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that their worst nightmare was indeed talking the language. The pronunciation of words was alien to them, and their need to speak in French, urgent, as it played a part in the life they live and communication on a simple basis with neighbors and villagers alike.

Little by little, I developed a technique that I believe is better in cases of teaching older students, and its success rate has been favorably compared against the traditional classes in language. My students are confident to talk the language because my system takes the learning process, and I produce lessons which are not only appropriate to the lifestyles of individual students, but also produce sheets of paper with correct French written words or phrases, followed by the English meaning, and then in bold type the actual phonetic pronunciation. I wasn't sure how this would work, though it worked very well, and over the period of the last two years, has helped many people that came to live here without knowledge of the language to integrate and talk to local people.

The most important verbs in the French language are Aller (to go), Avoir (to have) and Etre (to be). With a knowledge of conjugation of these irregular verbs, the student grasps the future tense, past tense and present tense respectively, and there are cheats to the French language that do not require the complexity that traditional language courses teach, which are too highbrow and difficult for students of this age, whose need is now, not in five years' time.

Let's demonstrate how phonetics works. Take a word like "fois". An elderly person looks at a word like this and is baffled. Taken phonetically to be spoken as "Fwa", they instantly understand the phonetics and the way in which it is said. Of course purists would argue that it is important to learn the complexities of a language, though it is worth bearing in mind that the people whom I teach are mature students who don't have the background to be able to understand traditional methods, and from the point of view of written work, every class that I give is followed by written homework in correct French.

Introducing the "La", "Le" and "Les", and the possessive "Mon", "Ma", "Mes" etc., was simple as the course I wrote took into account that people of this age range will at some time in their future need medical help. I introduced the parts of the body, and then went through the process of being able to say "My leg, My arm, My head", demonstrating how the possessive pronoun changes with

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