Speaking French and writing French are very different. Not all the letters in a French word are pronounced and the letter combinations to form vowel sounds are different than in English. Learning the rules for pronunciation will not only help learners be understood, it will also improve spelling and will increase a student’s understanding of the language. Direct teaching of phonemes and their spelling is essential to language learning.

I have divided these lessons into “steps” (étapes) making three mini-lessons that can be taught one at a time with a unit. Teach the information and then apply it to the vocabulary you are teaching in your current unit. For example, in the first étape you will see that I taught Silent Letters and then had the students use what they were taught to answer the question, “What do you do every day?”

Mini-lessons are effective because they are right-sized to be accessible to students. The three topics of these lessons are silent letters, accents and frequently used phonemes. And, they are each followed by practice to solidify the concepts. 

Lessons on pronunciation are best when they are taught in the context of the current vocabulary and theme. Here is how I would integrate each Étape into a unit, to model what I am addressing, however these lessons could fit into almost any unit.

• Étape 1 À l’école 
• Étape 2 Je me présente
• Étape 3 Les héros

No explanation is ever as good as examples. Here is the set of lessons.* I hope some of it will be useful for you to copy and put into your own presentations. How do you teach pronunciation? Let me know in the comments. 

* Please note that there are links and information in the speaker’s notes of the slides.