J'adore les exercises! Continue avec plus dans le future!! Merci beaucoup.
We’ve put together some fun writing challenges for you to work on this weekend, which you should receive by email – if you’re subscribed to Kwiziq System Communications. (If you don’t have a Kwiziq account, register now to receive the next set of exercises. Premium accounts receive a new set every week, free accounts once a month.)
These are self-marked tests, so you’ll be shown the correct answers as you go and asked to score yourself against them. Once you’ve completed the exercise, you can come back to this post and take a look at the 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 below to your notebook(s) if you made mistakes in these areas during the exercises 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: “Like everyone, I’ve got a daily routine. Every morning, I get up at seven. I have a shower, I brush my teeth, and I get dressed in my bedroom. Around half past seven, I go in the kitchen to have my breakfast. Usually, I drink coffee and I eat toast with butter. I leave home at ten to eight.”
Here’s the French grammar you need to complete the exercise:
- À + time
- Aller – present tense conjugations
- Avoir – present tense conjugations
- Chaque = every, each
- Definite articles: le, la, les
- Feminine forms of adjectives and nouns
- S’habiller – present tense conjugations
- Se lever – present tense conjugations
- Partir, laisser, quitter, sortir
- Partir, sortir present tense conjugations
- Partitive articles: du, de la, des
- Possessive adjectives: mon, ma, mes…
- Pour + infinitive = “in order to”
- Prendre – present tense conjugations
- Preposition: chez
- Prepositions: dans, en
- Prepositions: dans, sur, sous, devant, derrière, entre
- Reflexive verbs – present tense conjugations
- Semi-regular -ger verbs – present tense conjugations
- Telling time
- Tout le monde = everybody
A2 French Writing Challenge
NB: Click the test link sent to you by email to do this challenge!
Translate: “I had a super weekend! Saturday morning, I went to the market and I bought some fresh fruit and vegetables. Then, I went back home and, with my friend, we prepared a delicious meal. We enjoyed it very much! In the afternoon, I studied my French: I reread my lessons, I listened to the Kwiziq examples, and I did a lot of quizzes to practise. On Sunday, I spoke with my neighbour Marie: she’s French, so I was able to practise with her, and she corrected my mistakes. Now, I feel ready for my French exam!”
Here are the French grammar lessons you need to complete the exercise:
- Adjective agreement
- Compound nouns
- Disjunctive / stress pronouns
- Être – present tense conjugations
- Être verbs – passé composé conjugations
- Faire – passé composé conjugations
- Feminine adjectives: eux > euse)
- Irregular feminine adjectives
- Le with days of the week
- Lire – passé composé conjugations
- Matin vs matinée
- Partitive articles: du, de la, des
- Passé composé agreement
- Passer meanings with avoir vs être
- Passer vs se passer
- Possession with de
- Possessive adjectives: mon, ma, mes…
- Possessive adjectives – common mistakes
- Possessive adjective: mon with feminine nouns starting with a vowel or mute h
- Pour + infinitive = “in order to”
- Preposition: chez
- Reflexive verbs – passé composé conjugations
- Regular -er verbs – passé composé conjugations
- Rentrer meanings with avoir vs être
- Sentir bon vs se sentir bien
B1 French Writing Challenge
NB: Click the test link sent to you by email to do this challenge!
Translate: “Next summer, I will go and spend two weeks in Paris! There, I will lodge at some friends’ who have lived in France for about ten years. First, I will visit all the touristic places that I’ve only seen in pictures. It will be magical! Then, obviously, I will taste all the delicious French food: Burgundy snails, frog’s legs, calf’s head… Well, maybe not the last one, I won’t have the courage [for it]! And when my friends are free, they’ll take me to have drinks in the trendy neighbourhoods of the capital, and they’ll introduce me to their friends who will help me practise my French, and I’m sure [of it], will teach me a lot of interesting expressions!”
Here are the French grammar lessons you need to complete the exercise:
- Adverb formation
- Adverbial pronoun en
- Adverbial pronoun y
- Aller– future conjugations
- Avoir – future conjugations
- Definite articles when generalising
- Depuis with present tense rather than passé composé
- Direct and indirect object pronouns
- Dizaine and other approximate numbers
- Être – present tense conjugations
- Être – future conjugations
- Feminine adjectives
- Feminine adjectives: eux > euse)
- J’habite à + city
- Ne … que with compound tenses
- Passer vs se passer
- Possession with de
- Possessive adjectives (singular)
- Possessive adjectives (plural)
- Preposition: chez
- Prochain / dernier
- Quand + future tense
- Regular -er and -ir verbs – future conjugations
- Relative pronoun: que
- Relative pronoun: qui
- Tout, tous, toute, toutes
- Venir de + country / state / region
- Vivre – present tense conjugations
- Voir – passé composé conjugations
B2 French Writing Challenge
NB: Click the test link sent to you by email to do this challenge!
Translate: “This morning, I missed my plane to Paris! I know, it’s really dumb! Yet I’d organized everything: I’d packed my suitcases two days ago so I wouldn’t forget anything, I’d put my passport and plane tickets in my coat pocket, I’d rented a car to go to the airport, and I’d even prepared a snack in case I was hungry! But nothing happened as planned! The car I’d rented broke down: I had to wait for a taxi, which made me late. It’s my fault, I should have left earlier, and above all, I should have taken a taxi in the first place! Finally, by the time we arrived at the airport, my plane had already left! Farewell, Parisian weekend! Right now, I should have been drinking an espresso on a terrace, while eating a warm croissant that I would have bought at the bakery. Next time, I’ll be better organised!”
Here are the French grammar lessons you need to complete the exercise:
- Attendre vs s’attendre
- Avoir – conditional conjugations
- C’est + adjective
- Comparisons with adverbs
- Contractions: à / de + le / les
- Demonstrative adjectives: ce, cette, ces
- Devoir – conditional conjugations
- Direct and indirect object pronouns
- Double object pronouns
- Être en train de
- Être verbs – passé composé conjugations
- Être verbs – pluperfect conjugations
- Expressing timeliness
- Gerund formation
- Il faut que + subjunctive
- Il y a = ago
- Irregular verbs – pluperfect conjugations
- Manquer = to miss
- Même = even
- Mieux
- Negation with infinitives
- Partir, laisser, quitter, sortir
- Passé composé agreement (avoir verbs)
- Passé composé agreement (être verbs)
- Passer vs se passer
- Possession with de
- Possessive adjectives: mon, ma, mes…
- Possessive adjectives – common mistakes
- Prochain / dernier
- Reflexive verbs – passé composé conjugations
- Regular -er and -ir verbs – future conjugations
- Regular verbs – past conditional conjugations
- Regular verbs – past perfect conjugations
- Regular verbs – subjunctive conjugations
- Relative pronoun: que
- Rien ne… = nothing
- Savoir – present tense conjugations
- Tout, tous, toute, toutes
Author info
[Follow on Twitter: @gruffdavies] Despite the very Welsh name, Gruff is actually half French. Nowadays, he's a tech entrepreneur (and some-time novelist) but he used to be a physicist at Imperial College before getting hooked on inventing things. He has a special interest in language learning, speaks five languages to varying degrees of fluency and he often blogs about language learning, science, and technology. As well as co-founding Kwiziq, he is the author the Amazon best-selling SF thriller, The Looking Glass Club and the inventor of the Exertris gaming exercise-bike and Pidgin, a free online tool that makes drawing flow charts and relationship diagrams as quick and easy as describing them in pidgin English.
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: 18
I've now finished all the tests. I have to admit I did much better than I thought i would do thanks to the quizzes I do everyday. Kwiziq has done more to get me thinking in French than any other online method I've tried.
That's such a lovely thing to hear! Merci beaucoup Christopher and everyone who's left such wonderful feedback. We're always so thrilled to hear it when our work makes such a difference to your learning! May I use this comment in our testimonials?
Thank you so much for sending us "French writing challenges".
je les aime bien et j'espère que je puisse les recevoir encore. merci infiniment.
Bonjour à tous!
The exercises are great. Good bite sized chunks. What was missing was a score at the end. Perhaps an average. Si told me that this was all testing but the email didn't indicate this so it seemed to end abruptly. There wasn't a link back to the blog or note that easily guided the person on what to do next. I think it's a great idea and enjoyed doing the test. Cheers
Thanks Bel - glad you liked,. Yes, we'll see if we can work out a way to add a score. I also added a link at the end (Si told me your comments yesterday).
This site gets better and better. I really appreciate the amount of work you have all put into it.
Thankyou
Cette nouvelle exercise est super. Comment on peut poser une question sur les réponses?
Really enjoyed doing the translations. Great idea. Just struggled with accents on my keyboard which made it annoying! Learned several things!
These challenges are a great addition to the website and after trying one I can see that they are very useful for my French learning. I hope you continue with them.
Merçi infiniment d' ajouter les challenges. Je viens de les faire. Cela m'a fait penser activement et m'a permis d' ameliorer un peu, surtout dans le cas des temps conditionelles. Merçi beaucoup!
Merci mille fois pour ces challenges. Je les ai beaucoup apprecié. Ils m'ont aidé à répérer mes points forts et mes points faibles.