Conjugation Nation French Review

Today, I want to take a look at an iOS app (sorry, Android users, hit the bottom for a recommendation) entitled Conjugation Nation French.  It's available on the App Store for $2.99 and is designed for students of French to be able to practice their conjugations.  It is available for Spanish and Italian verbs.

So, how does it work?  Well, let's fire it up and take a look.  Here is your starting screen:

The top three options allow you to jump into a pop quiz using your most recently-defined settings.  We'll take a look at the exams themselves, but first, let's dive into the settings menu!

As you can see from my stupendous screen grab, the options they are aplenty.  Specify your tenses (from all 17), which persons/pronouns you want to use, and then select which verbs you want to practice and save your own custom lists with all of these settings.  Conjugation Nation will also save your scores and you can erase them at will.  The other options are pretty self-explanatory, I think, so let's jump into the actual test!

 Crap.  Well, it was fun while it lasted.  If you have trouble remembering what a particular verb on the test means, just tap the screen in the "chalkboard" region and the definition will come up in yellow English text.  You will be scored on correct answers/total possible correct answers and on time spent.  Any mistaken answers will incur a time penalty which is added onto your final time.  This adds a nice sense of self-competition to what is otherwise a mere pop quiz, and I liked this touch.  It also makes for geeky competitions with your beloved.  Just make sure not to win too much, or you may have to learn the French for "to sleep on the couch without one's blanket."  Your results summary will also display all of your answers.  Click on the red ones to see which ones you missed and what the correct word was.  I like to write these down and then make a superlist over time that is comprised of my weakest verbs.

 Alright, I know what you're thinking right now.

Well, I'm glad you asked, even if you need a review session on how to use an interrogation mark!  Here's the deal.  There is a lie that you have been told if you've been told in learning French conjugations.  It goes something like this:

Teacher: There are three verb groups in French.  Can you tell me what they are?
Student: Yes, ma'am!  They are the verbs ending in -er, most of the verbs ending in -ir, and the irregular verbs!
Teacher: Wonderful, Theodosius!  Have a conjugation cookie, you brilliant beast!

What is the lie, you ask?  ALL OF IT!  In reality, there are NOT merely three verb groups in French, there are 103!  103!

"How can this be?!", you ask, "Mrs. Farthingsworth was just like a teacher to me!"  Well, in fairness, she was sort of correct.  There are three VERY general categories of verbs.  The problem is that the third group contains a bajillion exceptional verbs, and the first two groups also have slight differences within them.  What's a conjugator to do?

Well, what is needed is a roadmap of all 103 groups.  See, some of them, like, say "tenir" have derivatives that will conjugate in the same way, like "advenir", "appartenir", "entretenir", "se souvenir", et cetera.  Here's the bad news: Conjugation Nation will not help you to cover all of these groups.  It will tell you the same lie as Mrs. Farthingsworth.  The difference is that she was trying to get any French at all to find a place in your school while competing with Jenny McWilliams who was the real reason that you took French class in the first place and who definitely had no interest in learning her conjugations with you.  Not even "jodler", which really is a pretty innocent one when you think about it, and its a regular first-grouper to boot!

So.......where to find these groups?  Brace yourself, gentle learner, for we are going to reference a buygone age by turning to.........................................................a book!  It is a classic and a favorite here in beautiful France and it is called "La conjugaison pour tous" and is part of the Bescherelle Deceptively Small and Pink Reference Collection.  Probably.  Anyhoo, it looks like this:

This book has EVERYTHING in it that you need to know about the verb groups, except for drills.  So, I decided to be brilliant and create lists in Conjugation Nation of 3 or 4 verb groups each to ensure that I drill all of the possible verb permutations.  And that's where I found out the one problem with this app.  48 of the 103 groups are not represented here!  Another problem?  When I make a list, I can't share it with someone (namely, my wife and another fellow student).  To give these lists to another person, I would have to recreate the from scratch.  C'est vraiment trop dommage.

Okay, this is getting depressing, what's the good news?  Well, this app works...as long as your okay with a very basic list of around 140 essential verbs!  I really have seen a dramatic improvement in my knowledge of French verbs, and the 25-word list is the perfect length to sneak a quick quiz in while I walk to my kids' school to pick them up!  I try to do the 50-word about once or twice a week (it takes about 12 minutes for me, I'm doing 11 tenses currently).  The 10-question one is very nice whenever you're just waiting in line somewhere or have a spare minute-literally!  My 7-year-old daughter has really gotten into doing it, as well.  If you fail to put accents, you get a wrong answer, which is great for ensuring proper spelling.  So, here's my breakdown and score:

Other, similar resources that you might want to check out to work on your conjugations:

Web: www.verbuga.eu
Android: Conjugate French Verbs
iOS: Verb2Verbe
Binder-friendly: French Verbs Sparkscharts
Print: Bescherelle: La Conjugaison Pour Tous (I really recommend this even if you have another drilling tool, this is really THE essential reference guide)

Thanks for reading and let me know your thoughts and any recommendations you might have for learning French.  If you'd like me to review a resource, drop me a line at hudson.shires@gmail.com .  Until next time, adieu!

Hudson