Le professeur demande aux élèves bavards de parler plus doucement.

In French, the verb demander works differently from English to ask.

• When you ask someone to do something, French uses:
  • demander à quelqu’un de faire quelque chose
  • Literally: to ask *to someone to do something*.

So in this sentence:

• demande = asks
• à = to
• les élèves = the students
  → à + les contracts to aux, giving aux élèves.

You cannot say demander les élèves here; that would sound like “to demand the students”, which is ungrammatical and meaningless in French. The person you are speaking to is introduced by à (→ aux in the plural).

Structure:

• Le professeur demande aux élèves de parler…
  = The teacher asks the students to speak…

Aux is a contraction of à + les:

• à = to
• les = the (plural)

So:

• aux élèves = à les élèves = to the students.

You must use aux (not à les) because French always contracts à + les into aux.

In French, most adjectives normally come after the noun:

• un élève bavard = a talkative student
• des élèves bavards = talkative students

Only a limited group of common adjectives (often about size, beauty, age, goodness, number, etc.) usually come before the noun, e.g.:

• un petit élève
• un bon élève
• un jeune élève

But bavard (talkative/chatty) is not in that special group, so it goes after:

• les élèves bavards = the talkative students

Bavard basically means talkative, chatty.

Nuance:

• It often suggests that someone talks a lot, especially when they shouldn’t (e.g., during class).
• It can be mildly negative in a school context: students who chat instead of paying attention.
• But in other contexts, it can be neutral or even slightly affectionate, depending on tone.

Forms:

• un élève bavard – a talkative (male or generic) student
• une élève bavarde – a talkative female student
• des élèves bavards – talkative (all-male or mixed group) students
• des élèves bavardes – talkative (all-female) students

With demander plus a verb, French uses the pattern:

• demander à quelqu’un de faire quelque chose
  • ask someone to do something

So:

• demande → asks
• aux élèves bavards → to the talkative students
• de parler → to speak

You do not say demander à quelqu’un à faire. That pattern is incorrect in standard French. It must be à quelqu’un de faire.

Parler is in the infinitive because it follows another verb (demande) in a construction where someone is asked to do something.

Structure:

• Le professeur demande aux élèves de parler…
  • literally: The teacher asks the students *to speak…*

In French:

• After many verbs of wishing, asking, planning, etc., you often use de + infinitive when the subject of both actions is the same group/person:
  • Je demande aux élèves de parler plus doucement.
  • Nous voulons parler avec vous.

If you used parlent, you’d need a full subordinate clause:

• Le professeur demande que les élèves bavards parlent plus doucement.

Here parlent is conjugated in the subjunctive after que.

Yes, that sentence is grammatically correct:

• Le professeur demande que les élèves bavards parlent plus doucement.

Differences:

1. Grammar

   • demander à quelqu’un de + infinitif
     → Le professeur demande aux élèves de parler…
   • demander que + subjonctif
     → Le professeur demande que les élèves parlent…

2. Style

   • à quelqu’un de + infinitif is more common, more neutral and direct in everyday speech.
   • que + subjonctif is slightly more formal or written in many contexts.

3. Meaning

   • In practice, here the meaning is essentially the same: the teacher is asking the students to speak more quietly.

Doux / douce are adjectives (describing nouns):

• un bruit doux – a soft sound
• une voix douce – a soft/gentle voice

Doucement is the adverb form (describing a verb: how someone does something):

• parler doucement – to speak softly / quietly / gently
• marcher doucement – to walk slowly / gently

In this sentence, doucement modifies the verb parler (how they speak), so you must use the adverb:

• parler plus doucement = to speak more softly / more quietly

Using doux or douce here would be wrong, because you’re not describing a noun, but the manner of speaking.

Doucement alone would mean:

• parler doucement – to speak softly/quietly

Adding plus makes it comparative:

• parler plus doucement – to speak more softly / more quietly

So the idea is not just “speak quietly,” but:

• “Speak more quietly than you are speaking now.”

Yes, you can say:

• Le professeur demande aux élèves bavards de parler moins fort.

Meaning and nuance:

• parler plus doucement
  → literally “to speak more softly/gently”
  → focuses on softness / gentleness of the voice (often understood as quieter, calmer).

• parler moins fort
  → literally “to speak less loudly”
  → more direct about volume (less loud).

In many classroom contexts, they can both translate as “Speak more quietly” and are used almost interchangeably. Moins fort is a bit more explicit about lowering volume.

Traditionally, professeur is a masculine noun grammatically:

• un professeur – a (male or unspecified) teacher
• le professeur – the teacher

For a female teacher, there are a few possibilities, and usage is evolving:

1. Le professeur with feminine agreement elsewhere

   • Le professeur est arrivée. Elle est très compétente.
     (masculine article, but referring to a woman with feminine agreement)

2. La professeure (increasingly common, especially in Canada and some official French usage)

   • La professeure de français est très stricte.

3. La prof – informal, shortened form

   • La prof est sympa.

In your sentence, Le professeur could refer to a male or female teacher; the sentence itself doesn’t specify gender.

In French, you almost always need an article in front of a singular, countable noun like professeur:

• Le professeur – the teacher
• Un professeur – a teacher

Unlike English, you cannot normally say just “Professeur demande…” without any article. That sounds incomplete or wrong.

So:

• Le professeur demande… – The teacher asks…
• Un professeur demande… – A teacher asks…

Using Le here suggests a specific teacher that both speaker and listener know (e.g., the teacher of that class).

You would only change the adjective bavards to its feminine plural form bavardes:

• Le professeur demande aux élèves bavardes de parler plus doucement.

Notes:

• élève is a word that can refer to any gender; its article and adjectives show the gender.
• Here les élèves stays the same in sound and writing; only bavards → bavardes changes.

The indirect object aux élèves bavards (to the talkative students) is replaced by leur (to them).

The sentence becomes:

• Le professeur leur demande de parler plus doucement.

Word order:

• Pronoun leur comes before the verb demande.
• You cannot put leur after the infinitive here (✗ Le professeur demande de parler plus doucement leur is wrong).

In this sentence, demande is a verb form:

• It’s the 3rd person singular, present tense of demander:
  • il/elle demande – he/she asks

Clues:

• It comes right after the subject Le professeur.
• It is followed by the indirect object aux élèves bavards and then de parler…, which is exactly how verbs behave.

If demande were a noun (“a request”), it would usually appear with a determiner like une or la:

• une demande – a request
• la demande du professeur – the teacher’s request

But here the structure is:

• Le professeur (subject) + demande (verb) + aux élèves… (objects/complements)
  So it’s clearly the verb.