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Newsletter Activity 9 – word origins

Many words of French origin have become common place in the English language but in many cases the original meaning gets changed or lost along the way. Which words can you think of that are used in English but were originally French? Is the meaning the same in both languages? If you want to go

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Newsletter Activity 8 – si + present tense

Today we are going to practise how to express a hypothesis in French using si, to say for example, “if you come, I’ll make a cake”. There are three possible formulas we can follow: si + present tense, followed by present tense si + present tense, followed by future tense si + present tense, followed

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Newsletter Activity 7 – qu’est-ce qui vous passionne?

In this activity, we are looking at different ways to express your interests by asking you qu’est-ce qui vous passionne le plus dans la vie?  There are several ways to answer this. Firstly, you can use the same structure as the question: ce qui me passionne le plus dans la vie c’est… ce qui m’intéresse

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Newsletter Activity 6 – False Friend: rude

In this newsletter activity, we’re looking at a false friend. The French word rude in French does not mean the same as the English word “rude”. Can you work out its meaning from the following examples? ma professeur est rude, elle ne veut jamais qu’on parle en cours je fais de l’escalade, j’ai une rude épreuve

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Newsletter Activity 5 – Il faut…

In this activity we’re going to have a look at the irregular verb falloir. Falloir is an impersonal verb which means that it can only be conjugated in the third person singular (il) form giving il faut. It means “to be necessary”, “to need to do something” or “must”.  This impersonal structure can be followed by an

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Newsletter Activity 4 – talking about countries

In this newsletter activity, we would like to test your knowledge of prepositions in French, with a particular focus on how you say “in” or “to” when talking about a country. We’d like to you post a comment telling us about a trip you’ve got planned for this year (if you haven’t managed to book anything

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Newsletter Activity 3 – La Fête de St-Valentin

Our question to you in this activity is: comment avez-vous fêté la St-Valentin? The verb fêter means “to celebrate”. If you’re trying to work out what something means, remember that if there’s a circumflex accent it often means that in old French there used to be an ‘s’, so fêter < “fester” which can be linked to “festival” and

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Newsletter Activity 2 – J’en ai marre!

Are you familiar with the expression j’en ai marre? It’s a great colloquial expression which means “I’m fed up” or “I’ve had enough”. You can use it on its own, or add de and say what you’re fed up doing. For example: j’en ai marre de faire la vaisselle j’en ai marre de ma voisine j’en ai marre

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Newsletter Activity 1 – Quel temps fait-il?

Coffee Break French learners form a worldwide community. Today we’re asking you a simple question: quel temps fait-il? – what is the weather like where you are? If you’ve just started learning French, you could use a simple expression such as the following: à Londres il fait froid – in London it’s cold à Phoenix il