Breakdown of Marie enregistre chaque séance pour revoir les points techniques plus tard.
Questions & Answers about Marie enregistre chaque séance pour revoir les points techniques plus tard.
Enregistre is in the simple present tense (3rd person singular of enregistrer).
French simple present can correspond to several English forms:
- Marie enregistre chaque séance.
- "Marie records each session."
- "Marie is recording each session."
- "Marie does record each session."
Because of chaque ("each"), the sentence clearly has a habitual meaning: she does this regularly, not just right now.
French normally uses the simple present where English would use the present continuous:
- English: "Marie is recording each session."
- French: Marie enregistre chaque séance.
There is a progressive form in French (être en train de + infinitive), but it’s used only when you want to emphasize that the action is happening right now, at this very moment:
- Marie est en train d’enregistrer la séance.
"Marie is (in the middle of) recording the session (right now)."
In your sentence, we’re talking about a general habit, so the normal simple present enregistre is what you use.
Here, enregistrer means "to record" in the sense of recording audio or video.
It has several common meanings depending on context:
- To record (audio/video)
- enregistrer une vidéo / une séance / une chanson
- To register / to officially record
- enregistrer une naissance, une marque, une plainte
- To check in (at a hotel, on a flight)
- enregistrer ses bagages = to check in your luggage
In this sentence, because of chaque séance and revoir, it’s clearly about making recordings of sessions.
A slow, approximate phonetic breakdown in English terms is:
- enregistre ≈ “ahn-reh-ZHREE-struh”
More precisely in IPA (standard French): [ɑ̃.ʁɛ.ʒistʁ]
Main points:
- en- → nasal sound [ɑ̃], like on in French; you don’t clearly pronounce the n.
- -re- → short [ʁɛ], guttural French r.
- -gis- → [ʒis], the g before i is like zh in "vision".
- The final -tre → [tʁ]; the e is silent in normal speech.
So you hear something like ahn-REH-zhistR, with several letters not fully pronounced.
Both are possible, but there’s a nuance:
- chaque séance = each session, focusing on individual sessions one by one.
- toutes les séances = all the sessions, focusing on the whole group as a total.
In your sentence:
- Marie enregistre chaque séance…
Suggests she records every single one, without exception, emphasizing the regular, systematic nature.
You could say Marie enregistre toutes les séances, but it sounds a bit more like “She records all the sessions” as a set, rather than highlighting the repetition session-by-session.
In French, séance is much broader and doesn’t default to a spiritual meaning. It generally means a session, sitting, or period of activity.
Common uses:
- une séance de cinéma = a film showing
- une séance de sport = a sports training session
- une séance de thérapie = a therapy session
- une séance de cours = a class session / lesson
In your sentence, séance just means “session” (of a class, training, lesson, meeting, etc.), depending on context. The spiritual-spirits meaning is only one specialized use.
To express purpose ("in order to do X"), French uses:
- pour + infinitive
So:
- pour revoir = "in order to review / to review"
À + infinitive does not express purpose this way, and pour à revoir is simply incorrect.
Some alternatives that are still purposeful:
- pour revoir les points techniques plus tard
- afin de revoir les points techniques plus tard (a bit more formal)
But the core pattern stays pour/afin de + infinitive for purpose.
Revoir literally means "to see again", but it often corresponds to English "to review" or "to go over":
- revoir une vidéo / un cours / ses notes
= to watch/see a video again, to review a class, to go over your notes.
Comparisons:
- regarder encore / regarder à nouveau
- More literally "to watch again", very concrete.
- Stresses the act of watching, not necessarily the idea of studying.
- réviser
- Used mainly for studying/revising for exams or systematically reviewing material.
- réviser pour un examen, réviser sa grammaire.
In your sentence, revoir les points techniques suggests she will go back over / review the technical aspects—it implies watching again with the goal of understanding or improving, not just passively rewatching.
The definite article les is used because the speaker is talking about specific, identifiable technical points—probably ones that are known from the context of the class or training.
- les points techniques = the technical points (the ones in this activity that both speaker and listener can identify).
- des points techniques = some technical points (non-specific, just “some” among others).
- No article (∅ points techniques) is generally not possible here in standard French; common countable nouns almost always need an article.
So les points techniques suggests “the technical points of this activity” rather than just “some technical points”.
It corresponds to both ideas in English:
- points here means aspects, items, issues.
- techniques is an adjective: technical / relating to technique.
So les points techniques = the technical points = the points of technique (details about how to perform the technique correctly, small technical aspects that need attention).
Note on word order:
- French: points techniques (noun + adjective)
- English: technical points (adjective + noun)
And techniques agrees in number and gender with points (masculine plural), but in the plural both masculine and feminine forms are spelled techniques, so you don’t see the difference in writing.
Yes, plus tard is fairly flexible, though the original position is the most natural:
- Marie enregistre chaque séance pour revoir les points techniques plus tard.
(neutral, very natural)
You could also say, with slightly different emphasis:
- Marie enregistre chaque séance pour, plus tard, revoir les points techniques.
(a bit more marked, with commas, highlighting "later") - Plus tard, Marie revoit les points techniques (qu’elle a enregistrés).
(Now the "later" action is in a separate sentence.)
Putting plus tard before pour (e.g. … plus tard pour revoir…) would sound wrong here. The usual place is right after the part of the action that happens later, i.e., after revoir les points techniques.
Yes, you can use the direct object pronoun les to replace les points techniques:
- Marie enregistre chaque séance pour les revoir plus tard.
= "Marie records each session to review them later."
Notes:
- les goes before the infinitive revoir (because it’s the object of revoir, not of enregistre).
- We already know what les refers to from the context (the technical points), so the full noun phrase can be omitted.
Both versions are correct:
- With full noun: pour revoir les points techniques plus tard
- With pronoun: pour les revoir plus tard
The pronoun version is more compact and often more natural once the object has been mentioned before.