Below is a description of the program offered at l’Institut. All courses are taught by highly experienced faculty. 

Beginning French Conversation

A series of seven classes for beginning French students. No prior experience with French is required to begin this series. 

• Beginning French Conversation I: Learn how to introduce yourself and others, talk about your hobbies and interests, ask for and give information, and express your emotions. Learn useful idiomatic expressions and how to conjugate the first group of regular verbs as well as some frequently used irregular verbs.
• Beginning French Conversation II: Learn how to talk about your daily routine, plans for the future, the weather and seasons, housing, and your neighborhood. Practice expressing needs and wants and asking for more detailed information. Learn useful expressions and how to conjugate the second and third groups of regular verbs as well as frequently used irregular verbs.
• Beginning French Conversation III: Learn how to talk about your background, past experiences, food, drinks, the art of cooking, and your favorite restaurants. Learn how to use the past tense, give more details about information you are sharing, and ask more complex questions.
• Beginning French Conversation IV: Learn how to talk about what you used to do, how you felt in the past, your family traditions, food, purchasing ingredients, preparing meals, and eating in restaurants. Practice using the correct past tense, relative pronouns, object pronouns, and asking more questions.
• Beginning French Conversation V: Learn how to talk about geography, climate and issues that concern our environment. Learn to express information about formal education and training and the careers they lead to. Practice prepositions with place names and when to use “c’est” or “il/elle est.” Review object pronouns and the imperfect. Learn to use the future tense.
• Beginning French Conversation VI: Learn how to talk about travel experiences and how to express needs you may encounter while traveling. Learn to share information and opinions about the role of technology in our society. Practice using double object pronouns and relative pronouns. Learn to use the subjunctive and the conditional.
• Beginning French Conversation VII: Learn how to talk about your health and the healthcare system as well as your social and family values. Study the plus-que-parfait and past conditional and practice narrating in the past tense. Delve deeper into the subjunctive and how to use it to express your emotions and when to use it after certain conjunctions. 

Advanced Beginner French Conversation and Grammar

A series of four classes in which students will review and delve deeper into everything they learned in the Beginning French Conversation series. Also appropriate for those who have studied French before but feel they need to brush up before taking an Advanced Beginner conversation class or intermediate course. Students will broaden their understanding of French grammar and culture while focusing on communication. The four classes need not be taken in a particular order.

• Advanced Beginner French Conversation and Grammar I: Students will focus on communication while broadening their understanding of French culture and grammar. Review common irregular verbs, pronominal verbs, negation, adjectives, and more.
• Advanced Beginner French Conversation and Grammar II: Students will focus on communication while broadening their understanding of French culture and grammar. Review the past tense, question formation, and more.
• Advanced Beginner French Conversation and Grammar III: Students will focus on communication while broadening their understanding of French culture and grammar. Review object pronouns, the subjunctive, prepositions, and more.
• Advanced Beginner French Conversation and Grammar IV: Students will focus on communication while broadening their understanding of French culture and grammar. Review the present participle, relative pronouns, the future and conditional, relative pronouns, “si” clauses, and more.