Holidaying in July

"Partir en vacances en juillet"
French C1 writing exercise

July is a hard time to organise holiday [US: vacation] for, as Martine and Sam found out!

Pay attention to the hints!

Some vocabulary you may want to look up before or during this exercise: "to shift one's days off", "a slot (timetable)", "to make do", "to convert", "to face the facts", "to anticipate", "to be worth [doing]", "to tighten one's belt".

I’ll give you some sentences to translate into French

  • I’ll show you where you make mistakes
  • I’ll keep track of what you need to practise
  • Change my choices if you want
Start the exercise
How the test works

Here's a preview of the text for the writing challenge, when you're ready click the start button above:

Martine had said it: taking one's holiday [US:vacation] in July was a mistake! She would have preferred to leave later - mid-September would have been perfect - but when Sam tried to shift his days off, the slot was already taken! So Martine had to make do with what she had! She spent hours on the booking websites: she compared all the hotels, she tried every combination of days and times. She even converted the price of local transportation into euros! In the end, she had to face the facts: this holiday [US:vacation] was going to cost them more than what they had anticipated! But after discussing it together, they told themselves that it was worth tightening their belt!

Clever stuff happening!