Goals What you'll be able to do
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to…
- 🏞️ Talk about long weekends and short-haul tourism in France.
- 📍 Locate a few French regions on a map (Savoie, Landes, Creuse, Charente-Maritime, Lozère).
- 📞 Call a tourist office to ask for information and book activities.
- 🔗 Use the gérondif to express cause, manner, or simultaneity.
- 🔊 Tell the sounds [b] and [t] apart at the end of a word.
Discover 🏞️ First contact
📍 Partir ailleurs · Get away somewhere else
vous faites quoi
ce week-end ?
A poster from a tourist office: outdoor activities, mountain, sea, countryside…
1. Look at the poster What's it for?
a. What's the purpose of this poster?
b. Which leisure activities are shown? Tick the ones you can see.
2. Listen to the radio feature What's it about?
a. What is the topic of the feature?
b. True (V), False (F) or Not stated (N)?
- The French go away for the weekend more often because they work less than before.
- People usually book their hotel a week before they leave.
- For long weekends, the French prefer the south of the country.
- Everything is organised to save time.
- In the Creuse, you can go fishing.
- If you like snow, you can go to Savoie.
🗺️ The 5 regions mentioned in the feature Where the French escape to
Vocabulary Words to remember
🏞️ Outdoor activities
📅 Weekends & duration
🧳 Tourism & booking
Grammar — The gérondif "by/while doing…"
The gérondif is a verb form that links one action to another. Its closest English cousin is the "by/while/in doing…" construction (e.g. "by working hard", "while driving"). Critical rule: the subject of the gérondif is always the same as the subject of the main verb. If you'd say "While I was driving, he sang" in English (two subjects), you cannot use a gérondif in French.
⚙️ Formation
en + the nous-stem of the present + -ant
| nous allons | → | en allant |
| nous finissons | → | en finissant |
| nous changeons | → | en changeant |
| nous faisons | → | en faisant |
| nous prenons | → | en prenant |
| 3 exceptions to memorise: | ||
| être | → | en étant |
| avoir | → | en ayant |
| savoir | → | en sachant |
📚 Three meanings of the gérondif
Elle arrive en courant. She arrives running / while running.
Il écoute la radio en conduisant. He listens to the radio while driving.
En se levant si tard, il n'est pas arrivé à l'heure.
Because he got up so late, he didn't arrive on time.
En s'inscrivant à la dernière minute, certains voyageurs ne trouvent pas d'hôtel.
By booking at the last minute, some travellers can't find a hotel.
En faisant beaucoup d'efforts, elle réussira un jour.
By working hard, she'll succeed one day.
C'est en forgeant qu'on devient forgeron.
"Practice makes perfect" (literally: it's by smithing that one becomes a smith — a famous French proverb).
💡 Trick: how to tell the 3 meanings apart
- Simultaneity → you can replace with « pendant que… » (= "while…")
- Cause → you can replace with « parce que… » (= "because…")
- Manner → you can replace with « de cette façon : … » (= "this way: …" / "by …")
⚠️ Anglophone trap: English speakers often want to use -ing at the start of a sentence ("Walking down the street, I saw…"). In French, that's NOT the gérondif unless you add en: « En marchant dans la rue, j'ai vu… ». Without en, you get a present participle, which has different rules.
⚠️ Don't confuse these
The gérondif (en allant) ≠ the present participle (allant). The present participle describes or modifies a noun, like an adjective: « Une femme allant à la gare. » = "A woman going / who is going to the station." In English both translate as "-ing", but in French only the version with en in front is a true gérondif.
Practice Try it out
Exercise 3 — What does the gérondif mean here? cause, manner or simultaneity?
For each sentence, indicate what the gérondif expresses: cause, manière (manner) or simultanéité (simultaneity).
- Nous avons pris les billets de train en arrivant à la gare.
- En prenant un train à cette heure-là, il est arrivé trop tard à Chambéry.
- J'ai trouvé l'hôtel en cherchant sur Internet.
- On parlera de tes week-ends en marchant.
- En refusant de réserver maintenant, vous perdrez du temps.
- En faisant beaucoup d'efforts, tu réussiras le DELF.
Exercise 4 — A weekend on the boat 🛶 Rewrite with a gérondif
Turn the first clause into a gérondif.
🎯 Example: Vous arrivez à Roye, allez directement à l'agence. → En arrivant à Roye, allez directement à l'agence.
- Vous réservez les visites par téléphone, vous gagnez du temps.
→ , vous gagnez du temps. - Vous découvrez la Bourgogne et vous suivez un cours en même temps.
→ , vous suivez un cours en même temps. - Vous visitez une grande partie de la région, mais vous voyagez lentement.
→ , vous visitez une grande partie de la région. - Vous faites quelques kilomètres en bateau et vous arrivez à un parking.
→ , vous arrivez à un parking. - Vous laissez votre voiture au parking. Vous pouvez prendre un taxi.
→ , vous pouvez prendre un taxi.
Exercise 5 — My ideal weekend ✍️ Write it!
Describe your ideal weekend using at least 2 different gérondifs (60-100 words). The AI will give you feedback. 🤖
Communicate · Where to? Real-world task
📞 Role play · Tourist office
With family or a few friends, you've decided to spend the weekend somewhere else in France. You call a tourist office (Office de tourisme) to ask for information and make a few bookings. Act out the scene with a partner.
👤 Tourist (you)
- Greet + introduce yourself
- Give your dates and the number of people
- Ask what activities are available
- Ask about prices and discounts
- Book a hotel or an activity
- Thank + say goodbye
📞 Tourist-office employee
- Greet + introduce the office
- Suggest some activities (skiing, canoeing, horse-riding…)
- Announce prices and discounts
- Give advice (book in advance, etc.)
- Confirm the booking
- Say goodbye
🎯 Use the gérondif at least once: « En réservant maintenant, vous obtenez 20% de réduction. » ("By booking now, you get a 20% discount.")
Pronunciation · On m'attend ce matin [b] vs [t]
Tell apart the sounds [b] (voiced — vocal cords vibrate) and [t] (voiceless — no vibration). The trap for English speakers is different from the Chinese one: English final stops are often aspirated with a little puff of air (cat [kʰæt], cab [kʰæb]). In French, finals stay crisp and unaspirated — no breathy release. Many English speakers also under-voice their French [b] at the end of a word and it ends up sounding like [p]. Keep the vocal cords vibrating right through.
Which word do you hear?
Listen to audio 3 and pick the word you hear.
Weekends in France 🇫🇷 Cultural insight
📅 The French "long weekend"
In France, lots of public holidays fall in May (1 May Labour Day, 8 May VE Day, Ascension, Pentecôte/Whit Monday). When a holiday falls on a Thursday, many French people « font le pont » ("build the bridge") — i.e. they take Friday off too, giving themselves a 4-day weekend. English speakers will recognise the idea — it's the same as a UK "bank holiday weekend" or a US "long weekend", but the French version is much more common because of how May lines up.
🚗 Short-haul tourism
Thanks to the TGV high-speed train, low-cost airlines and booking platforms (Airbnb, Booking.com…), the French go away on weekends far more often than 30 years ago. Popular destinations: the coasts (Brittany, the Côte d'Azur, the Basque Country), cultural cities (Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg) or nature (Auvergne, Cévennes, Alps).
🏞️ The French and nature
Since COVID, the French have been rediscovering their own country: hiking has exploded, and so has the e-bike. Small rural communities (Creuse, Lozère, Cantal) are attracting more and more city-dwellers in search of quiet.
🇫🇷 vs 🇺🇸/🇬🇧
France has 11 public holidays a year — roughly the same as the US (about 10-11 federal) and slightly more than England (8 bank holidays). The big difference is timing: French holidays cluster heavily in May, which makes spring a season of long weekends. There's also no "in lieu" rule in France — if a holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday, you don't get a replacement day off (the UK does add a substitute Monday). On the upside, every employee gets 5 weeks of paid holiday by law, vs ~10 days in the US.