the topic. Each lesson's exercises also include comprehensive oral and written expression training.