Romanian Language. Manual for Foreign Students in Preparatory Year (Level A1-A2)

Unit # 1
The alphabet / 11
• Graphic representation of letters in the Romanian alphabet / 11
• Groups of letters / 14
• Phonetic transformations / 17

Unit # 2
Who is she? / 19
• Personal pronouns in the nominative / 21
• The verb to be in the present (affirmative / negative) / 22
• Place and time (where / from where; when / from when) / 22
• Noun (fem. -A / -e; masc. -Ø / -i) / 22
• Interrogations. Who? What the? How many? How many? / 22
• Numbers from 0 to 19/23

Unit # 3
In a classroom / 27
• The verb to have in the present (affirmative / negative) / 28
• Noun (genres and numbers) / 28
• In a / -o; from a / -o / 29
• Many / few / few / each / 29
• Nobody / nothing / 29

Unit # 4
What's the weather like? / 33
• Cardinal points / 34
• Notions of time (moments of the day, days of the week, months of the year, seasons, date) / 34
• From when / until / 36
• Numbers from 20/36

Unit # 5
In Constanta / 41
• Notions of space (from where / to where) / 42
• The decided article / the undecided article / 42
• All / all / 44
• The adjective with four forms / 44
• Very + adjective / 45
• The verbs to do and to go to the present (affirmative / negative) / 45

Unit # 6 - Recapitulation / 51

Unit # 7
In classes / 59
• Notions of time: time expression / 60
• The verb in the infinitive; classification of verbs / 61
• The present indicative verb / 62
• Verb + preposition + noun / 63

Unit # 8
After courses / 69
• Verbs in the present indicative ending in: -ez, -esc, -asc / 70
• The verb in the imperative, second person plural / 71
• Pronouns and the demonstrative adjective of closeness: this, this, these, these / 71
• Much, -a / little, -a / everything, all + singular noun / 72

Unit # 9
The supermarket / 79
•  How much does it cost? / 83
• Colors / 83
• Variable adjectives with 2 and 3 forms / Invariable adjectives / 84
• The past: the perfect compound / 85
• The participle with adjective value / 85

Unit # 10
The students rented a house / 93
• The verbs to cut, to divide, to delay in the present / 95
• Mai + adjective / adverb / verb / 95
• The genitive (proper nouns, common nouns) / 95
• Prepositions with the genitive / 97
• Indefinite pronoun / adjective un (ul) / alt (ul) / 98

Unit # 11
The restaurant / 105
• The verbs to take, to stay, to give in different communication situations / 109
• Verbs to eat, to place in the present / 109
• The present subjunctive: the formation of the subjunctive, the distribution of the subjunctive, the subjunctive of some irregular verbs, the subjunctive with imperative value / 109
• Personal pronouns in the accusative - accentuated forms / 111

Unit # 12 - Recapitulation / 119

Unit # 13
The hospital / 127
• Personal pronouns in the accusative - unaccented forms / 129
• The position of unaccented pronominal forms in relation to the verb / 130
• Replacing the noun direct object with personal pronoun / 131
• Personal pronouns in the accusative - accentuated forms + unaccented forms / 131
• Interrogative pronoun in accusative (direct object) / 132

Unit # 14
The travel agency / 139
• Means of transport / 141
• The future (I will ... / you ... / I will ...) / 142
• The future accompanied by personal pronouns in the accusative / 143
• The adjective / pronoun demonstrative of distance that / that / 143
• The imperative, pers. a II-a singular / 144

Unit # 15
On a trip to Bran / 151
• Verbs ending in -a with alternating oa / u / 153
• The reflexive pronoun in the accusative / 153
• Verbs with reflexive pronouns in the accusative / 153
• The position of the reflexive pronoun in relation to the verb / 154
• The verb to be able and the reflexive pronoun / 155

Unit # 16
My family / 161
• Realization of possession in Romanian / 162
• The genitive. Structure: noun + adjective, noun + possessive adjective, noun + qualifying adjective, noun + demonstrative adjective / 163
• The degrees of comparison of the adjective / adverb / 164

Unit # 17
Shopping / 171
• Personal pronouns (accented forms and unaccented forms) in dative / 173
• The position of pronouns in the dative in relation to the verb / 174
• Verbal constructions with the dative / 175
• Nouns in the dative case / 175
• Both / both / 176

Unit # 18 - Recapitulation / 183

Annexes - Grammar notions for Level A1-A2 / 197

The work Romanian Language. Handbook for foreign students in the preparatory year. Level A1-A2, now in its third edition, is addressed, as mentioned in the title, primarily to foreign students in the preparatory year, who come to Romania to attend Romanian universities in various specializations, in Romanian.
At the same time, we consider that the paper, made according to the descriptors of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages ​​(CEFR) is particularly useful for all foreigners who are interested in obtaining a minimum knowledge of the Romanian language.
Certainly, the experience gained during the years of activity with groups of foreign students has been very helpful in compiling and structuring learning units that include texts on topics from different fields, very useful for students in discovering the realities of Romanian society, complemented by a lexicon adapted to the needs of expression at beginner level, grammar problems explained for everyone's understanding and finally a set of very varied exercises, which approach all language compartments and which combine in an efficient and attractive way the vocabulary knowledge with the phonetics, morphology and Romanian syntax.
In order to remove the monotony of repeating the same type of exercise, we combined the exercises that allow the development of the student's reading skills, with exercises for developing writing skills (exercises involve replacing some forms with others, finding antonyms / synonyms, choosing a correct variant, answer to questions, finding mistakes and correcting them, filling in the blanks, composing on various topics, etc.) and speaking in Romanian (descriptions of images, conducting dialogues in different communication situations). All types of exercises approached in the textbook require from the students a good knowledge of the vocabulary and grammar of the Romanian language at beginner level, but also a special attention in finding the solutions.
The texts and exercises are doubled by the presentation of clear and suggestive images for the approached language problem, which makes the students to be won from an emotional point of view, which is very important in the process of teaching-learning Romanian as a foreign language. These images help a lot to Romanian language users in developing oral expression skills.
Therefore, the structure of the textbook was designed so as to obtain a unitary whole, and the communication skills (understanding a written text and an oral message, producing written text and producing an oral message), based on a solid linguistic competence, to be equally present in all learning units. Each unit was designed to cover approximately 10 (ten) course hours, this limit can be changed plus or minus, depending on the specific profile of each group of students.
The paper wants to be of an applicative type, with a content adapted to the needs of expression in Romanian at the A1-A2 level.
Without claiming to have found the formula of the perfect textbook for learning Romanian as a foreign language, we hope that this paper will be of real use to both teachers who are concerned with teaching Romanian to non-native speakers and students and to all foreigners who want to discover the Romanian language in all its aspects.

The Authors