Media and current events
At B1 you are expected to read short newspaper articles and grasp the main idea without understanding every word. The TEF and TCF Canada reading sections are full of press extracts: headlines, short news items, captions and opinion pieces. This lesson gives you the press vocabulary you need, a reading technique called scanning, and an introduction to the gérondif, a structure that links two ideas in one sentence and appears constantly in journalistic French.
| un journal (des journaux) | a newspaper (newspapers) |
| une chaîne d'information | a news channel |
| un article | an article |
| un titre / un gros titre | a headline / a front-page headline |
| une rubrique | a section (of a paper) |
| un journaliste / une journaliste | a journalist |
| un reportage | a news report |
| l'actualité (f.) | current events / the news |
| une enquête | an investigation |
| un fait divers | a news-in-brief item (crime, accident) |
| une source | a source |
| les réseaux sociaux | social media |
| une fausse information (une infox) | fake news |
| un abonnement | a subscription |
Associez chaque mot de la presse à son sens.
Match each press word to its meaning.
Que signifie « le balayage » comme technique de lecture ?
What does "scanning" (le balayage) mean as a reading technique?
Quelle phrase emploie correctement le gérondif ?
Which sentence uses the gérondif correctly?
Scanning means letting your eyes run quickly over a text to find one precise piece of information (a date, a name, a figure) without reading every line. In the exam you rarely have time to read the whole article first. Read the question, decide what kind of word you are hunting for, then scan the text for it. A capital letter signals a name, a number or % signals a statistic, quotation marks signal an opinion.
Complétez avec le gérondif du verbe regarder.
Complete with the gérondif of the verb regarder.
J'ai appris la nouvelle ____ les informations.
Complétez avec le gérondif du verbe contacter.
Complete with the gérondif of the verb contacter.
La journaliste a vérifié les faits ____ plusieurs sources.
Écoutez et tapez la phrase que vous entendez.
Listen and type the sentence you hear.
The gérondif is formed with en plus the present participle (the verb stem plus -ant): parler → en parlant, lire → en lisant, faire → en faisant. It links two actions done by the same subject and usually expresses simultaneity (while doing) or manner/means (by doing). It is very common in articles to pack two ideas into one tidy sentence.
Traduisez en français.
Translate to French.
I follow the news by reading the newspaper every morning.
Traduisez en anglais.
Translate to English.
Beaucoup de jeunes s'informent sur les réseaux sociaux.
Remettez les mots dans l'ordre pour former une phrase correcte.
Put the words in order to make a correct sentence.
Vous devez trouver quand un événement a eu lieu dans un article. Que cherchez-vous en balayant ?
You must find when an event happened in an article. What do you scan for?
Complétez avec le gérondif irrégulier du verbe avoir.
Complete with the irregular gérondif of the verb avoir.
Tout ____ accès à Internet, il lit plusieurs journaux.
0 of 11done. Finish the rest to complete (Try again, or Show answer if you’re stuck).