The fourth year of secondary school
Four years already! Just one more step and high school will soon be a thing of the past (not what you’ve learned, we hope!). In Secondary 4, we consolidate what students have learned by increasing the complexity of their reading, writing and oral communication skills. Here’s a review of French in Secondary 4. This knowledge is in line with the Quebec Education Program, available on the Ministry of Education and Higher Education of Quebec website.
Literary genres studied in Secondary 4
In Secondary 4, the emphasis is increasingly on the importance of writing. The literary genres studied are the short story or novel (fantasy, initiation, psychological or science fiction) and the short story or narrative (fantasy, psychological or science fiction), either original or inspired by a film. As they read, students study their characteristics: their areas of interest, their preferred genres, their literary knowledge (linked to their personalized repertoire), and the effectiveness of their reading and listening strategies. They also study, among other elements, the historical or sociocultural context of production (as distinct from the period in which the story takes place). He learns to write a story in the 1st person, and to recognize marks of the narrator’s attitude towards the characters and his subject. Finally, he studies lyric poems and plays. In short, he’ll have learned a lot this year!
The weighting on the Secondary 4 report card is the same as for Secondary 1 to 3. They are as follows: Read and appreciate a variety of texts (40%), write a variety of texts (40%) and communicate orally in a variety of ways (20%).
By the end of Secondary 4, your child should be able to :
- Use the correct lexicon for names of establishments, events, holidays, trademarks, news media, etc. (e.g.: the visit to Parliament, Labor Day, a Toyota, Le Monde newspaper).
- Recognize nuances of meaning (e.g.: color, shade, hue).
- Recognize the variety of language (e.g.: automobile, voiture, bagnole, bazou).
- Distinguish between oral and written usage.
- Recognize and use acronyms (e.g.: Société Radio-Canada→SRC; cégep; ONU).
- Recognize borrowings (e.g.: wapiti, yogourt, rafle) and the use of regionalisms (e.g.: débarbouillette, dispendieux, poutine); criticized borrowings and anglicisms (e.g.: chum, line up, appointement).
- Use the pronouns I or he as the only narrator in a story.
- Pay attention to nuances in the meaning of a verb (e.g.: gravir, escalader).
- Use plurals for proper nouns (e.g.: la fête des Lachance; on a volé deux Picassos à Amsterdam) and compound proper nouns.
- Use the appropriate number for infinitives used as nouns (e.g.: des allers et retours, les savoir-faire).
- Use syntactic manipulations to agree determiners, often in opposition to other word classes (e.g.: tout).
- Use nuances of meaning (e.g.: disrespectful, insolent, brazen).
- Use prefixes and suffixes with meliorative (e.g.: superpowerful) and pejorative (e.g.: -ard: chauffard; -onne: brouillonne) values.
- Recognize antithesis (e.g.: history is beautiful, reality less so), euphemism (e.g.: an emerging country for a poor one), hyperbole (e.g.: Je suis crevée!; C’est un pic, c’est un cap, c’est une péninsule [pour le nez]!, Edmond Rostand) and metonymy (e.g.: Ces jeunes s’en vont à la mort pour à la guerre).
- Agree the adjective with a nominal group whose nucleus is a collective noun (e.g.: un groupe d’électeurs favorables/favorable).Use -indre and -soudre verbs (e.g.: craindre, peindre, résoudre), -oir verbs (e.g.: émouvoir, décevoir, recevoir, s’asseoir) and the verbs vaincre, convaincre, rompre, corrompre and interrompre.
…and much more !
Finally, in addition to the verb tenses already taught, in 4th grade students learn the modal values of the imperative and subjunctive to express an order, a wish, etc., as well as the modal values of certain uses of the future and conditional tenses (e.g.: Ce serait la solution.).
Here’s a video explaining the agreement of determiners, which are responsible for many mistakes. It’s time not to get caught out again.
Finally, the 4th year of secondary school is an important one, preparing students for their final year before vocational training. This is the time to double up on your studies and assimilate all the material. Here you’ll find French revision exercises.
And if you’d like to practice your grammar rules and agreements of all kinds, here are a host of exercises to get you started.
Reading strategies
Since reading is an important part of Secondary 4, here are a few strategies to help students develop their reading skills:
-Orient reading according to intentions and needs (what information should the student extract from the text?)
-Determine how to read (overview or complete reading, taking into account what is required in the assignment).
-Plan one or more ways of noting significant elements (reactions, questions, associations, sources consulted, quotations, unifying concepts).
-Activate general or specific knowledge (of the text and author, for example, and recognize particular effects in the text that enable particular effects to be created).
-Determine the elements to be considered (What is the subject and genre of the text? Who is the author?).
-Anticipate content from clues (back cover, table of contents)
-As you read, identify the information that emerges from the text, its new ideas (what do I learn from reading this text?).
-Develop a lexical field around the theme to identify all related information.
-Draw up a table of all the information that emerges from the text, according to each paragraph.
And here you’ll find tips for effective reading!
This article gives excellent advice on how to make it easier for students to assimilate vocabulary words. The speech therapist who wrote it also encourages students to understand what they’re learning, not just to store the information.
MMES also provides a site where you can access digital books, both fiction and non-fiction, written by French-speaking authors from Quebec, Canada and around the world. All you have to do is select Secondary 4 and the desired level of difficulty. You can also enter keywords on themes of interest to your child.
Useful links :
- Students will soon be entering their final year of high school. It’s time to decide which CEGEP to attend and which field of study to pursue. This article explains the differences between high school and CEGEP.
- Students can practice their grammar with these dictations, depending on what they want to work on. For example, he or she can practice verb agreement, capitalization, negation, etc.
Essential skills for high school:
French in high school :
- Revision of French in Secondary 1
- Revision of French in Secondary 2
- Revision of French in Secondary 3
- Revision of French in Secondary 4
- Revision of French in Secondary 5
- Become a high school French tutor
- Find a French or French as a second language tutor
High school mathematics :
- Revision Secondary 1 mathematics
- Revision Secondary 2 mathematics
- Revision Secondary 3 mathematics
- Revision of the mathematics technico sciences program (TS4)
- Revison of Culture, Society and Technology (CST4)
- Revison of the mathematics and natural sciences program (SN4)
- Revision of the mathematics technico sciences program (TS5)
- Revison of the mathematics natural sciences program (SN5)
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- Tips to make homework easier
- Becoming a high school math tutor
- Find a math tutor
- Find an algebra tutor
- Find a science tutor
- Find a biology tutor
- Find a physics tutor
- Find a chemistry tutor
Secondary 4 History
English as a second language in secondary schools :
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- Secondary Cycle 1 English as a Second Language
- Secondary Cycle 2 English as a Second Language
- Become an ESL tutor at the secondary level
- Tips to make homework easier
Reference :
- Ministry of Education and Higher Education of Quebec http://www.education.gouv.qc.ca/enseignants/pfeq/secondaire/
- http://www.education.gouv.qc.ca/fileadmin/site_web/documents/education/jeunes/pfeq/PFEQ_francais-langue-enseignement-premier-cycle-secondaire.pdf
