The Description of Others

Context:

Eh oui! One of my students’ favorite lessons!!! They are always very excited about this particular lesson because after just 3 days into the French program, they start learning the proper descriptive tools to talk about their best friends (and also about the new young men and women they now have as classmates, and (I’ll tell you a secret!) it is not rare to read some pretty flattering remarks they make about a certain class partner in their essays, hehe).

Well I hope that you, too, will have a lot of excitement about this lesson as you learn how to say “Elle est grande, elle est blonde”, etc (She is tall, she is blond …)

Goals:

In Lesson Three, you will learn:

new adjectives to describe people

gender and articles

the conjugation of the verb être

Chapter 1 –> Lesson 3:

Level of difficulty: Easy

MASCULINE			FEMININE
	Un homme. A man.			Une femme. A woman.
	Un garçon. A boy.			Une fille. A girl.
	Il est grand. He is tall.			Elle est grande. She is tall.
	Il est petit. He is short.			Elle est petite. She is short.
	Il est blond. He is blond.			Elle est blonde. She is blond.
	Il est brun. He’s got brown hair.			Elle est brune. She’s got brown hair.
	Il est beau. He is handsome.			Elle est belle. She is beautiful.
	Il est laid. He is ugly.			Elle est laide. She is ugly.
	Il est vieux. He is old.			Elle est vieille. She is old.
	Il est jeune. He is young.			Elle est jeune. She is young.
	Il est mince. He is thin, slender.			Elle est mince. She is thin, slender.
	Il est fort. He is heavy, plump.			Elle est forte. She is heavy, plump.

Now, here are two examples where I describe 2 celebrities using some of the adjectives we have just learned…

If you have listened very carefully to these 2 audio clips, I begin each description with “Regardez cette image”. I do not expect you to understand every single word of what you hear, but I do expect you to make good use of all the materials we have previously studied, and “Regardez” is one of them (lesson one).

Now, do not forget to do your homework

For the Grammar section of this lesson, please go to these different pages to learn more about:

→ French Gender and Articles

→ The verb être

→ How to form the negation