Grammar tools

Struggling to learn French grammar?

Or just looking for tips to accelerate your French learning? You’ve come to the right place.

1. Un? Une? The noun gender/ Le genre du nom

When you name a table, a chair or a house in English, you don’t need to worry about its gender; however in French, every noun has a gender, and you need to know it. This is one of the tricky parts of French grammar, because the idea doesn’t really exist in English. The gender of a noun will change the ending of the words referring to it – this is called ‘agreement.’ 

The difficulty is that many of the words in a sentence must agree. This doesn’t mean they sit down to talk about it – just that their endings mark them as the same gender as the noun of the sentence. For example, the French for ‘a good-looking woman’ is ‘une belle femme.’ But to say ‘a good-looking man’ is ‘un bel homme.’ 

"Femme" is a feminine word (easy to remember) and that means the article (une = the) has a feminine ending, while for the masculine word, "homme", the ending is masculine (un = the). It also affects the adjective, beau/bel/belle (meaning beautiful or good-looking), and you need to use the form that matches the noun you’re describing. So, when learning French vocab, it’s super important that you learn not just the word, but its gender! 

There are many tricks for learning the gender, so try a few to find out what works best for you. If you tend to be a list learner, a handy trick is to memorize the patterns of endings that are typically one gender or the other. 

For example, the nouns with these endings are typically feminine: a vowel then a consonant then ‘e’, like: -ine, -ise, -alle, -elle, -esse, -ette, -euse, -ance and -ence; · -tion, -sion, -son; · -ure, -ude, -ade; · -ée, -té, -ière. 

and masculine verbs mostly end with: · -ste and -tre; · -u, -ou, -oir; · -me, -ment, -isme; · -ble and -cle; · -eau and -eur; · -age and -ege; · And many of them end in consonants: -b, -c, -d, -f, -k, -l, -m, -n, -p, -r, -s, -t, -x.

Remember that there are always exceptions that you’ll have to learn specifically, but this pattern is a useful rule of thumb. 

Another good way to learn the gender of new words is to learn sentences that suggest the gender to you, or by linking words of the same gender and learning them together, such as ‘l‘homme aime son vélo vert’ (‘the man loves his green bike’) or ‘la femme aime la forêt et ses belles fleurs’ (‘the woman loves the forest and its beautiful flowers’). In a similar vein, when learning thematic vocabulary lists, break up words into one list of masculine words and one list of feminine words. 

For example, when learning foods, you might have, le pain (bread) and le fromage (cheese) in one list and la pomme (apple) and la carotte (carrot) in another. Try to create mental images of these things that you can recall later: for bread and cheese, conjure up an image of dipping bread in cheese fondue; for apples and carrots, you might imagine a snack platter. 

As with the above strategy, this exercise gets you actively thinking about gender and making connections between the words you are learning. If you catch yourself wondering if "fromage" is masculine or feminine later on, you just have to remember which mental image you associated the word with!

Exercises: 

1. Un/une
http://fog.ccsf.edu/~creitan/qchap1a.htm
2. Nom masculin/nom féminin

http://fog.ccsf.edu/~creitan/qchap2mf.htm 

2. The negative sentences/ les phrases négatives

This is one piece of grammar you can easily learn then put to plenty of use. It’s very easy to create the negative in French, and it instantly doubles what you can say in your new language. So, you can say “I like chocolate” – “J’aime le chocolat.” But if, for some strange reason, you want to say “I don’t like chocolate.” you say “Je n’aime pas le chocolat.” 

If you say “I speak English,” “Je parle anglais,” you probably won’t need to say “I don’t speak English,” “Je ne parle pas anglais.” – but you could! Or you can say “I never speak English.” “Je ne parle jamais anglais.” If you can lie in a new language, you’re doing well! 

So, to form a negative, use ne + verb + pas and you’re there. 

Or to say you never do something, use ne + verb + jamais. 

http://wps.prenhall.com/ca_ph_parmentier_enbons_7/46/11983/3067774.cw/index.html
http://wps.prenhall.com/ca_ph_parmentier_enbons_7/46/11983/3067656.cw/index.html

Complexes negatives sentences:

Just remember that, like when we put a ‘n’ on an ‘a’ to say ‘an apple’, we drop the ‘e’ on the end of ‘ne’ so a vowel doesn’t touch another vowel, like in ‘n’aime’ (‘not like’). Remember – vowels don’t like touching when they come from different syllables! 

Here is some exercices to practice: 
http://wps.prenhall.com/ca_ph_parmentier_enbons_7/46/11982/3067570.cw/index.html
http://wps.prenhall.com/ca_ph_parmentier_enbons_7/46/11983/3067774.cw/index.html
http://wps.prenhall.com/ca_ph_parmentier_enbons_7/46/11986/3068456.cw/index.html

3. The adjectives / les adjectifs

4. The possession/ La possession 

Here is an exercice:
http://wps.prenhall.com/ca_ph_parmentier_enbons_7/46/11983/3067882.cw/index.html
http://wps.prenhall.com/ca_ph_parmentier_enbons_7/46/11983/3067882.cw/index.html
http://wps.prenhall.com/ca_ph_parmentier_enbons_7/46/11983/3067882.cw/index.html
http://wps.prenhall.com/ca_ph_parmentier_enbons_7/46/11983/3067882.cw/index.html
http://wps.prenhall.com/ca_ph_parmentier_enbons_7/46/11983/3067882.cw/index.html
http://wps.prenhall.com/ca_ph_parmentier_enbons_7/46/11983/3067882.cw/index.html

5. How to ask questions/ Comment poser des questions

Requiring a Yes or a No answer:

To form a yes-no question (i.e. one that can be answered by 'yes' or 'no'), you just need to put est-ce que at the beginning of the sentence:

est-ce que tu travailles? do you work?

est-ce que tu fais ça demain? are you doing it tomorrow?

est-ce que tu as des frères et soeurs? have you got any brothers and sisters?

You can also form a yes-no question simply by keeping the same words as in the equivalent affirmative sentence but by saying the final syllable on a rising pitch:

tu travailles? do you work?

tu fais ça demain? are you doing it tomorrow?

tu as des frères et soeurs? have you got any brothers and sisters?

Questions with Interrogative Pronouns: what, when, who…

Here is a list of the main interrogative pronouns: 

• Quand (when)

• Quoi (what)

• Où (where)

• Comment (how)

• Qui (who)

Note: Make sure you don’t confuse “ou” and “où”. The first one means “or”, the second “where”. The pronunciation is the same for both words though.

Examples: Click here, here, here.


Where do you live? Click here to learn how do answer this question.

Here is some exercices to practice these rules:  

http://platea.pntic.mec.es/cvera/hotpot/adjectifs_interrogatifs.htm
http://wps.prenhall.com/ca_ph_parmentier_enbons_7/46/11982/3067570.cw/index.html

http://wps.prenhall.com/ca_ph_parmentier_enbons_7/46/11983/3067774.cw/index.html
6. L' adjectif démonstratif
http://www.polarfle.com/exercice/exoadjdebdem.htm

Credit:http://www.meilleurenclasse.com/aide/Exercices

7. L' adjectif possessif

 Here is some exercices:

http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~creitan/q2adpos1.htm

http://wps.prenhall.com/ca_ph_parmentier_enbons_7/46/11984/3067928.cw/content/index.html
http://hotpot.klascement.net/aanbod/wouters.joyce/adj_poss2.htm
http://www.didierconnexions.com/niveau1/index.php?id=1-3-4-1
http://www.didierconnexions.com/niveau1/index.php?id=3-8-5-1

8. Les adjectifs demonstratifs

9. Les prépositions

10. Les comparatifs

Here is some exercice:
http://wps.prenhall.com/ca_ph_parmentier_enbons_7/46/11986/3068541.cw/index.html
http://wps.prenhall.com/ca_ph_parmentier_enbons_7/46/11986/3068541.cw/index.html

11. Expressions of quantity