Learn how to read in French

Learning how to read and write in French can be challenging! For example, there are lots of silent letters at the end of the words and so many words that have a different spelling for the exact same pronunciation. 

English speakers learn to read with Phonics, French people learn with a syllabic method - "la méthode syllabique". The good news is that in French you pronounce ALL the syllables! French is what we call a syllabic language, like Spanish or Modern Greek.

When I was a school teacher in a bilingual private school, in 2001, I was taught to teach French reading and writing to my Kindergarten 5-year-old kids. I had no experience whatsoever teaching reading and writing! But the syllable method is quite easy to follow and is very efficient. Of course, as there are always exceptions to rules, some short words have to be taught differently - kids have to learn a list of words by heart. We call it "la méthode globale". The method is based on a visual recognition of words within a contextual search for their meaning.

A year after, I became a mother. My first child had an insatiable thirst for learning. She was very much interested in letters and words that she would spot everywhere and would try to decipher. I decided to teach her vowel sounds and simple syllables such pa, pe, pi, po, pu; ma, me, mi, mo, mu and she loved it. It became our daily little game. When I associated a gesture for each syllable sound, she loved it even better. She could read lots of syllables when she was 4 and could read French fluently when she was 5. Her love for letters and reading grew bigger and bigger. She became a bookworm as soon as she could read and started to write poems and essays. When she was 15, she made up her mind that she would become a writer. She wrote her first two novels during boring classes at high school. The third one was written in 10 days (and nights) last summer during our vacation in the middle of nowhere in Le Lot, in southern France. Our daughter is now 20 years old, and she already published 3 books out of 9 of her series of detective novels. She would love to see the main characters of her series - Hélène, Jules and Guillaume - on screen on a Netflix series! If you love Paris, History, science, mythology, mysteries, and detective novels and if you can read French, check out her blog. (Worldwide shipping)

Revenons à nos moutons. (It's a French idiom which means 'but I digress' or 'anyway', literally 'let's go back to our sheep') 

So, after a professional experience of teaching reading and writing French AND a mother's experience, I am pleased to announce you that I am creating a simplified French reading and writing course for families. My method is based on the 'Méthode Boscher'. It was first published in 1906 in Saint-Brieuc which is where I live today, in Brittany, France! It has been republished several times and used by French school teachers and parents since then. 

With Lessons4Kids reading method, kids and adults will be able to learn together as a family. I will use this method in my Zoom classes, but it will also be available as an online course (e-learning). You can take a glimpse at it on my YouTube channel.

What do you think of this? Feel free to drop a comment or ask me questions.

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