OT: Teaching French

My family are headed to France in four weeks or so now and I've recently
been persuaded to go with them. We actually own a house there but I
haven't been for so long that my french is extremely rusty, and although
my parents say all the time that they want to learn French they never
really make the time. I think its a bit rude to go to a foreign country
without making some effort to speak the local language, so I've been
trying to revise my French and also at the same time trying to help my
parents. At some time or other they've covered most topics, so its more
a matter of relearning what they've learned and forgotten (several
times... they've gotten much worse since their french tutor moved away
about a year ago) than introducing new material.
 Anyway, I've been writing them little topic sheets that they can do
half an hour summarising different things... trying to help, but like I
said my french is very rusty. I only started a week or so ago and so far
I've only really gone over the present tense with them (regular endings
and a few of the really common irregular verbs) and where to put
pronouns in french (my father regularly tries to replace me with moi, te
with toi etc in statements and my mother gets confused about using
indirect object pronouns and where to put them sometimes...). Given that
I've only got four weeks, and that they (and I) have all the touristy
phrases memorised, which areas of grammar should I focus on? I'd be
grateful to hear from native French speakers or anyone who teaches
French. :)

Chris Bates.

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