The 250-word letter that must not sound translated
You are drafting a 250-word formal letter for your Level 3 French writing portfolio. The brief: write to the maire of your French twin town, Mme Delaunay, proposing that the twinning committee fund four lycée students to attend a two-week language stay. You have never met her. The checklist requires one hypothesis (si + imperfect + conditional), one concession with bien que + subjunctive, one cause connector and one consequence connector, and no more than one 'je pense que'. You have a week and two drafts. Draft one is 310 words; it contains three 'il y a', 'je suis excité' twice, 'aussi' used to mean 'also' in three places, and the closing 'bises'. Your teacher's margin note reads: 'Le fond est bon, mais le registre glisse.'
1. Fix the register. List the specific changes to make and explain what each one signals to a French reader.
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Register in a letter to a maire is built from small, reliable choices:
- Opening: 'Madame le Maire,' - not 'Chère Madame' (you do not know her) and certainly not 'Salut'. Close with 'Je vous prie d'agréer, Madame le Maire, l'expression de mes salutations distinguées.' It is formulaic, and the formula is the point.
- 'vous' throughout, including 'votre conseil municipal', 'vous avez bien voulu'. No 'tu', and no 'on' when you mean 'vous'.
- 'bises' → delete. It is affectionate and intimate; to an official it reads either as a mistake or as a joke. Use the closing formula instead.
- Lexical upgrade, sparingly: 'je veux' → 'je souhaiterais'; 'il faut' → 'il serait souhaitable que'; 'parler de' → 'évoquer'. Not every verb needs upgrading - 'iceux' and 'icelui' sound archaic, not elegant.
- No spoken fillers: 'du coup', 'en fait', 'super' belong to speech, not to this letter.
The test to apply sentence by sentence: could this appear in a letter from a stranger to a public official? If it sounds like a message to a friend, it is wrong register. Register is a marking criterion, not decoration.
2. Diagnose the interference from English in the draft ('excité', 'aussi', 'bises') and give the correct alternatives with a short explanation.
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Three classic English-to-French traps:
- 'je suis excité' - in French this carries a sexual charge. For enthusiasm about a project use 'je suis impatient de...', 'je me réjouis de...', or 'c'est avec enthousiasme que...'. This is exactly the kind of error a French reader remembers, so it costs more than its grammatical weight.
- 'aussi' meaning 'also' - in clause-initial position this is an anglicism. Use 'de plus', 'en outre', 'par ailleurs', or 'également'. Keep 'aussi' for comparison ('aussi grand que') and for the formal 'therefore' sense ('aussi avons-nous décidé...').
- 'bises' - as above; also 'bisous', 'à plus'. Replace with the closing formula.
Other traps to check in a formal letter: 'actuellement' means 'currently', not 'actually' (that is 'en fait'); 'demander une question' should be 'poser une question'; 'je suis d'accord avec' + thing should be 'je partage l'avis selon lequel...'. When unsure, choose the structure you can control rather than the literal translation of the English phrase - a simpler correct sentence beats an ambitious calque.
3. You must cut 310 words to 250 without losing marks. What goes, what stays, and how do you protect the required structures?
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Cut by function, not by sentence.
Keep (these earn marks): the opening formula; your proposition in one clear sentence; the hypothesis ('Si le comité acceptait de financer quatre places, les étudiants pourraient...'); the concession ('Bien que le budget soit serré, ...'); one cause ('étant donné que') and one consequence ('par conséquent'); the closing formula.
Cut: the second and third 'il y a' - recast as 'se trouvent', 'existent', or simply delete, since 'il y a' often props up an empty sentence; the paragraph explaining why languages are useful in general (the examiner already agrees; it is filler); any 'je pense que' beyond the single permitted one; the list of four benefits trimmed to the two strongest; 'je suis excité' replaced by one clause rather than three.
Method: write the skeleton as bullets first - proposition, two arguments, one objection, response, request - then write only the sentences those bullets need. 250 words is roughly twelve to fifteen sentences. If you are over length, you are almost always explaining rather than arguing, and explanation is where the cut should fall.