Entrée libre or Entrée gratuite? Marking a Mixed Vocabulary Exercise
A vocabulary test has six items. The candidate, Meera, writes: (1) « L'entrée est libre pour les moins de 18 ans » → « Entry is free for under-18s. » (2) « Il a du pain sur la planche » → « He has bread on the board. » (3) « Elle a eu un coup de foudre pour ce tableau » → « She had a lightning strike for this painting. » (4) « assister à un concert » → « to assist at a concert. » (5) « Je suis libre mardi » → « I am free on Tuesday. » (6) « Le musée est gratuit le premier dimanche » → « The museum is free the first Sunday. » The mark scheme gives 1 mark per item and accepts a correct paraphrase. Meera argues that (2) and (3) should be accepted because they are word-for-word translations and French is “logical”. The teacher has 10 minutes to give written feedback.
1. Mark items 1-6 out of 6, justifying each decision. Distinguish true false friends from idioms and from context-dependent polysemy.
Read the worked answer
Marking:
- 1/1 - « Entry is free for under-18s. » Entrée libre means admission without a ticket or payment. A more explicit translation is “free admission”, but the meaning is correct.
- 0/1 - Avoir du pain sur la planche is an idiom meaning “to have a lot of work to do / to have one's work cut out”. “Bread on the board” is a literal translation, not an English meaning.
- 0/1 - Avoir un coup de foudre pour means “to fall instantly in love with / to have an instant crush on”. “Lightning strike” is literal and does not convey the figurative meaning in English.
- 0/1 - Assister à is a false friend: it means “to attend”, not “to assist” (= to help). This is a lexical false friend, not an idiom.
- 1/1 - Être libre mardi means “to be free/available on Tuesday”. Here libre concerns availability, not price.
- 1/1 - Gratuit means “free of charge”; the translation is correct.
Total: 3/6. The distinctions to teach are: idiom (2, 3) - the whole phrase has a non-literal meaning; false friend (4) - the French word resembles an English word but has a different meaning; polysemy/context (1, 5) - libre can mean “free of charge” in entrée libre but “available” in je suis libre mardi.
2. Meera asks why « libre » can be correct in item 1 and item 5 but not a universal synonym of « gratuit ». Write a 50-70 word explanation with one extra example.
Read the worked answer
« “Libre” veut dire “qui n'est pas retenu, occupé ou réservé” : une personne libre, un fauteuil libre, un mardi libre. Dans “entrée libre”, cela veut dire qu'on peut entrer sans billet, donc sans payer. Mais “gratuit” est le mot précis pour “sans payer”. Exemple : un fauteuil libre n'est pas un fauteuil gratuit ! »
Reasoning: the explanation does not treat libre as a wrong word; it identifies the core meaning (“not constrained/occupied”) and shows how context produces the “no payment” reading in entrée libre. The chair example makes the distinction memorable: libre = available, gratuit = costing nothing.
3. Rewrite items 2 and 3 as natural English paraphrases, and give one French context in which each idiom would fit an HSC-style dialogue.
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Item 2: « Il a du pain sur la planche » → “He has a lot on his plate / his work cut out for him.” Context: « Tu viens au cinéma ce soir ? - Non, j'ai du pain sur la planche avant l'examen de français. »
Item 3: « Elle a eu un coup de foudre pour ce tableau » → “She fell in love with this painting at first sight / was instantly bowled over by it.” Context: « Elle est entrée dans la galerie, elle a vu le tableau et ç'a été le coup de foudre. »
Teaching point: both answers replace the literal image with an English expression that carries the same function. In the dialogue contexts, the idioms are embedded in a situation where the figurative meaning is clear. A word-for-word rendering would break the communication, even though every individual French word has been “translated”.