Friday, March 28, 2008

French Online Grammar Quiz

Check out this great website as a way to test your French knowledge and review basic grammar.

French Online Grammar Quiz

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

French Dictionary

Use this great online dictionary to look up French/English translations.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

French Accent Codes

Note: Your written text must be complete with correct accent marks in order for the pronunciation to be correct. Codes for accent marks courtesy of Penn State University http://tlt.its.psu.edu


Capital Vowels
À ALT+0192
 ALT+0194
Ä ALT+0196
È ALT+0200
É ALT+0201
Ê ALT+0202
Ë ALT+0203
Î ALT+0206
Ï ALT+0207
Ô ALT+0212
Œ ALT+0140
Ù ALT+0217
Û ALT+0219
Ü ALT+0220
Ÿ ALT+0159


Lowercase Vowels
à ALT+0224
â ALT+0226
ä ALT+0228
è ALT+0232
é ALT+0233
ê ALT+0234
ë ALT+0235
î ALT+0238
ï ALT+0239
ô ALT+0244
œ ALT+0156
ù ALT+0249
û ALT+0251
ü ALT+0252
ÿ ALT+0255

Friday, March 7, 2008

Blogs and Avatars

Today you have the opportunity to create your own blog and avatar. A blog is a web based journal where you can publish written, audio, and visual, and multi-media work that you have created. An avatar is a computer persona that you can incorporate into your blog. Avatars can be fun ways to personalize your blog and add audio content to your blog, without compromise your safety by publishing photos of yourself.

To set up a blog, you need to go to blogger.com and create a new blog. You need to have an email account in order to do this. If you don't have an email account go to google's gmail page and register for a new account.

Please follow the following guidelines for setting up a blog account, and provide me with your email address and password in case information is forgotten or misplaced.

Your user name is your email address.

Your password is of your choice.

Your display name is your first name only.

The title of your blog is "French I: Your First Name (French or English)."

Your blog web address (URL) is "firstnamefrench1.blogspot.com"

Next you need to set up a Voki account at voki.com

In order to do this you need to have a valid e-mail address. Most of you already do. If you have forgotten yours, see me. You will need to validate your voki account by checking you email and clicking on the necessary link in a message you will receive from Voki. Go ahead and check your email to do this. After you validate, you can return to voki.com and begin building your avatar.

Avatars need to be dressed appropriately as if they were going to school; there are some inappropriate outfits and these must be avoided.

Once you are ready to give your avatar text to speak, I would like you to type in French sentences. These sentences should include a greeting and introduction of yourself. You must also include at least two sentences: one, about what you like to do; two, what you do not like to do. You can then say goodbye, talk more about yourself (or your avatar), or pose questions to your audience. All your text must be written in French. There is an option on the voice creation in Voki that allows you to play with French accents.