The big debates (l'enjeu, la mesure)

This lesson stocks the content vocabulary behind every French exam task that asks for your opinion: TEF's letter to the newspaper and its persuasion task (convincing a friend), TCF's synthesis (reporting what different people think) and its closing speaking task (giving your own opinion). Those tasks hand you a topic and expect you to argue about it. This lesson is the vocabulary you argue WITH — the topics, the stakes, the policies. The connectors you argue WITH structurally (d'une part... d'autre part, certes... mais) are Lessons 12 and 13, not here.

Two clusters make up this lesson, and TEF/TCF prompts draw on both constantly: environment and climate (le réchauffement climatique, le développement durable, les énergies renouvelables) and opinion/current-affairs (un enjeu, une mesure, les réseaux sociaux, l'intelligence artificielle, le pouvoir d'achat). Nearly every French opinion prompt recycles a handful of "big debate" nouns, and an issue at stake

un enjeu is the single most common one — almost any topic can be framed as "les enjeux de...". Learn it well; you will use it constantly.

Article gender is graded here as much as spelling: a fossil fuel

une énergie fossile is singular, "une énergie fossile," while renewable energy
les énergies renouvelables is plural, "les énergies renouvelables." Get the article wrong and the exam marks the word wrong.

The sentences below use the impersonal, generic register of French opinion writing — il est important de..., selon un sondage..., la plupart des gens... — rather than a vous/tu dialogue. That register, not a conversational one, is what TEF and TCF expect when you are asked for your point of view on a societal issue.

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