French language Q&A Forum

B1 ???

You've got to be kidding! (Tu plaisant!)

This is hugely faster than an B1 student could ever contemplate.

Without the translation, I wouldn't have had a ghost of a chance of understanding this.

I think faire faire and se faire + infinitif are quite hard for English speakers to get their heads round. Is there a reason that only one of the examples is in the present tense?  Even that one is ambiguous (ils se font couper les cheveux - could be they’re getting their hair cut as we speak or are just about to).

Why is fut used in the above, rather than était.To the best of my knowledge, we have not been introduced to the Historic?

Couple of queries:-

In the sentence ' As I grew up, it was her melancholy ...' the advice is to use c'est. Why not c'était?

and,

In the sentence 'Barbara, as you used to sing (it) so perfectly, our most beautiful love story will always be you., the 'it' refers to the 'love story' which is feminine so 'comme tu le chantais' should be 'la'?

Thanks

This was my first time coming across the inverted questions.. 'puis je'

I read the lesson that that's more formal and 'est-ce que' is used more colloquially. I thought you could always replace est-ce que with just the interogative + subject + verb so I put 'Que je peux faire...' which was marked wrong. Is this wrong with these inverted questions?

And also in the lesson it mentioned "statement order"'questions being a possibility. What are these?

More of a comment than a question, but seeing my A0 through B1 levels decline from 100% to 99% today felt like a punch in the gut.  I normally only have enough time per week to take tests maybe 2-3 days, so it's been a slow and steady climb for me.  I tried to knock 'em out quickly, but of course I made some minor mistakes, and now I'm doing A1 tests instead of the B2 tests I would normally be doing right now.  Rough way to start the week.

I think the more I listen to French, the worse I get...

I'm so depressed!

"We listened to the water".

I would have considered that a past imperfect ie, "Nous ecoutions les bruits de l'eau" because you can't listen to water at a specific moment in time - it's a continuous action in the past. "Nous avons ecoute les bruits de l'eau" isn't appropriate. 

We got splashed with water would be passe compose but not a continuous event of listening to the water?

Suggestions please....

I would like to particularly congratulate the person who gave us this piece.  Not only was it enlightening for me, but it was also a perfect B2 listening exercise. Thank you.  Now to my question.  I understand the admonition about the use of present tense to relate a historical story.  How does the use of the future perfect in the first paragraph relate to this?  Were there other choices for this tense?

"...vous pourrez programmer votre combinaison personnelle quand vous arriverez ici." (recommended answer)

"...vous pourrez programmer votre combinaison personnelle quand vous serez arrivés ici." (marked incorrect)

While I do realize that the construction is covered at a higher level than this writing exercise, I was curious if the second sentence is grammatically or situationally incorrect? Or maybe just not preferred?

Merci!