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A couple's ups and downs

"Les hauts et les bas dans un couple"
French C1 writing exercise

Hélène explains how she and her partner managed to navigate out of a rough patch.

Pay attention to the hints!

Some vocabulary you may want to look up before or during this exercise: "straight away", "to find one's soulmate", "living together", "a fairy tale", "to sour (situation-figuratively)", "to criticise [someone]", "to bicker", "the slightest reason", "to make [someone] feel", "utterly wretched (unhappy)", "to agree to [do]", "couple's therapy", "to turn out to be", "to overcome", "a rough patch", "to get out of hand", "to rediscover".

Written by qualified French expert Céline Pickard PGCE, BA
Last updated: 2023-01-04

I’ll give you some sentences to translate into French

  • I’ll show you where you make mistakes
  • I’ll keep track of what you need to practise
  • Change my choices if you want
Start the exercise
How the test works
You’ll practise: Le Passé Composé (Indicatif), L'Imparfait (Indicatif), Pronom réfléchi

Here's a preview of the text for the writing challenge, when you're ready click the start button above:

The day I met Victor, I knew straight away: I had finally found my soulmate and we were going to stay together forever. However, after living together for a few years, our fairy tale had soured. We constantly criticised each other and we bickered for the slightest reason, which was making us (feel) utterly wretched. That's when we agreed to start couple's therapy, which turned out to be an incredible experience thanks to which we managed to overcome this rough patch. Now, we're able to stop (each other) before the situation gets out of hand, and we're rediscovering what we love so much about each other!

Clever stuff happening!