Coucou les French learners,
“To travel is to grow. It is the big adventure. The one which leaves marks in the soul.” Marc Thiercelin, Captain Marck.
As the holidays are approaching for many of us, I want to talk to you about voyager, travelling.
These past weeks, I co-created along with one of my amazing French learners an interesting story about a special suitcase. In my French lessons, we have a lot of fun describing a character out of the blue! I always ask my learners to choose between une personne, un animal ou un objet and I find the objects often give birth to the funniest stories! The ideas for the stories all come from the learner, I am the mere facilitator of French input. That way we have a natural conversation in French without any forced output.
Read about the special suitcase here and try to answer the 10 comprehension questions afterwards, I bet you’ll answer them all!
Le Canal des Deux Mers
I do love cycling and there was a time when I only had a bike to go to work and to shops. Living in Germany made cycling life easy though because there are so my cycle paths available!
If you enjoy cycling too, the Canal des Deux Mers is for you. It is an exceptional cycling route through France linking the two seas of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. You can cycle along for almost 800km beside the Canal de Garonne and the Canal du Midi, the latter a World Heritage Site, to explore unforgettable landscapes and sites.
A holiday shoe: l’espadrille
L’espadrille (not to be confused with the Québécois word which means sport shoe!) is in fashion and it is the typical summer holiday shoe to me. I remember my uncle always wearing them when he was holidays and it was hot.
The other day, I saw on my Facebook timeline a startup company called La Brousse which is selling unique espadrilles made in the South West of France with fabrics from Uganda, Africa. It is a wonderful project as if it turns out to be a successful business, it will give work to many Ugandan seamstresses!
Have a look at their business and maybe help them grow by ordering a pair. You can then use Google Translate Web to check your comprehension.
Une aventure de Polo en mer
And here is another of Polo’s adventure (but without his friend Marco!). It will help you escape from your daily routine, unless you live on a desert island, of course!
In this story, you will acquire:
Il voit = he sees
Il décide de = he decides to
Il continue de dormir profondément = he continues to sleep deeply
Elle grandit = she grows
Un sac de couchage = a sleeping bag
Happy French acquisition!
A bientôt !
P.S. Got friends, family, colleagues or clients who want to become fluent in French? Share this with them, they’ll thank you for it 🙂
P.P.S. Watch my new story on YouTube, it is also about holidays!