Difficult Exercise

Question

This is more a comment than a question. I found this to be a difficult exercise. For one thing, the vocabulary is not taught in a typical French class. Words like laptop, headline, online etc are useful to know but not common. Also, there were so many ways to say the same thing. Sometimes the answers included alternate responses, sometimes not. I was taught (and use) "les nouvelles" for the news. I have never seen "les infos" before this exercise.

Accepted Answer

Hi Carl,
We are sorry you found this exercise difficult.
We try to make all our material relevant to current times but we do appreciate that things change and language evolves, so some words might differ from what you learnt at school.
The words used for 'media news' as on the television or radio will be -

Les actualités 
Les infos

Je vais regarder les infos du soir = I am going to watch the evening news.
The word 'nouvelles' has become old-fashioned to mean this kind of news. It is used at the end of the text to say 
... to hear the latest news at the coffee machine = ... pour entendre les dernières nouvelles à la machine à café
meaning 'what's new' rather than media news.
Hope this helps!

Answer

Yes, the vocab is difficult because elsewhere we are often not taught this USEFUL, UP-TO-DATE vocabulary. I never think I will do that well in these exercises the FIRST time... I use them as a learning exercise at first, and then I practise over and over so I will learn the vocab. Les infos for example, seems to used more on TV, radio so we MUST LEARN this stuff. This is one of the reasons I LOVE LAWLESS FRENCH... it is teaching useful, up-to-date language. It's the only way to get to C1 level.

Answer

I'm so glad for Victoria's suggestion to practice these writing exercises over and over.  Three months ago, I decided to try to perfect each B1 writing exercise.  I try it on Day 1, take some notes on new vocabulary or tricky grammar points, and then 2-3 days later, I try it again.  It takes me 3-4 times to perfect the exercise but I'm seeing SO much progress in both my written and spoken French now.