> had some exposure to them) but did not know many common
> tenses (PRESENT TENSE!, Imparfait). It has been a struggle
You might try teaching past/future tenses based on the
present tense + infintive of aller/venir/pouvoir -- then your
students can express many things with only the present tense.
Surely your students will be happy to know that by learning
only one tense they can express many ideas! when they have to
write an essay on a test, they will appreciate this economy.

> present tense, p.c., and imparfait). But they had no idea
> what an article was, when/how to use le/la/l'/les!!!!!
do they know what an article is in English? I always found
that French articles made more sense when their usefulness
was clear. How exactly are they useful? Well, by tracing the
use of fem/masc and sing/plur through a text, you know what
adjective refers to what, you also know what a pronoun refers
to (just like he, she, it in English). Maybe a demonstration
of how articles are useful to the student, such as how
associating gender and plurality allow you to better guess
the answer to a question on a test.

Surely when students understand that minimal effort will apy
off with much better test scores they will focus better.
without understanding the concrete usefulness of the grammar
to the students it is likely just useless, abstract,
arbitrariness.

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