"Colette (Portraits français)" has been shared to the blog from the French reading practice section of the learning library where you can find a large selection of interactive texts to help you with your reading skills. This article also has audio for you to practice your French listening skills; you can find many more listening activities in the French listening exercises section.
Growing up in a small town in Burgundy, French author Colette never imagined she would one day become the toast of Paris. As prolific a writer as she was passionate and scandalous (for the times) in life, Colette and her nonconformist heroines flouted social conventions, which explains why she is still so popular more than a century later. Learn more about her fascinating life in this article from our Portraits français series.
After listening to the audio, click any word for the English translation and links to related grammar lessons.
Note: The tenses in this French article and its English translation don’t match! In French, we use the present tense to describe historical stories like this to evoke a sense of immediacy, whereas in English, we commonly use the past tense – learn more about historical French tenses.
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Author info
For over ten years now, Céline has been teaching French and Italian to students of all ages and abilities in the UK. This French native speaker comes from Brittany, and likes crafts, Breton dance (of course!) and Breton music which she actually played for four years. She also has a fondness for European cinema and British History.
Aurélie is our resident French Expert. She has created most of the wonderful content you see on the site and is usually the person answering your tricky help questions. She comes from a small village near Chartres in Central France, country of cereal fields and not much else. She left (in a hurry) to study English at the world-famous Sorbonne in Paris, before leaving France in 2007 to experience the “London lifestyle” - and never looked back! She's worked as a professional French teacher, translator and linguist in the UK since. She loves to share her love of languages and is a self-professed cinema and literature geek!