Saturday, June 12, 2010

French blog

Une île secrète - secrete island

Posted by Jennie

Texte bilingue (anglais en incise) à lire:

As Serge Gainsbourg would have said, to choose Brussels over Tunisia, faut être à moitie fou (you have to be half-crazy). Mais même si je le suis (but even if I am), I had une bonne raison to do it. Brussels, at just over 100 euros aller-retour (round-trip) on the Eurostar, is vachement* moins cher (way cheaper) than flying to la Tunisie. Which left a lot more money to play with for the rest of the year. Which meant… une île secrète.

1 comment:

Alix said...

I invite you to visit our section "MIROIRS" in our learning french website "Vivre en Aquitaine".
http://uk.aquitaine.f/spip.php?rubrique3&lang=en

It puts together pairs of texts on similar topics in French and English, French and Spanish, French and German, French and Italian (just clic on the flags on the top of the page to change the language). This double take allows one to compare different ways of looking at a same issue.

It also gives the opportunity to look at vocabulary in context, and to compare and contrast it across the languages.

Have a look for instance at the school menus in France and the UK under the heading "Santé". What are the differences in the food itself and in the way the dishes are described? Why is the fact that some dishes don’t contain pork highlighted in the French menu? What French reality does that make reference to?

Under the heading "Notre temps", you will see two articles on how the French and the British spend their time. The headings are not exactly the same, but can you match some of the categories? Which categories appear in one, but not in the other, and what does that tell you about the different cultures?

I'll be happy to have your opinion on this approach to practice a language.

Alix Creuzé
Institut Français de Madrid