Confusing Lesson

If rappeler is used in the meaning of "to remind someone of something", you will always use the person who is being reminded as the indirect object introduced by à. When the person isn't spelled out but referred to by a personal pronoun (me, te, lui, etc.), the preposition à is implied by the use of the personal pronoun.  It may become clearer using an example:

Tu rappelles Paula à ma mère. -- You remind my mother of Paula.

Tu lui rappelles Paula. -- You remind her of Paula.

Lui is the indirect object (replacing à ma mère) but, as is always the case with this type of pronouns (not just in conjunction with rappeler), it doesn't use à and it jumps forward in the sentence.

 

I am answering this question, which is related to the one I wish to ask, because the kwizbot won't post my own question. I hope it is of some help to Valerie O and others

This lesson opens with the statement:

“In French, there are two different structures to express "reminding", depending on whether we mean to be reminded of [something] or to prompt someone to remember [to do something].”

Let’s call to be reminded of something ‘A’ and to prompt someone to remember ‘B’

 

The structure of A is:

 

“rappeler + person one's reminded of + à + person being reminded”

 

unless an object pronoun appears in the sentence. If there is, the structure of A becomes:

 

”me/te/lui/nous/vous/leur + rappeler + person one is reminded of"

So there are two different sentence structures  for A.

When we want to prompt someone to remember (B), the structure is:

"rappeler + à + person being reminded + de + [infinitif]”

 

unless an object pronoun appears in the sentence. If there is, the structure of B becomes:

 

“me/te/lui/nous/vous/leur + rappeler + de + [infinitif]”

 

Note this involves two different sentence structures in the case of B. 

Each of these sentence structures differ, one from the others, so in fact there are four structures involved in French to express reminding.

As the lesson is presented, a student must retain these four only slightly different structures and identify where to use them in order to progress with this lesson.

Were the lesson split in two - using the A and B situations described above, the student would need to retain and identify only two structures at a time, leading to a better chance of succeeding in A before progressing to B.

I imagine this would lead to this lesson attracting less confusion and improved learning. Or am I missing something? Is there a logic or pattern that evades me?