Staycation: a positive experience

"Le staycation : une expérience positive"
French C1 writing exercise

Oscar talks about his experience with staycations.

Pay attention to the hints!

Some vocabulary you may want to look up before or during this exercise: "at the height of", "a pandemic", "to cross one's mind", "a holiday rental", "[something] to be used to [do]", "to cover [travel/accommodation/food] expenses", "to be far less [adjective]", "to have some planning to do", "to deny", "a staycation", "a drawback", "to be tempted to [do]", "a work email", "to disconnect from [something], "day-to-day (adj.)", "all in all", "to reproduce", "since then", "a hidden gem".

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

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

At the height of the pandemic, in the summer of 2020, my family and I had to spend our holiday [US: vacation] at home. It had never crossed our mind that you could spend your holiday [US: vacation] this way. As we stayed home and didn't book a hotel or a holiday rental, we managed to save a lot of the money that would have been used to cover the travel, accommodation and food expenses. We've also realised that we were far less stressed and more relaxed because we did not have a lot of planning to do. I can't deny that staycations also have a few drawbacks. For example, my wife was often tempted to check her work emails and she could not truly disconnect from the day-to-day chores. However, all in all, it was a very positive experience that we have reproduced several times since then, which enabled us to discover some true hidden gems in our own region.

Let me take a look at that...