Mathieu
Night We were a lot of friends in a party and a friend of mine is a coward because he cannot dance. All of us paid him some drinks because we wanted to help him to dance with a girls. We tried so hardly to make him dance but it didn't work.Some hours after, he staggered and fall somewhere and nobody has seen him. During the evening, I have scarcely searched him but I was busy with someone else so I stopped. A while after, I was seriously looking for my friend so I asked to another friend if he has seen him but he said he didn't. He said too:''Don't fret we might have seen soon'' . A few hours later, we have discovered our friend lied down and was dreary on the floor.Someone has availed of his unconsciousness to draw something on his face.
Nov 25, 2014 12:49 PM
Corrections · 4

Night

We were I was with a lot of friends in at a party and a friend of mine is was being a coward because he cannot would not dance. All of us paid bought him some drinks because we wanted to help him to dance with a some girls. We tried so hardly to make him dance but it didn't work.Some hours after, he staggered and fall fell somewhere and nobody has seen saw him. During the evening, I have scarcely searched him but I was busy with someone else so I stopped. A while after, I was seriously looking for my friend so I asked to another friend if he has had seen him but he said he didn't hadn't. He said too:''Don't fret we might have seen soon''. [Do you mean, "We might find him soon"?] A few hours later, we have discovered our friend lied lying down and was dreary passed out on the floor.Someone has had availed taken advantage of his unconsciousness to draw something on his face.

 

Bien travail! Two recurring corrections involve tenses: (1) In spoken (and sometimes written) French, the passé composé includes the sense of the passé simple, but in English (both spoken and written), the distinction between the two can be important. In the paragraph above, you sometimes use the English perfect tense ("I have done") when English requires the past simple ("I did"). That's a common mistake, and the frustrating thing is that the Anglophone ear knows when it's wrong, but the Anglophone mouth has a hard time explaining the distinction in terms of grammar rules. We just know from experience and sense. (I started to try explaining, but I was about to confuse the matter, so I deleted my attempt. Perhaps you can find something helpful with a Google search.)

 

(2) You sometimes use the perfect ("I have done") when the English requires the pluperfect ("I had done"). My understanding is that the difference is much like the difference between the passé composé and the plus-que-parfait. If a story is happening in the past, and someone in the story discovers something that was done even further back in the past, use the pluperfect / plus-que-parfait. ("We found [in the past] that someone had drawn [even further back in the past] on his face.")

 

One final note: The word "coward" in English isn't vulgar, but it's strong and quite insulting. It has a serious sense, not a playul one, and lots of people wouldn't consider it a funny joke to be called a "coward" by their friends. "Chicken" is a softer and more playful (although it's probably a bit dated by now).

November 25, 2014
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