When does one use 'il est' as opposed to 'c'est'
A new set of self-marked weekend writing challenges was sent by email to all subscribers.
Once you’ve completed the exercise, there’s a list of grammar topics tested. If you have questions please post them under the most suitable grammar topic (if it’s related to a specific point), or here or on the QandA forum (for general questions). Don’t forget you can add any of the lessons to your notebook(s) and then kwiz against them to strengthen the areas where you discovered you were weak.
A1 French Writing Challenge
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Topic: “At the train station”
Grammar lessons included in A1 exercise
A2 French Writing Challenge
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Topic: “Celebrating Christmas”
Grammar lessons included in A2 exercise
B1 French Writing Challenge
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Topic: “An anxious flyer”
Grammar lessons included in B1 exercise
B2 French Writing Challenge
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Topic: “Volunteering at a soup kitchen”
Grammar lessons included in B2 exercise
C1 French Writing Challenge
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Topic: “Once upon a time in the North Pole”
Grammar lessons included in C1 exercise
Hey there! What kinds of topics would you like to write about? Please give us some suggestions!
Author info
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!
Laura is a French expert and Kwiziq's Head of Quality Control. Online educator since '99, Laura is passionate about language, travel, and cooking. She's American by birth and a permanent ex-pat by choice - freelancing made it possible for her to travel extensively and live in several countries before settling permanently in Guadeloupe. Laura is the author of Lawless French, Lawless Spanish, and other websites and books on French, Spanish, Italian, English, and vegetarianism. She spends most of her spare time reading, playing with food, and enjoying water sports.
Comments: 7
Bonjour Valerie !
Here's a link to our related lesson, which you can also find in the Notebook related to the Writing Challenge you refer to:
https://french.kwiziq.com/revision/grammar/when-to-use-cest-or-il-est-elle-est-to-say-it-is
À bientôt !
If I could talk to you in person, I would definitely argue my case on some of these. For example, my dictionary gives the word "endormi " as the word for nap. I think there should be more possibilities for correct answers. This was very hard, I thought!
Bonjour Nancy !
By all means, we'd be happy to discuss any alternative options. We don't pretend that our correct answers are necessarily the *only* answers, especially when vocabulary is involved, and that's what this forum page is all about :)
In the case of "endormi", this simply means "asleep", from the verb s'endormir (to fall asleep). It's more generic than the specific "to nap", which will be faire la sieste or faire un somme which is a bit more familiar.
I hope that's helpful!
À bientôt !
How do I do French accents on my American iPad? Also, I put words in correctly and I get autocorrected.
Bonjour Rolf,
Here are instructions for typing accents on an iPad: https://carleton.ca/iteam/2016/french-character-accents/
And for disabling autocorrect: https://www.igeeksblog.com/how-to-disable-autocorrect-for-certain-words-on-iphone-ipad/