French language Q&A Forum

With "How are your holidays going?"  Why is "Comment vont vos vacances."  not acceptable?

I have a student who wants to know how to say the color "maroon". The hex color code #800000 gives "Maroon" as the answer on the encycolorpedia.fr site, but that's the only place I see it listed. Most "first choices" on translators give "marron" as the translation -- but how do you tell the difference between marron/maroon and marron/brown? Some give bordeaux or grenat as options -- and those are "related" colors on the encycolorpedia.fr site as well. Thank you for your help with this vexing dilemma. I hope the next student chooses something "easy" like navy blue!! :)

Why is the sentence fragment "J'écoute du Beethoven" and not "J'écoute à Beethoven"? When would someone use 'écouter à' vs 'écouter de'?

I have a student who was taking an A0 test. She was asked how to say "Marie, you are a student." and was given the prompt 'Marie tu...'. She answered 'Marie tu es élève.' and Kwizbot told her that she was wrong, that it should be 'Marie tu es étudiante." Why would 'élève be incorrect? I was under the impression that they were interchangeable, so I need to understand the usage differences...