Our Approach to Teaching

At the French Centre each lesson is based on a real life dialogue, a real life French text related to the dialogue and a cultural segment.

The dialogues deal with both practical topics - like ordering in a bar or a restaurant, asking for directions, buying tickets and catching public transport - and conversational topics - like talking about yourself, asking people about themselves, inviting people out, talking about your and someone else’s experiences, likes and dislikes, opinions, films, travel plans, describing people and places, and so on.

The real life French texts range from train timetables or restaurant menus, to newspaper or magazine articles, extracts from the French television news, movies, books, etc.

Each dialogue is studied in depth: we examine the vocabulary, useful expressions, phrases, and grammar. Then we role play the dialogue in class over and over until you can hold that particular dialogue with ease and confidence.

Once you have learnt the dialogue, we expand on it, bring in new elements, modify it to suit different circumstances and situations, and link it to previous dialogues. We then study the real life French text to further practise our hearing and reading skills, and provide further “prompts” for conversation and role-playing.

The dialogues are accompanied by French Centre “practice” CDs (or, if you prefer, tapes) which play a key role in helping you absorb and practise during the week the language covered in class. For more information regarding the French Centre CDs (or tapes) click here.

The real life dialogues are generally set in areas of particular interest in France. This gives us the opportunity to study in greater depth the history, art, cuisine, music, traditional feasts of the area.

To really give you a feel of the places, the people, and the issues, we use an enormous amount of visual material, such as slides, extracts from documentaries and films, and our own videos shot specifically during our visits to France.

At the French Centre you start speaking “real” French from the very first lesson. As you progress, your vocabulary expands, the range of topics and situations you can handle and your confidence increases. You’ll speak for longer periods, and you start seeing the patterns in the language (“patterns” is how we think of grammar) and it all starts falling into place.

For enquiries, email us at enquiries@frenchcentre.com.au, or call the French Centre on 9264 0232.