Clé à la Grammaire

CLÉ À LA GRAMMAIRE Huitième partie : Le participe présent

The present participle in French is the stem of the verb and ends in –ant. It is far less common in French than in English, but you may be asked to pick out a participe présent as part of the reading comprehension exercises. However, do not use it to talk about what you are doing right now as we do in English. In English, we say “I am eating”, which is classed as the present continuous tense. Never translate this as Je suis mangeant, simply write Je mange or Je suis en train de manger. Likewise, if you want to translate “I like watching TV”, use the infinitive verb J’aime regarder la télé. Normally in texts, you will see the pronoun en before the present participle, for example, Il lisait le journal en mangeant son petit-déjeuner or Elle descendait la rue à vélo en écoutant son iPod.

For the purposes of the Leaving Certificate reading comprehensions, you will be looking out for verbs such as parlant, faisant, écoutant, lisant, buvant, disant, or the irregulars, étant, sachant and ayant.

Rappel

There are a few nouns that happen to end in –ant. Be careful that you don’t pick these out as a present participle, for example les commerçants, les passants, les combattants.

Exemples En travaillant très dur, tu peux obtenir de bons résultats.

En arrivant à l’école, le proviseur m’attendait.

O. Traduisez les phrases suivantes en français. 1. On seeing my friend, I was ashamed.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 2. By studying a little harder, you can succeed in your exams.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 3. Upon seeing the photos, she cried.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 4. She lost weight by playing a lot of sport.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 5. While getting dressed in the morning, I listen to French CDs.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 6. She was reading the newspaper while eating.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 7. I saw Luke upon leaving school yesterday.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 8. Don’t speak while eating.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 9. One can learn a lot of French by watching French films.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 10. By practising a little every day, it’s fairly easy to learn.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Neuvième partie : Ceci / cela

Demonstrative adjectives, ce (cet), cette, ces, which are followed by a noun, are covered in Unité 7 so revise them if you need to. If you want to say “I don’t like this” (with no noun following “this”) then use ceci or cela. They are interchangeable. Ceci means “this” and cela means “that”.

Exemples Je ne veux pas ceci, pas du tout !

Je ne suis pas du tout d’accord avec cela. 192

Mais cela prendrait trop d’effort de la part du gouvernement.

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