Goal: To introduce the concept of gender and to teach the articles that go with words of each gender. 

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livre (book)
chat (cat)
avion (airplane)
foot (football, soccer)
crayon (pencil)
ordinateur (computer)
magasin (store)

édition (edition)
grenouille (frog)
voiture (car)
natation (swimming)
gomme (eraser)
calculette (calculator)
école (school)

Before you start investigating articles in French, it might be helpful to review articles in English. In English, as in French, there are four kinds of articles: indefinate, definate, particular, and possessive.

Consider this sentence: A dog is brown.
The subject of the sentence, "a dog", could be any dog. When it is unclear what object, or in this case dog, you are talking about, you know you are using an indefinate article. In English, the indefinate articles are "a" and "an."

Consider this sentence: The dog is brown. 
The subject of the sentence, "the dog", refers to a specific dog. That's because the word "the" is a definate article. In English, "the" is the only definate article.

Consider this sentence: That dog is brown. 
The subject of the sentence, "that dog", refers to a very specific dog. Particular articles are a type of definate articles, and they are even more specific than regular definate articles! In English, the particular articles are "these," "those," "this," and "that."

Consider this sentence: My dog is brown. 
The subject of the sentence, "my dog", refers to a dog owned by a specific person. Possessive articles are a way of showing the owner of something. In English, the possessive articles are "my," "your," "their," "our," "his,"and "her." 

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Indefinate, definate, particular, and possesive articles are also present in French. However, unlike English (where no gender is present), French uses different articles for words of different genders. Words that are in the plural and words that start with vowel sounds also use different articles.