The greatest need of language teachers today is a workable approach to teaching vocabulary. This is essential if students are to be enabled to achieve communicative competence, that is, to make a transfer from the textbook to the real world of French, as reflected in the French media. An effective and comprehensive approach to teaching vocabulary can be integrated with existing French instructional materials and programs. In time, it can allow the teacher to use authentic materials in place of the "packaged" materials of existing courses. Such a change in methods and materials is essential if large numbers of students arriving in high school with a good foundation in French are to reach the stated objective. There are two complementary vocabulary instruction strategies directed toward this end: a predetermined approach based on a minimum high frequency word list, and an experiential approach using authentic materials (e.g., newspapers and radio broadcasts) arising from students' expressed needs. The predetermined approach capitalizes on the etymological relationship between French and English words. The experiential approach provides one way to learn, use and test vocabulary as it is needed. A bibliography and ten appendices are provided, containing lists of French and English words, grouped according to similarities and etymological origins and links, and sample vocabulary tests. (Author/AMH)