soin (French) – Structured Vocabulary Support
£2.00
'Soin' is one of the first words a French learner meets when they start talking about looking after people or things - 'prendre soin de', to take care of. What it doesn't show on the surface is that it started out meaning something much closer to worry.
This card traces 'soin' through five stages. In Vulgar Latin (the late Roman period, around the 3rd-5th centuries) the form '*sunnia' meant worry, or concern of the mind - the sort of thing that sits in your head. By Old French (9th-11th centuries) 'soin' had shifted to care, concern and watchfulness. Through medieval French (12th-13th centuries) it came to mean care shown by actually helping someone, and in Middle French (14th-16th centuries) care shown through careful, diligent work. By modern French (17th century to today) it settled into the everyday sense we use now - care, treatment, or looking after someone or something.
A word card showing the full path of 'soin' from Vulgar Latin to modern French, with the meaning at each stage
An illustrated card for each of the five stages, each with a short caption written for the learner
A sources page listing every reference used
A page of guidance on how to use the resource
Format: PDF download. It's designed to work fully in black-and-white printing - colour isn't needed for meaning or accessibility. Laminating is optional.
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
Designed first for one of my own children, but it suits a wider range:
Anyone who likes knowing where words come from
KS3 French learners (roughly Year 7 upwards) meeting this vocabulary for the first time
Home-educated children learning French
Learners with dyslexia or weaker working memory, who often find isolated vocabulary hard to hold on to
Duolingo or classroom learners who want a bit more grounding under the words
Specialist tuition students
Parents and adults brushing up their own French, or studying alongside a child
This isn't a French course, and it isn't a way to learn the language from scratch. It assumes the learner is already meeting French vocabulary in lessons or reading - 'soin' is a word they'll come across, and this helps it make sense and stick. It's meant to be used with an adult guiding the discussion, not worked through alone.
Vocabulary taught as a list to memorise is hard work for a lot of dyslexic learners - the words don't connect to anything, so they slide straight back out. Knowing that 'soin' once meant worry, and watching it move from a feeling in the head to the everyday act of looking after someone, gives the word something to hang on. It doesn't replace practice or repetition. It makes the repetition land better.
Originally created to support one of my own children's learning once the school day had ended.
You'll find more French word cards in L'atelier des mots. If you'd like to try one first, there's a free sample, 'Salut'. And if you want the thinking behind why word origins help dyslexic learners with a foreign language, there's a post on that in the Compendium.
Available now as a PDF download.
'Soin' is one of the first words a French learner meets when they start talking about looking after people or things - 'prendre soin de', to take care of. What it doesn't show on the surface is that it started out meaning something much closer to worry.
This card traces 'soin' through five stages. In Vulgar Latin (the late Roman period, around the 3rd-5th centuries) the form '*sunnia' meant worry, or concern of the mind - the sort of thing that sits in your head. By Old French (9th-11th centuries) 'soin' had shifted to care, concern and watchfulness. Through medieval French (12th-13th centuries) it came to mean care shown by actually helping someone, and in Middle French (14th-16th centuries) care shown through careful, diligent work. By modern French (17th century to today) it settled into the everyday sense we use now - care, treatment, or looking after someone or something.
A word card showing the full path of 'soin' from Vulgar Latin to modern French, with the meaning at each stage
An illustrated card for each of the five stages, each with a short caption written for the learner
A sources page listing every reference used
A page of guidance on how to use the resource
Format: PDF download. It's designed to work fully in black-and-white printing - colour isn't needed for meaning or accessibility. Laminating is optional.
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
Designed first for one of my own children, but it suits a wider range:
Anyone who likes knowing where words come from
KS3 French learners (roughly Year 7 upwards) meeting this vocabulary for the first time
Home-educated children learning French
Learners with dyslexia or weaker working memory, who often find isolated vocabulary hard to hold on to
Duolingo or classroom learners who want a bit more grounding under the words
Specialist tuition students
Parents and adults brushing up their own French, or studying alongside a child
This isn't a French course, and it isn't a way to learn the language from scratch. It assumes the learner is already meeting French vocabulary in lessons or reading - 'soin' is a word they'll come across, and this helps it make sense and stick. It's meant to be used with an adult guiding the discussion, not worked through alone.
Vocabulary taught as a list to memorise is hard work for a lot of dyslexic learners - the words don't connect to anything, so they slide straight back out. Knowing that 'soin' once meant worry, and watching it move from a feeling in the head to the everyday act of looking after someone, gives the word something to hang on. It doesn't replace practice or repetition. It makes the repetition land better.
Originally created to support one of my own children's learning once the school day had ended.
You'll find more French word cards in L'atelier des mots. If you'd like to try one first, there's a free sample, 'Salut'. And if you want the thinking behind why word origins help dyslexic learners with a foreign language, there's a post on that in the Compendium.
Available now as a PDF download.
