A teachers’ association recently recommended that the government simplify the rule of past participle agreement used with avoir. In my opinion, it is better to develop innovative methods to teach it and rely on the logic that gives the rule its meaning in most cases:
“The past participle used with avoir remains invariable if, when written, the word to which it refers is not known, or if it has no direct object. In the opposite case, that is to say when, at the time when the participle is written, the word to which it relates is known, because it precedes it, the past participle agrees with this complement of object in gender and number. (Quillet)
In the sentence “The apple that I ate”, the participle agrees since the speaker, once arrived at the verb, knows what it is: the apple was named earlier in the sentence. He can therefore agree the participle with this noun, because, precisely, it is to him that he relates on the level of meaning.
Some teachers approach the rule by emphasizing its supposed difficulty or by delegitimizing its use, which consolidates the students’ defeatism, whereas their intellectual curiosity should be aroused. A member of the association affirms: “When a student says to me: ‘Madam, I don’t understand why we grant it like that’, the only answer I give her is that people decided on the rules 400 years ago. years. It’s hard to convince him that it’s relevant. Hard, indeed, if one has no respect for the rules taught. Instead, let’s present the material constructively, focusing on the stated principle. It allows the student to carry out logical reasoning on the sentence, its meaning and its structure.
The solution promoted by the association is misguided. Let us consider student learning more broadly, as a teacher, Catherine Paradis (The pangs of the past participle). According to her, the long-awaited reform should not rely on the simplification of a rule, but on “the content and educational strategies”: “Young people should be confronted with texts and literary works that are increasingly complex and be accompanied in their reading. They should produce texts regularly, and language skills should be corrected and assessed, constructively, in all subjects. This is a great program to ensure that students learn to write and read.