French Writing Challenges - week eight

French writing challengesOur eighth set of self-marked weekend writing challenges was sent by email to Premium 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

NB: Click the test link sent to you by email to do this challenge!
Translate:
“Food shopping …”

Grammar lessons included in A1 exercise

A2 French Writing Challenge

NB: Click the test link sent to you by email to do this challenge!

Translate: “This morning, I woke up at seven as usual …”

Grammar lessons included in A2 exercise

B1 French Writing Challenge

NB: Click the test link sent to you by email to do this challenge!
Translate:
“I would like to go and live in Edinburgh …”

Grammar lessons included in B1 exercise

B2 French Writing Challenge

NB: Click the test link sent to you by email to do this challenge!
Translate:
“You’ll never believe what happened …”

Grammar lessons included in B2 exercise

C1 French Writing Challenge

NB: Click the test link sent to you by email to do this challenge!
Translate:
“Once upon a time there was a little guy called Bidule …”

Grammar lessons included in C1 exercise

Author info

Aurélie Drouard

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 K Lawless

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: 2

In the A1 writing exercises Annie asks what kind of pasta should she get. All of the possible answers used prendre as the verb for "getting" the pasta. I know normally prendre is used for "to take" something or "to have" something for a meal. I've never seen it used to mean "to get" as in "What kind of pasta should I get". I see in the dictionary it can be mean grab, seize, trap but I've never seen it used in this context. I guess I can assume this is common usage in everyday French?

Bonjour Christopher, and sorry for the delay!

Indeed, as you guessed, the verb prendre in that context can mean "to get/grab".

E.g. Si tu vas au magasin, tu peux me prendre du thé ? (If you go to the shop, can you get me some tea?)
Je prends du riz ou des pâtes ? (Do/Should I get rice or pasta?)

I hope that's helpful!