Common exceptions

Question

The lesson states "Most verbs ending -ir in Le Présent (Present Tense) conjugate like this:" but sortir, mentir and partir are very comon verbs endng in -ir that have a different rule so shouldn't the lesson discuss both groups smultaneously, otherwise a student gets misled until sometime later when the other is introduced with a similarly simplistic description.

Accepted Answer

Hi David,
This is a good point but in my experience this is how groups of verbs in learning French have always been taught.
You start off with the three groups of regular verbs and then you learn the exceptions and irregular verbs.
In time, you will be able to know which end in 
 'is, is, it, issons, issez, issent' 
and learn the irregular ones each separately.
In my opinion the two most important verbs in that category are 'finir' and 'choisir', and you will get used to how they conjugate.
It might be reconforting to know that almost 90% of French verbs are those ending in ER ( according to Le Petit Robert), so by far the biggest group, and only 6% are verbs ending in IR...
Hope this helps!

Answer

It should be edited as it is definatley misleading.  It is not the number of verbs congugated in this way that counts (in fact this is completely irrelevant) but how often they are used and partir and sortir are extremely common as mentioned.
It is not because French is taught that way that we should keep doing something misleading!!!