Matching game
A French wellbeing article: advice, warning or personal testimony?
Match French wellbeing sentences to personal testimony, advice, practical warnings and limits, without turning one person’s experience into a universal claim.
- B1
- 6 pairs
- Tap to match
- Learn this in the B1 notebook →
In short
Ask who is speaking and what the sentence does. Pour moi, cela… can report personal experience; vous pourriez… can offer advice; attention à… can introduce a warning. A person saying an activity suited them does not instruct every reader to copy it.
Yellow the idea to rememberBlue French to learn
The short extracts below concern scheduling and participation in activities. Identify the speaker and communicative function before deciding what each sentence establishes.
Trois voix sur les habitudes
Inès, participante
Depuis que je garde le mercredi soir libre, je trouve mon agenda plus simple à organiser. C’est ce qui me convient pour le moment.
L’animatrice
Vous pourriez choisir une seule modification et noter ce que vous en pensez après une semaine. Vous n’êtes pas obligés de raconter une expérience personnelle au groupe.
L’organisation
Attention à ne pas confondre la date d’inscription avec celle de la séance. La salle du premier étage sera fermée : l’atelier aura lieu au rez-de-chaussée.
Tap one on the left, then its partner on the right.
A first-person report has a first-person scope
Inès reports that her agenda seems simpler to her. Her statement concerns her own schedule; it does not tell every person to keep Wednesday free. Pour le moment also limits the claim in time. A careful summary retains both: Inès dit que ce choix lui convient actuellement.
Could is different from must
Vous pourriez introduces a possible approach. It can still function as advice, but it leaves more room than vous devez. The sentence about disclosure has a different function: it explicitly says there is no obligation to share personal experience. Do not classify every line spoken by a facilitator as an instruction.
For your own notes, put the speaker’s name beside the sentence and label its job: experience, suggestion, warning or practical information. Then preserve any limiting phrase. This helps you report the text without turning an individual preference into a general result.