Gap-fill
Économiser or réduire? Complete a French story about saving resources
Fill eight gaps with économiser or réduire in a short workplace story. Compare saving money and paper with reducing spending, quantities and text length.
- A2
- 8 gaps
- Translation included
- Learn this in the A2 notebook →
In short
Économiser means to save money, time or resources: économiser de l’eau. Réduire means to make an amount smaller: réduire la consommation d’eau. The same action can save water and reduce water consumption.
Yellow the idea to rememberBlue French to learn
économiserto save
Focus: the money or resource you keep or use sparingly
économiser de l’argent / du papier / de l’énergie
Imprimer en recto-verso permet d’économiser du papier.
Printing on both sides saves paper.
réduireto reduce
Focus: the amount, size or length you make smaller
réduire les dépenses / la quantité / la longueur
Le responsable veut réduire la longueur du message.
The manager wants to shorten the message.
| French | English | The change |
|---|---|---|
| réduire le texte de vingt mots | shorten the text by twenty words | 100 words → 80 words |
| réduire le texte à vingt mots | shorten the text to twenty words | 100 words → 20 words |
Objects from a week with less waste
Four things in the story’s world
Find:
Choose the verb and give it the right form
Fill the eight gaps with a form of économiser or réduire. The English hints give the meaning and tense. Watch the subject: elle, ils and nous take different present endings. In the last paragraph, a is already written before each past participle.
Moins de gaspillage au bureau
Nora (saves) de l’argent pour acheter un vélo. Pour le moment, elle va au bureau à pied et elle (reduces) ses dépenses de transport. Chaque vendredi, elle met dix euros de côté.
Au bureau, ses collègues veulent (save) du papier. Ils (reduce) le nombre de pages imprimées et ils impriment en recto-verso. Dans la cuisine, chacun remplit sa gourde et ferme bien le robinet.
Malik prépare une affiche pour expliquer ces gestes. Son premier texte fait cent mots. « Nous (are reducing) le texte à cinquante mots », propose Nora. Malik enlève les répétitions. « Avec des consignes plus courtes, nous (save) aussi du temps », dit-il.
Le soir, Nora regarde ses comptes. Ce mois-ci, elle a (saved) vingt euros sur ses trajets. Elle a (reduced) ses dépenses de transport et son projet de vélo avance !
Read it in English
Nora is saving money to buy a bicycle. For now, she walks to work and reduces her transport spending. Every Friday, she puts ten euros aside.
At work, her colleagues want to save paper. They reduce the number of pages printed and print on both sides. In the kitchen, everyone fills their reusable bottle and makes sure they turn the tap off.
Malik prepares a poster to explain these actions. His first text is a hundred words long. “We’re reducing the text to fifty words,” Nora suggests. Malik removes the repetitions. “With shorter instructions, we save time too,” he says.
In the evening, Nora looks at her accounts. This month, she has saved twenty euros on her journeys. She has reduced her transport spending, and she is getting closer to buying her bicycle!