KS3 · French · Year 9
Religion in Francophonie: feminine and plural nouns
People and places: present and perfect tense
Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.
IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/10
Your learning goal
I can read and understand sentences about secularism in France.
1 of 10
Religion in Francophonie: feminine and plural nouns: 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 read and understand sentences about secularism in France.
Key learning points
- Nationality and religious adjectives can become nouns when used with an article. These are identity nouns.
- Religious nouns do not use capital letters, unlike nationality nouns. Le musulman - l'Algérien.
- There is no article 'un/une' after 'être' when using nouns to describe identity. Il est Anglais: He is an Englishman.
- Nouns ending in -ien often change to -ienne in the feminine form: le chrétien - la chrétienne.
- To make nouns plural, we usually add an -s. Nouns ending in -eu, -(e)au, -al or -ail make their plurals with -(au)x.
Words to know
- identity noun
- noun describing one's identity, religion or profession, having different forms based on the gender of the person it is referring to: un Italien - une Italienne
- feminine
- form for nouns with feminine grammatical gender: la foi, une Canadienne
- plural
- form for nouns that refers to more than one person place, thing or idea: des Canadiens
Common mistakes
Like non-person or object nouns, identity nouns exist in only one form and gender.
Unlike non-person or object nouns, identity nouns can have both masculine and feminine forms: le chrétien - la chrétienne. This is the same as other French person nouns you may know, e.g. le directeur/la directrice.
For parents, carers and teachers
- Following on from exercises A1 and A2, discuss the following questions with your class: How is religion viewed in French schools? How is it different from your school and other schools in your area? Are you surprised? What do you think of the idea of 'la laïcité'?