Kilo Lingo

French ยท Curriculum

The French curriculum, in one view

Twelve chapters. The first three lay the foundation: word order, the top hundred lemmas, and the present tense. Chapters four through twelve drop a new band of high-frequency vocabulary every hundred ranks, weave in the AQA Foundation grammar that activates each band, and end with a graded reader you can finish using only the words you've learned so far.

Chapters
12
Lessons
118
Grammar primers
23
Story milestones
10

The grammar arc, chapter by chapter

Every chapter from 4 onwards interleaves grammar with the rank batches, so a learner alternates between drilling words and unlocking the construction that turns those words into sentences. This is the arc:

  1. 1

    Word order in French

    Also: French articles: when to use which

  2. 2

    Top 127 words foundation

    Ranks 1-127

  3. 3

    Conjugating -er verbs

    Also: Conjugating -ir verbs, Conjugating -re verbs

  4. 4

    Demonstratives: ce, cet, cette, ces

    Also: Possessive adjectives, Negation: ne... pas, jamais, rien, personne · ranks 101-200

  5. 5

    Adjective agreement

    Also: Partitives and 'de' after negation and quantity, Basic prepositions and contractions · ranks 201-296

  6. 6

    Direct and indirect object pronouns

    Ranks 303-400

  7. 7

    Reflexive verbs

    Also: Comparatives, Question words · ranks 401-500

  8. 8

    The passe compose with avoir

    Ranks 501-600

  9. 9

    The imparfait

    Also: Passe compose vs imparfait: which one when · ranks 601-698

  10. 10

    Talking about the future

    Ranks 701-800

  11. 11

    The conditionnel

    Ranks 801-900

  12. 12

    Commands: the imperative

    Also: Impersonal verbs: il y a, il faut, il fait, Relative pronouns: qui, que, dont, ou · ranks 901-999

What you can do when you finish

  • Read the rank-1000 graded reader at the end of Chapter 12 with no lookups - every content word is from the chapters you've just worked through.
  • Hold a present-and-past tense conversation: ask questions, talk about routines, narrate something that happened yesterday.
  • Hedge a request politely with the conditional ("I would like...", "could you...").
  • Recognise (and partly produce) the AQA GCSE Foundation grammar inventory - the formal benchmark for the curriculum.