The Story Behind the French Verb Code Breaker
One summer, years ago, I was teaching French to teachers of French who wanted to upgrade their skills and confidence to be able to help their own students overcome the challenges of French verb tenses.
As one of them was looking over the many Fench verb tenses in a popular conjugation manual, he asked me with a defeated look and tone:
"What do all these tenses mean?"
His desperate question highlighted what a huge challenge learners whose first language is English face when trying to master French verb tenses.
Learning and practising the rules is a big challenge, but knowing the actual generic meanings of the various verb tenses represents a whole other level of difficulty!
"What's the use of being able to conjugate a verb correctly if you don't understand the generic meaning - general value(s) - of the verb tense that you're conjugating?"
Verb tense names like 'Imparfait', 'Passé composé', 'Futur antérieur', etc., tend to be meaningless to a speaker of English.
I had to find a way to 'break that code'. I had to find a quick and intuitive way to decode those verb-tense names into something that was meaningful to English-speaking learners of French.
What, after all, did the French verb tenses actually mean? What was one actually saying when different tenses were used? These were the questions that I set out to answer for English–speaking students of French.
This led to an intuitive linguistic invention I now call the 'Univerb Tag'©. (The term "Univerb" represents "Universal Verb-Tense Coding System".
Univerb for short.
These tags work as instant and flexible verb-tense labels which can be modified to represent any conceivable English verb-tense expression.
Here's how it works. Each Univerb Tag combines three parts:
1) one generic subject (third person wherever applicable),
2) one specific English verb-tense expression, and
3) one generic verb.
Here are a handful of examples:
The Univerb Tag for the 'Plus-que-parfait' verb tense is 'he/she/it had verbed'.
The Univerb Tag for the 'Futur antérieur' verb tense is 'he/she/it will have verbed'.
The Univerb Tag for the 'Présent continu' verb tense is 'he/she/it is in the process of verbing' or 'he/she/it is in the middle of verbing'.
And the Univerb Tag for the 'Conditionnel passé' verb tense in its passive form is 'he/she/it would have been verbed' or 'he/she/it would have gotten verbed'.
And so on. You get the idea. It's that simple. And it can represent every verb tense and variation, without exception.
The Univerb Tag system turned out to be a simple, natural, and at the same time powerful code-breaking system which for the very first time made it possible for learners – teachers, students, and professionals – to instantly grasp all the generic meaning(s) of any verb tense(s) they were trying to learn. The first book I wrote was a prototype containing only the active voice of all the major verb tenses, titled "The French Verb Express"
The first students to use my book (The French Verb Express) were professionals in their respective fields who were taking a year-long French course with very high achievement targets. They loved the approach and found it helpful to achieve their professional goals. (Reviews available on request.)
Then I created an 8-hour workshop for local teachers of French where they could learn the generic meanings of all the major French verb tenses along with all the rules. They were delighted to be able to practise the formulas while knowing exactly what they all really meant. (Reviews available on request).
Then I asked a group of students that had graduated from the Canadian French Immersion program to evaluate the book, and they concluded that if they had had this tool during their own studies, they could have reached a much higher level of verb-tense skill. (Reviews available on request.)
The discovery of the Univerb Tag system eventually led to my creating a set of specially designed Univerb-Tag cards to use as an experiment with a mature French student who wanted to learn the English verb system.
With no prior knowledge of the English language, she was able to use my set of Univerb Tags to go directly from her own mother tongue of French to an in-depth knowledge of English verb-tense usage!
It worked seamlessly and instantly removed the usual confusion faced when learning the verb tenses of another language.
So this new method turned out to be useful in two directions; from English to French and from French to English.
The speaker of English can see every generic meaning of any French verb tense, and the speaker of French can see and begin to master English verb-tense usage.
It turned out to be a winning combination, so I decided to write an amplified version of my first book.
Imagine the full inventory of every conceivable French verb tense - in the active, passive and pronominal voices along with the four major semi-auxiliary verbs (Aller, Devoir, Pouvoir, and Vouloir) - all represented by these little tags to instantly clarify the exact generic meaning(s) of every possible verb tense and form.
That was my next step, and after many years of work, I have now published the 722-page French Verb Code Breaker (now available from Amazon and fine book sellers around the world).
I also designed a companion website featuring examples (with every possible translation) of every French verb tense and variation that is included in this volume.
In the online examples, I’ve used the 3rd person masculine and/or feminine (singular or plural) wherever possible in order to clearly show the effects of masculine and feminine (if any) on that particular verb tense or form.
The online examples, translations, and extra notes represent over 200 extra pages of paper, so I integrated a WebBridge System throughout the volume in the form of QR codes (the little square codes).
The user can simply scan (paper edition) or click on (digital edition) any QR code with any smart device and they’ll be instantly transported to its companion web page showing examples of that French verb tense/form and all of its possible variations, every conceivable translation, and much more.
Subscription-based online exercises (webxercises) are also currently in planning and being prepared for online practice, and for download for home assignment or for in-class live practice.
Click HERE to see the practice webxercises that are on the way!