Goals What you'll be able to do
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to…
- 📰 Talk about the press, the media and the crisis they are going through.
- 🛍️ Understand the situation of French newsstands (kiosques à journaux).
- ↪️ Express consequence with donc, alors, c'est pourquoi, si…que, tellement de…que, trop…pour, assez…pour.
- 🎯 Use the cleft sentence (c'est… qui / c'est… que) — French's "it's X that…" — to highlight one element.
- 💼 Talk about your working conditions and explain your problems.
- 🎵 Recognise emphatic intonation by ear (enthusiasm vs irritation).
Discover 📰 Getting in
📃 Article — "Young people and the daily press"
Here is an article from Le Monde reporting on a French government study: young people read little daily press. Why? And what can be done? Note: Le Monde is France's quasi-equivalent of The New York Times or The Guardian — the broadsheet of reference for news of record.
Les jeunes et la presse quotidienne
Un récent rapport du gouvernement montre que les jeunes lisent peu la presse quotidienne. Il y a trois raisons à cela : son prix est trop élevé, elle n'est pas présente dans les lieux fréquentés par les jeunes et elle est souvent peu adaptée à cette population. Cette presse est aussi concurrencée par les magazines, la radio, la télévision et, depuis quelques années, par Internet.
Plusieurs propositions sont présentées pour développer la lecture de la presse chez les 15-25 ans : proposer par exemple à chaque jeune qui fête ses 18 ans un abonnement gratuit de deux mois à un quotidien, ou vendre des journaux dans les lycées ou les universités.
📖 English translation
Young people and the daily press
A recent government report shows that young people read little daily press. There are three reasons: the price is too high, newsstands aren't located where young people go, and the content is often not very well suited to this audience. The daily press also faces competition from magazines, radio, TV — and for the past few years, the internet.
Several proposals are put forward to encourage reading of the daily press among 15- to 25-year-olds: for example, offering every young person turning 18 a free two-month subscription to a daily paper, or selling newspapers in high schools and universities.
Exercise 1 — Did you get it?
Read the text and mark each statement True 🇻, False 🇫 or Not stated 🇳.
- In France, young people read few daily papers.
- The daily press is generally free for young people.
- You find newspapers at the entrance of almost every high school and university.
- Articles often aren't well enough adapted to young readers.
- The internet has affected daily-paper sales over the past few years.
- Magazines face the same problems as the daily press.
- On their 18th birthday, every young person already receives a free two-month subscription.
🎙️ A tough job · Mme Quincampoix, newsstand owner
Madame Quincampoix has been running a Paris newsstand for 20 years. The City of Paris interviews her to find out why so many kiosques are closing.
Exercise 2 — Madame Quincampoix's problems
a. Tick the problems Madame Quincampoix mentions about her job.
b. Why is her salary so low?
Vocabulary Words to remember
📰 The press & media
📉 Crisis & difficulties
💼 Work
Grammar How French works
➡️ 1. Expressing consequence
A consequence connects a cause (already happened) to its result. French has several connectors, which fall into three families:
① Simple connectors — they just add a consequence
| Connector | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| donc | therefore, so (English "therefore" / "so") | Il était là tout à l'heure. Il ne peut donc être bien loin. |
| alors | so, then — informal, spoken | Sa voiture était en panne, alors il y est allé à pied. |
| c'est pourquoi | that's why — written, more formal | J'étais malade, c'est pourquoi je ne t'ai pas répondu. |
| c'est pour ça que | that's why — spoken, informal | J'étais malade, c'est pour ça que je ne t'ai pas répondu. |
② With intensity — the intensity of the cause produces the result
| Structure | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| si / tellement + adj / adv + que | so … that (English "so X that…") | Le vent est si fort qu'il est préférable de tout fermer. Il parle tellement vite que je ne comprends rien. |
| tellement de + n + que | so much / so many … that | J'ai tellement de travail que je suis très fatiguée. |
| si bien que | = such that, to the point that | Ils se sont entraînés, si bien qu'ils ont gagné le match. |
③ trop / assez + pour + infinitive — result is impossible or possible
| Structure | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| trop + adj / adv + pour + inf | too … to (= impossible) — English "too tired to drive" | Le chauffeur est trop fatigué pour conduire. |
| assez + adj / adv + pour + inf | … enough to (= possible) — English "good enough to pass" | Fanny travaille assez bien pour réussir son examen. |
| trop de + n + pour + inf | too much / too many … to | Ils sont trop âgés pour faire du ski. |
| assez de + n + pour + inf | enough … to | Il a assez d'argent pour acheter cette voiture. |
🎯 2. Putting the emphasis somewhere · cleft sentences
French uses c'est… qui or c'est… que to emphasise one element of the sentence. This is the cleft sentence — extremely common in spoken French. English does almost the same thing with "It is X who/that…", though we often use word stress instead.
c'est… qui — emphasises the subject
Plain sentence: « Le téléphone disparaît dans le quartier. »
With emphasis: « C'est un peu de la vie qui disparaît dans le
quartier. » ("It's a bit of life itself that's vanishing from the neighbourhood.")
« C'est toi qui as raison. » = "You are the one who's right" (not me).
c'est… que — emphasises anything else (object, place, time, cause…)
« C'est en France que j'ai pris ces photos. » = "It was in France that I took these photos." (emphasises the place)
« C'est ma mère que tu vois sur la photo. » = "The one you see in the photo is my mum." (emphasises the object)
« C'est parce que beaucoup de kiosques ferment que la ville a réagi. »
= "It's because so many kiosks are closing that the city reacted." (emphasises the cause)
💡 Anglophone tip
Where English speakers often emphasise with stress ("I saw HIM at the cinema"),
French speakers restructure the sentence with c'est… qui/que. Don't try to
convey emphasis in French by raising your voice — it sounds odd. Cleft instead:
« C'est lui que j'ai vu au cinéma. »
(The English "It-cleft" — "It is/was X who/that…" — is the direct equivalent and works the same way,
just used less often than in French.)
Practice Try it out
Exercise 3 — Things aren't going well! 😩
Rewrite the sentence using si / tellement … que or trop / assez … pour.
🎯 Example: Les journaux sont devenus trop chers, alors ils se vendent moins bien.
→ Les journaux sont devenus si chers qu'ils se vendent moins bien.
- Ce travail est vraiment dur, c'est pour ça qu'il n'attire plus personne. →
- Il y a beaucoup d'autres types de média, la presse a donc moins de succès. →
- Certains journaux se vendaient très mal, c'est pourquoi ils ont disparu. →
- Le matin, l'installation des journaux est très longue, alors elle commence tôt. →
- La situation est difficile, le gouvernement a donc décidé d'agir. →
Exercise 4 — At the kiosk 🗞️
Imagine the reply (with a consequence expression) to each question.
🎯 Example: — Alors ? Vous ne m'avez pas acheté le journal ce matin ?
→ — Non, il y avait tellement de monde devant le kiosque que je ne l'ai pas pris.
- — Pardon Madame, vous ne vendez plus L'Équipe ?
→ - — Comment ? Le kiosque va fermer ?
→ - — Vous avez fini de lire le journal ? Je peux te l'emprunter ?
→ - — Ah bon ? Vous avez déjà vendu tous les Ouest-France aujourd'hui ?
→ - — Ça ne vous fatigue pas de compter tous les journaux chaque matin ?
→
Exercise 5 — Emphasise with c'est… qui / c'est… que 🎯
Rewrite each sentence to put the emphasis on the underlined element.
- Marie a écrit cet article. →
- J'ai lu cet article hier soir. →
- Je suis allée au kiosque ce matin. →
- Il a fermé son kiosque à cause de la concurrence. →
Exercise 6 — Mini-article 📝
Write a mini-article (80-120 words) about a crisis of your choice in your country: the print press, independent bookshops, small shops, vinyl records, paper letters… Use at least 2 consequence expressions and 1 cleft sentence. AI will check your work 🤖.
Communicate Real-world tasks
🗞️ 7. And you? Your news sources
With a partner, answer the following questions.
- Which media do you use to keep informed? (Newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, internet, social networks, news apps…) Why those ones?
- At what time of day do you listen to or watch the news?
- In your country, are there any free newspapers? If so, where? (subway, campus…)
- What do you think of fake news? How do you go about fact-checking?
- Do you still read print newspapers? Why (not)?
😤 8. Nothing's working any more! · Role play
Pick one of the two roles. Then act out the scene with a partner.
😩 You · the employee
You're unhappy with your working conditions (hours, workload, pay). You go to your manager to complain and show them the impact on your health and life.
💡 Use si…que, tellement de…que, trop…pour.
💼 The manager
You run a business. An employee is unhappy. Explain that you can't change anything because of competition and the wider economic situation.
💡 Use c'est… qui / que to emphasise.
Pronounce · Tu plaisantes ! "You must be kidding!"
The same sentence can be said with enthusiasm 😍 or with irritation 😤 depending on intonation. When speaking, French speakers emphasise by articulating each syllable and stressing the keyword: « C'est in-croy-AB-le ! » — a more deliberate, syllable-by-syllable delivery than the single-word stress English speakers use ("That's IN-credible!").
Enthusiastic or irritated?
Listen to audio 1 and mark Enthusiastic or irritated (V for énervé).
- « C'est drôle ! » +
- « C'est inadmissible ! » −
- « C'est impossible ! »
- « C'est formidable ! »
- « C'est incompréhensible ! »
🎯 Your turn: say each sentence twice — once enthusiastic, once irritated. Hit the syllable boundaries hard: « C'est in-croy-AB-le ! »
The press in France 🇫🇷 Context
📰 The major national dailies
- Le Monde — paper of record, centre-left, founded 1944. Roughly the French equivalent of The New York Times / The Guardian.
- Le Figaro — centre-right daily, founded 1826 (the oldest). Closer to The Times or The Wall Street Journal in positioning.
- Libération ("Libé") — left-wing, founded by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1973.
- L'Équipe — sports daily, the most-read paper in France.
- Le Parisien / Aujourd'hui en France — popular, general news.
- Les Échos / La Tribune — business and finance (think FT / WSJ).
- 20 Minutes / Métro — free subway papers (now in decline).
🛍️ Newsstands in danger
The green Parisian newsstands have been an institution since 1857 — those distinctive dark-green metal kiosks you see on postcards. But their numbers are falling fast: there were 340 in Paris in 2000, 240 in 2010, around 320 today (now renovated and modernised). Why? The internet, tough working conditions (long hours, weather, low pay), and competition from free digital news.
📊 The French press in numbers (2024)
since 2000
the press daily
a print daily
social networks
🇺🇸🇬🇧 vs 🇫🇷
In the US and UK, the print press is in much the same shape — local papers decimated, regional dailies folding, big names (NYT, WaPo, The Guardian, The Times) surviving by pivoting hard to digital subscriptions. In France, print holds on slightly better for two reasons: a cultural tradition (reading the paper with your coffee at the counter of a café), and substantial state aid to the press — about €400 million a year in direct and indirect subsidies, which has no real US/UK equivalent. The newsstand on the corner is therefore both a commercial business and, informally, a piece of cultural heritage the state actively protects.