In the eighth grade French Honors course students develop an increased sense of confidence and proficiency in expressing themselves in French.  Oral proficiency is achieved through paired activities, presentations, peer review, performances, and exercises that encourage students to react to and interpret oral and print input. Students are introduced to thematically based vocabulary units that include a comprehensive vocabulary and idioms associated with time, weather, dates, professions, nationalities, and leisure activities.  They develop proficiency in shopping for food and ordering in a restaurant, planning a meal, making introductions and extending invitations and discussing feelings.  Students also learn vocabulary and structures that enable them to speak, read, and write about entertainment, sports, health, and daily life.  Students learn about the social and political issues that people in the Francophone world are facing. Theme-based instruction gives the students the opportunity to expand their language skills in a meaningful way. Throughout the year, the students learn grammar in context that enables them to enhance their interpersonal and presentational language skills.   Grammatical structures are expanded to include: review of present tense of verbs including reciprocal and reflexive verbs, the past tense, expressions of quantity, the plural of adjectives and nouns, and indirect discourse.