French language Q&A Forum

When doing the writing tests, I find myself regularly struggling with knowing when to place accents (and regularly second-guessing myself too!).

Are there any rules of thumb to help with this? For example, the 'ô' seems to always appear in words which sound similar in english and one would place an 's': eg hôpital, hôtel, hôte, etc.

I generally have trouble with accented 'e's (ignoring the "obvious" accents, such as when using the passé composé and other conjugation rules) so any advice would be very welcome.

I don’t understand how to know whether this refers to a person (WHOM do you miss) or to a thing (WHAT are you missing).

Could anybody help me with the form of the word: 'cochant'?

I have learned third person plural conjugation is cochent, but this word 'cochant' I couldn't find in a dictionary. 

As you know, cocher is infinitive form of verb but what about cochant? Please!

The original context: "Répondez aux questions en cochant la ou less bonne response."

Please help me!

In the quiz there was this sentence:  By the time you were ready, the bus had already gone. We had to write the part up to the comma.

The answer given was Le temps que tu sois prête....  That to me translates as By the time you are ready, not were ready.  How would you write:  By the time you are ready the bus will be already gone.

Hello!

I tried a different way of writing the final sentence, and it wasn't accepted by the exercise engine:

"que l'on peut aujourd'hui savourer le champage aux fines bulles qui se connaît dans le monde entier."

I tried this because the English text specified "[that is]" and I thought it was prompting use of "qui" -- is this grammatically in correct?

I realize this has come up before but it doesn’t seem there’s been a satisfactory answer yet: Why is only “On peut toujours trouver plus fort que soi” and not also “On peut toujours trouver plus fort que soi-même” correct?