French verb pivots - Part 1 - focuses on the present indicative, but also covers the immediate future, as well as modal verbs. It is a book aimed at beginner-to-pre-intermediate learners of French, for classroom or independent use, whatever the setting or course.




Traditional grammar and lexicogrammar intersect throughout the whole book, allowing learners to become creative with each sentence pattern and master the manipulation of the changeable items in each sentence.




This book aims at teaching how to use the most useful and frequent French verbs in everyday communication in order to:

- manipulate them effectively

(inflectional morphology, e.g. how to conjugate them in the present)

- deal with the linguistic choices they trigger

(pattern grammar, i.e.: the constructions associated with each verb)

- master the rules which bind words together within a given syntactic pattern (colligations, i.e.: how each word affects the next; for instance how determiners or adjectives agree in gender and number with nouns)




Each of the 9 units in the book centres on a key verb, which is then explored through a wide range of enjoyable multi-modal tasks. Each unit starts 'small', with the target verb being learnt within very basic sentence patterns and in the first person only, before gradually increase in length and complexity. Recycling is carefully engineered to allow for repeated receptive and productive processing of the target language items within the same units and across the whole book.