Core French 10

Unit 1: Listening and Viewing with Intent

Big Idea: listening and viewing with intent supports our acquisition and understanding of French. Reading a variety of French text types with an eye for format, audience, register, and purpose, and recognizing the common elements that make up a story.

• Reading a variety of text types: format, audience, register, purpose

• Common elements of stories: place, characters, plot, problem and resolution

Unit 2: Expressing Ourselves and Engaging in Conversation

Big Idea: expressing ourselves and engaging in conversation in French involves courage, risk taking, and perseverance. The full Grade-10 toolkit for talking about your life across time — present, passé composé, l'imparfait, the passé-composé-vs-imparfait aspect contrast, and the futur proche — asking every kind of question, recounting events in sequence, expressing degrees of liking, sharing hopes and opinions, and narrating a story that pulls it all together. Framing note: this unit also carries forward the government's sixth Big Idea, "Acquiring French allows us to explore diverse opportunities" (educational, personal, professional, social, and travel opportunities per its elaboration) — a framing idea with no distinct Grade-10 Content standard of its own. It has no anchored skill; it is realized through these communicative and hopes/dreams/ambitions skills (talking about plans, jobs, and travel is exactly how a Core French student starts to access those opportunities), not through an invented standalone skill.

• The present tense as a system: describing what happens now

• The passé composé: narrating completed past events

• L'imparfait: describing ongoing and habitual past states

• Passé composé vs imparfait: choosing the right past tense (aspect)

• The futur proche: talking about the near future and plans

• Asking yes/no questions: intonation and Est-ce que

• Asking questions with inversion and interrogative words

• Recounting sequences of events with connectors (tout d'abord, ensuite, enfin)

• Expressing degrees of liking (J'aime bien... / Je n'aime pas du tout...)

• Talking about hopes, dreams, desires, and ambitions

• Giving opinions about familiar topics

• Narrating a story across past, present, and future time frames

Unit 3: A New Language Shapes Perspective and Identity

Big Idea: acquiring a new language can shape our perspective and identity. Choosing precise words — the right verb form, the right near-synonym — to convey exactly what you mean, not just something close to it.

• Word choice: verb-form nuance and near-synonyms (sortir vs partir)

Unit 4: Cultural Expression Takes Many Forms

Big Idea: cultural expression can take many different forms. Colourful idiomatic French — expressions with avoir, faire, and être, regional slang, and figurative sayings — plus the ethics of using someone else's cultural material with care and proper attribution.

• Idioms with avoir, faire, and être

• Slang expressions (l'argot) across la francophonie

• Figurative idiomatic expressions and their meanings

• Ethics of cultural appropriation and plagiarism (attribution and citation)

Unit 5: Interacting with the Francophone World

Big Idea: acquiring French allows us to interact with the Francophone world. The lives and contributions of Francophone Canadians, and the deep historical interactions between First Peoples and Francophone communities in Canada — including the Michif language and Chinook Jargon.

• Lives and contributions of Francophone Canadians

• Exploring the lives and contributions of Francophone Canadians

• First Peoples and French: Michif and Chinook Jargon