Le lycée est près de la gare.

Not exactly. Un lycée is specifically a high school in France.

A few useful comparisons:

• école = school (often primary school, depending on context)
• collège = middle school / junior high
• lycée = high school

So in this sentence, Le lycée means the high school.

In French, you usually need an article before a noun much more often than in English.

So:

• le lycée = the high school
• la gare = the station

French generally does not drop the as easily as English sometimes can. Saying just lycée by itself would usually sound incomplete in a normal sentence like this.

Because French nouns have grammatical gender.

• lycée is masculine → le lycée
• gare is feminine → la gare

This gender is a property of the noun itself, not of the real-world object. So you simply have to learn the noun together with its article:

• le lycée
• la gare

Près de means near or close to.

It works as a fixed expression:

• près de la gare = near the station
• près de chez moi = near my house / near where I live

French often uses short word groups where English uses a single word. So even though English has near, French uses près de.

Because près must be followed by de.

So the structure is:

• près de + noun

Examples:

• près de la gare = near the station
• près du lycée = near the high school
• près des magasins = near the shops

You cannot normally say près la gare in standard French.

No. Here, de la does not mean some.

In this sentence:

• près de la gare

the de comes from près de and la is simply the article belonging to gare.

So it breaks down like this:

• près de = near
• la gare = the station

Together:

• près de la gare = near the station

This is different from partitive de la meaning some, as in:

• Je mange de la salade = I am eating some salad

Because de only contracts with:

• le → du
• les → des

So:

• près du lycée = near the high school
• près des écoles = near the schools

But it does not contract with:

• la
• l’

So you keep:

• près de la gare
• près de l’école

Est is the third-person singular form of être (to be).

The subject is Le lycée = the high school, which is singular, so French uses:

• Le lycée est... = The high school is...

A quick comparison:

• je suis = I am
• tu es = you are
• il / elle / on est = he / she / one is

So est is the correct form for le lycée.

Yes, very similar.

The structure is:

• Le lycée = subject
• est = verb
• près de la gare = location phrase

So it follows the same basic pattern as English:

• The high school
  • is
    • near the station

This is one of those sentences where French and English line up quite closely.

Lycée is pronounced approximately like lee-say.

A rough guide:

• ly- sounds like lee
• -cée sounds like say

The final -e is not pronounced separately.

So:

• lycée ≈ lee-SAY

A rough English-style pronunciation would be:

preh duh lah gahr

A few notes:

• près sounds roughly like preh
• de often sounds like a light duh
• gare sounds like gahr

Also, the French r is different from the English r. You do not need to perfect it right away to be understood.

Yes. Proche de also means close to / near.

So:

• Le lycée est près de la gare
• Le lycée est proche de la gare

Both are correct and natural.

A small nuance:

• près de is very common and straightforward
• proche de can sound slightly more like close to, but in many everyday contexts they are interchangeable

Usually, gare refers to a train station.

So:

• la gare = the train station

For other kinds of stations, French often uses different words:

• station de métro = metro/subway station
• arrêt de bus = bus stop

So if you see la gare by itself, it most often means the train station.