KS4 · French · Year 10
La vie en ville : extended writing and speaking, photo description
My neighbourhood: Là où j'habite
Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.
IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/9
Your learning goal
I can describe a town in detail, using the imperfect and present tenses. I can describe a photo and draw comparisons between two photos.
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La vie en ville : extended writing and speaking, photo description: 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.
Download original PowerPoint ↓What you’ll learn
I can describe a town in detail, using the imperfect and present tenses. I can describe a photo and draw comparisons between two photos.
Key learning points
- We use present tense for describing a photo, but a range of tenses, including imperfect, to extend the discussion.
- Use 'plus' and 'moins' followed by adjectives and 'plus de' and 'moins de' followed by nouns for contrasts.
- Immediate repetition of a speaking task, with reduced support, improves performance.
- It's important to plan to incorporate a range of past, present and future tenses when writing an extended text.
Words to know
- imperfect tense
- tense used to describe how things were or used to be in the past, or to say what was happening
- adjective
- a word that gives more information about a noun
- noun
- word for a person, place, or thing
Common mistakes
Only the near future and future tenses can be used to refer fo the future.
It is possible to refer to the future using the conditional mood: phrases like 'je voudrais' and 'il voudrait' which are followed by an infinitive. This creates the idea of what someone would like to do, clearly referring to possible future events.
For parents, carers and teachers
- You may wish to have current and historic photos of the town or area your school serves to use as prompts for students to practise writing sentences about their town using present and imperfect tenses.