KS3 · French · Year 9

Pandemic in France: impersonal expression 'il est + adjective + de'

Future and past events: 2-verb structures with prepositions

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Your learning goal

I can use impersonal and two-verb infinitive structures to talk about a global health crisis.

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Pandemic in France: impersonal expression 'il est + adjective + de': 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.

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What you’ll learn

I can use impersonal and two-verb infinitive structures to talk about a global health crisis.

Key learning points

Cognates may look very similar to English but sound quite different so attention must be paid to pronunciation.
Some verbs require à or de before an infinitive e.g. aider à, arrêter de. Some like 'continuer' can have à or de.
There are two correct spellings with identical pronunciation for the singular forms of 'essayer'; 'essaie' and 'essaye'.
'On' is an impersonal pronoun applying to everyone.
il est + adjective + de + infinitive can be used to express it is difficult/easy/forbidden to + a verb.

Words to know

impersonal verb: verb that doesn’t refer to a particular person or thing, and whose subject is most often ‘il’ (it)

Common mistakes

'Il est' always means 'he is'.

'Il est' can be used as an impersonal verb where 'il' means 'it' and is not referring to a specific thing but talking about 'it' in general. e.g. 'Il est difficile de croire' means 'It is difficult to believe'.

For parents, carers and teachers

These lessons could be sensitive for some learners due to the overall subject content so it would be worth letting students know about the theme in advance.