French Lesson Plan Les Métiers (Jobs and

French Lesson Plan
Les Métiers (Jobs and Professions)
Purpose and requirements:
The main themes of the lesson are jobs and professions.
Here, students are encouraged to talk and interact verbally
since most of the lesson does not require any writing. It
introduces job-related vocabulary (professions, habits,
places, tools) and is mainly focused on feminine and
masculine rules in French (nouns more generally) but it will
also make students work on basic expression of goal, cause,
and consequence.
It requires students to know the indicatif présent (for all
groups of verbs, preferably) and the use of the conditionnel
présent. Students at this point have a good knowledge of
the various interrogative forms and most likely also know the
passé composé. This lesson is aimed at lower-intermediate
levels.
Lesson objectives:
− Communication: describe people’s jobs, ask
someone about his or her job, talk about habits,
express dreams and projects, and express cause,
consequence and goal.
− Grammar focus: feminine and masculine rules and
exceptions for nouns and adjectives to some extent,
interrogation, conditionnel présent
− Vocabulary: job-related vocabulary
Material:
− Images of various professions chosen by the teacher
from the word endings list provided below.
− Labels with places and items to draw
− A box
− Tape
− Dictionaries
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French Lesson Plan
Les Métiers (Jobs and Professions)
Bridge-in:
ACTIVITY 1
The rules (simplified):
Showing images of various professions, using male and
female pictures, the teacher is first going to demonstrate to
students that in French, there are:
Part 1
Most of the time, making nouns feminine just
involves adding an “e”
1. masculine and feminine forms for job names
2. some jobs with no feminine form that are used with “un”
or “le” as if they were masculine
3. differences between “il est” and “c’est” as in: il est
docteur, c’est un docteur
un employé de bureau – une employée de bureau
Guidelines:
–
–
–
Students can repeat the sentences to work on their
pronunciation and to realize there are different sorts of
endings. It is not necessary and might be confusing to
write the vocabulary at this point. It should be written on
the board when the activity is over.
The teacher should use names for the characters shown
to better explain the difference between “c’est” and “il
est”: C’est un docteur. Marc est docteur.
The rules for the feminine endings for nouns in French
are presented here in three different parts: easy ones
as well as common ones for jobs, the not so easy
ones, and then other endings that are rare for jobs.
This activity should only focus on endings of part 1 and
2. Rules have been simplified for an introduction to
feminine and masculine forms.
This works for all sorts of words: un ami, une amie,
un inconnu, une inconnue, etc.
But some words end in “e” and are both
masculine and feminine (this happens mostly
with job names).
le/la secrétaire – le/la vétérinaire – le/la juge – le/la
journaliste …
And many words have a specific ending; this is
also the case for certain animals too.
The -euse ending for words in -eur is very
common for jobs
un coiffeur – une coiffeuse
As well as the -(i)ère ending (although
pronunciation is not easy and there’s an accent
to add)
un boulanger – une boulangère
un banquier – une banquière
The -ienne ending for words in -ien
un comédien – une comédienne
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French Lesson Plan
Les Métiers (Jobs and Professions)
ACTIVITY 2
Part 1
The teacher places the characters representing jobs on the
board or walls of the class and asks students to pass the box
with labels around the class, each student drawing a certain
number of labels from the box.
The labels are marked with places related to the jobs the
teacher has shown as well as items used by the various
characters. It is advised to use two places and two items at
most for each job.
Note: The quiz sheets provide a basis of words to work with.
Students will then place the labels they have on the correct
images and only in the second phase can they look in the
dictionary if they are missing some words.
Example:
JOB : un cuisinier / une cuisinière
PLACE : un restaurant
ITEM USED : un four
Part 2
The teacher makes sentences to describe a job.
Example:
Le cuisiner travaille dans un restaurant. Il prépare
les repas avec un four. Il travaille avec un chef et
avec d’autres cuisiniers. Il ne voit pas les clients du
restaurant.
Then the teacher asks students to make sentences with
jobs of their choice following the example. Depending on
the students’ level, it might not be necessary to prepare the
sentences by writing them.
Part 2
The -trice ending can be confusing because of
words in -teur ending in -teuse
un acteur – une actrice
un chanteur – une chanteuse
Part 3
This part deals with other endings; there are
not many jobs with these endings; therefore,
some of the examples below may not be
specifically job related.
The -esse ending
un maître d’école – une maîtresse d’école
un âne – une ânesse
The -onne ending for words in -on
un patron – une patronne
un lion – une lionne
The -elle ending for words ending in -el
un criminel – une criminelle
éternel – éternelle
The -ette ending
un cadet – une cadette
not always for adjectives! discret - discrète
The -se ending for words ending in -x
un époux – une épouse
The -ve ending for words ending in -f
un sportif – une sportive
Debriefing
The first part of the lesson can be done without any writing
to encourage students to talk. The teacher should either
provide a list of the vocabulary used with sentences and
rules for the feminine or write them on the board for students
to copy once the first part of the lesson is over.
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French Lesson Plan
Les Métiers (Jobs and Professions)
Activity with written preparation
1. Before learning the rules in part 3 for feminine endings, each student is asked to prepare a short text to
present his or her dream job.
Questions to answer could be written on the board: What is your dream job? What do you do daily in
this job? Why would you like to do this job?
Dictionaries are probably necessary.
2. Teacher will check and correct:
− students have to use the conditionnel présent (at least with j’aimerais or je voudrais)
− students have to express a goal (pour + infinitive) but they may use parce que
Activity for the other “endings”
This activity deals with other endings (part 3 of the feminine endings rules) and there are not many jobs with
them.
1. Dialogue
The dialogue can be recorded or read by 2 students.
Théo – Qu’est-ce que tu voudrais faire plus tard ?
Nicole – Je voudrais être docteur et toi ?
Théo – Moi ? Comme mon papa !
Nicole – Et qu’est-ce qu’il fait dans la vie, ton papa ?
Théo – Mon papa est patron !
Nicole – Patron ? Ooh la la! Alors, vous êtes très riches ?
Théo – Mais non ! C’est une petite entreprise !
Nicole – C’est quelle entreprise ?
Théo – L’entreprise s’appelle « Le maître fromager »
2. Questions
a. What expression is used in French to talk about someone’s job?
→ « Qu’est-ce qu’il fait dans la vie ? »
b. What is a patron? (Why does Nicole think that Théo and his family are very rich?)
→ A “patron” is a boss.
c. What is Théo’s father’s company manufacturing or producing?
→ Cheese (Le maître fromager)
d. What is the feminine of “patron”?
→ Students do not know the answer or answer that the word needs an “e”; the teacher will introduce
the double consonant ending rule for “-on / -onne, -el / -elle, -et / -ette”
e. What is “Ooh la la” expressing?
→ It expresses surprise/admiration; it is an expression similar to “wow!”
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French Lesson Plan
Les Métiers (Jobs and Professions)
3. Dialogue creation for role play
In pairs, students create a dialogue with a little girl and a little boy, following the structure of the dialogue
above, but with different elements. The structure below could be given to students.
Boy – Qu’est-ce que tu voudrais faire plus tard ?
Girl – Je voudrais être …........................... et toi ?
Boy – Moi ? Comme ma maman !
Girl – Et …........................................................, ta maman ?
Boy – Ma maman est ….......................................... !
Girl – …............................... ? Ooh la la! Alors, [choose or invent] elle travaille beaucoup / tu ne la vois pas
souvent etc.
Boy – Mais non ! [choose or invent] ….................................................................... !
4. Other endings
Activity ends with the rest of the rules given to students:
-esse ending
un maître d’école, une maîtresse d’école
-se ending for words ending in -x
un époux, une épouse
-ve ending for words ending in -f
un sportif, une sportive
Closure
Game: What is your job?
The game is a type of “Who am I?” game, but with jobs.
A student chooses a job and others try to guess what it is
by asking questions that require a yes or no answer.
Do you use this or that, do you work at that place, do you
meet these people, do you work on the weekends...
The teacher can give examples of questions to ask.
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