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KS4 · French · Year 11

Des plats typiques : use of 'y' and 'en'

Travel and tourism: Des pays francophones

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Your learning goal

I can recognise a range of typical French foods and dishes and can use 'y' and 'en' with correct word order.

1 of 8

Des plats typiques : use of 'y' and 'en': slides adapted from the imported teaching text; recall questions created from its keywords, learning points and common mistakes. Self-check practice, with no automatic grading or XP. Answers stay on this page and are cleared when you leave.

Original teaching resources

The original illustrated PowerPoint is available as well as the IllumED text slides. It retains the publisher’s design and credits.

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What you’ll learn

I can recognise a range of typical French foods and dishes and can use 'y' and 'en' with correct word order.

Key learning points

  • [y] sounds like 'y' in 'physique'
  • Y can replace the object of a verb followed by à e.g. elle y a pensé.
  • We do not use 'y' for people. We use pronouns in this case e.g. Je pense à lui.
  • Il y en a means 'there is/are some'. It can also be used in the past tense: il y en avait and the future: il y en aura.

Words to know

y
indirect object pronoun meaning ‘there’ and '(to, about, in) it'
en
indirect object pronoun meaning 'of it/them' used to replace 'de + noun'

Common mistakes

In the perfect tense, the pronouns y and en go before the past participle.

Both y and en go before the auxiliary verb in the perfect tense e.g. il y est allé, il en a mangé.

For parents, carers and teachers
  • Learning cycle 2 practises y and en in more depth. It is useful for foundation students to recognise the general use of these pronouns and, in particular, the set phrase 'il y en a'. Teachers may wish to adapt the practice tasks in this cycle or spend more time on vocabulary practice instead.
IllumED Slides adapts “Des plats typiques : use of 'y' and 'en'”, French, by Oak National Academy ↗. Licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Slides and recall practice adapted by IlluminatED; no publisher endorsement. Restricted lessons have listing information only.