French language Q&A Forum

The lesson says that when talking about specifics, you use être, but the kwiz said this should be aller:

Martine était malade, mais elle ________ mieux à présent.

She is feeling better at present sounds like it is specific, so why is 'est' not right here?

I can see from the discussion that I am not the only learner who gets confused about this, but am I correct that these two sentences are translated thus:

Jack descended the giant = Jack a descendu le geant (Sorry, can't do the accent)

and

Jack descended on the giant = Jack est descendu sur le geant.