My son who started 1st year at secondary school this year is getting very poor marks in French. He finds it so hard he has effectively given up. Unfortunately his school insists they do French up to S4.

Unfortunately neither hubby nor I are any good at French.

Have ordered the relevant text books from Amazon. Thinking about a tutor perhaps.

Has any of you got any suggestions as to how to get him motivated? Or suggest any 'puter programs etc?? Thought about Muzzy but it is very dear and not sure if it is the right level.

Any ideas

Thanks
Ailsa

I think the only way anyone can really learn a language is to need to use it, in other words to stay in the relevant country or talk to Real French speakers.

I am bilingual, but my children's Polish is poor (my son he would get by) and passable (my daughter could hold a not very grammatical conversation), because neither have felt the need to speak it more than a little as grandparents can understand English so when spoken to in Polish they reply in English.

Now that we know a few Polish nationals whose English is limited they are finding they could so with more.

Until now they haven't felt it relevant as unlike me they didn't visit the country regularly, and my Gran used to visit us too, so we needed to be fluent.

> Unfortunately his school insists they do French up to S4

either french or german is a requirement till s4 in the scottish curriculum, not just his school.

personally i did german so not much advise on subject but a tutor might help. to be honest s1 stuff is the general basics and you;d probably pic it up quick enough to help out by trying to converse with him (its all, hello, goodbye, how are you? stuff, then we did animals, hobbies, body parts etc)

have a look at his text book and see what he's doing and see if you can learn with him.

is he having trouble with actually speaking it or is it poor exam grades? just the exams are really different from anything he'll be used to (listening tests "you are staying with your french penfriend, Pierre. you go to the park. what do you eat at the park?" followed by a french speaking passage which is a nightmare to hear properly) so it might take a few goes to get used to it. it is quite hard to start with.