New
New
Year 8

Good and bad experiences: feminine adjective agreement

Learning outcomes

I know how to make adjectives feminine, in order to accurately describe and compare masculine and feminine nouns.

I know that [om] and [on] can be nasal or oral sounds depending on whether they come before a consonant or a vowel.

Link copied to clipboard

New
New
Year 8

Good and bad experiences: feminine adjective agreement

Learning outcomes

I know how to make adjectives feminine, in order to accurately describe and compare masculine and feminine nouns.

I know that [om] and [on] can be nasal or oral sounds depending on whether they come before a consonant or a vowel.

Link copied to clipboard

These resources will be removed by end of Summer Term 2025.

Switch to our new teaching resources now - designed by teachers and leading subject experts, and tested in classrooms.

These resources were created for remote use during the pandemic and are not designed for classroom teaching.

Lesson details

Vocabulary and transcripts for this lessons

Key learning points

  1. The SSCs [om] and [on] are nasal sounds. Before a consonant they have the same nasal sound, like in ‘bombe’ and 'monde'.
  2. Before a vowel the 'm' and 'n' are pronounced, like in 'omelette' and 'monotone'. They are different oral sounds.
  3. In French, the ending of an adjective matches the noun it describes. This is called adjective agreement.
  4. There are various ways to make an adjective feminine, including adding an -e and changing -eur to -euse.
  5. Some short masculine adjectives ending in -n, -l or -s double the last letter before adding -e, e.g. gentil, gentille.

Keywords

  • [om] - sound-symbol correspondence pronounced as in 'nom', a nasal sound

  • [on] - sound-symbol correspondence pronounced as in 'non', a nasal sound

  • Adjective agreement - when the ending of an adjective matches the noun it describes in gender and number

Common misconception

The SSCs [om] and [on] always sound the same.

When [om] or [on] appear at the end of a word or before a consonant, they have a nasal sound and are pronounced the same. However, before a vowel their sounds are oral, the 'm' and 'n' are pronounced more clearly, making these SSCs sound different.


To help you plan your year 8 french lesson on: Good and bad experiences: feminine adjective agreement, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...

As we are at the beginning of practising comparisons in this lesson, the importance of the gender of French nouns comes into play. Games where pupils hear the noun without its article and have to indicate whether it is masculine or feminine, are a good way to encourage engagement and accuracy.
Teacher tip

Equipment

Licence

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2025), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

Lesson video

Loading...

Some of our videos, including non-English language videos, do not have captions.

6 Questions

Q1.
Match the adjectives to their meanings.
Correct Answer:italian,Italian

Italian

Correct Answer:dangereux,dangerous

dangerous

Correct Answer:gentil,kind

kind

Correct Answer:blanc,white

white

Correct Answer:sûr,safe

safe

Correct Answer:mince,thin

thin

Q2.
What is the French word for secondary school?
Correct Answer: un collège, collège
Q3.
Match the modal verbs to their meanings.
Correct Answer:vouloir,to want to

to want to

Correct Answer:devoir,to have to

to have to

Correct Answer:savoir,to know (how to)

to know (how to)

Correct Answer:pouvoir,to be able to

to be able to

Q4.
Which of the following words are adverbs?
Correct answer: souvent
sympa
Correct answer: encore
beau
Correct answer: seulement
Q5.
Put the words in the correct order to make the following sentence. 'I must only go out with Léa in the evenings'.
1 - Je
2 - dois
3 - seulement
4 - sortir
5 - le soir
6 - avec
7 - Léa
Q6.
Put the words in the correct order to make the following sentence. 'We can visit beautiful churches in Paris'.
1 - On
2 - peut
3 - visiter
4 - de
5 - belles
6 - églises
7 - à Paris.

6 Questions

Q1.
Complete the sentence. When [om] or [on] appear at the end of a word or before a consonant, they have a nasal sound and are pronounced the ...
Correct Answer: same
Q2.
Match the opposites.
Correct Answer:bon,mauvais

mauvais

Correct Answer:meilleur,pire

pire

Correct Answer:amusant,ennuyeux

ennuyeux

Correct Answer:plus,moins

moins

Correct Answer:grand,petit

petit

Correct Answer:intelligent,stupide

stupide

Q3.
Give the feminine form of the adjective 'travailleur'.
travailleur
travailler
Correct answer: travailleuse
travaille
travaillee
Q4.
'Il est très ' - He is very thin. Fill in the gap with the correct spelling of the adjective.
Correct answer: mince
mincee
minc
minceuse
Q5.
Translate, 'She is Italian'.
Correct Answer: Elle est italienne
Q6.
Put the words in the correct order to make the following sentence, 'The rabbit is white and the mouse is white too'.
1 - Le lapin
2 - est
3 - blanc
4 - et la souris
5 - est
6 - blanche
7 - aussi

Additional material

Download additional material