French language Q&A Forum

Why is indefiinite article omitted from Quelle excellente ideée?

In this story, the writer is still waiting the response from the interviewers, thus I would assume he is still working. Hence shouldn't we use Je travaille tellement dur depuis quelques années ? I assume he is still working hard....  :) 

Can one no longer use  je puis?

In my last test the answer was ‘le jour de Pâques‘. I got it wrong. Now the answer is ‘à la Sainte-Catherine‘. I got it wrong. Next the answer is ‘à Noël’. I got it wrong. Could you put all the rules on one page please, so I can see the pattern? Thanks.

Does effort refer to the skiing activity or to the production of the raclette ?   The sentence seems a bit ambiguous.

In level C1 why is there so much emphasis on passé simple?  I would rather be practising useful phrases. Thank you.  

I think it's interesting that you never note the divergence of french and english grammar on using bien as an adverb with être.  If one says in english  "it is good", good is an adjective.  If one says the french version of this "C'est bien" one uses the adverb. Elsewhere in french "c'est" is followed by an adjective "c'est beau". Usually, I guess, one uses il/elle "il est difficile".   But it seems unusual to suddenly use an adverb to describe not a verb but the noun of the sentence.  I can see easily Ça va bien, because bien is modifying the verb going. 

I always understood "le conditionnel présent" to mean "could," but here you're indicating that it means "would," which has a completely different meaning.  Is that just true with "aller" or how do you tell when it's could or would?

I notice in the example, Martine walks "jusque chez Julien". More often you see jusqu’à (or au, à la etc). Is à omitted here because "chez" is already a preposition, as well as denoting Julien’s house?