La Grande Arche de La Défense
French Listening Comprehension
Study Guide
Take a look at the following for help with any vocabulary that you might not
have understood in La Grande Arche de La Défense, then take
the test.
| Vocabulary | |
| aboutir | to succeed, be concluded |
| accueillir | to welcome, accomodate |
| aménagement | planning, laying out |
| un axe | route, line |
| une bielle | connecting rod |
| un concours | competition, contest |
| désormais | from now/then on, henceforth |
| un mousqueton | snap hook, clasp |
| le parement | facing |
| prévu | past participle of prévoir - to foresee |
| la superficie | surface area |
| susciter | to create, give rise to |
| Notes | |
| The Grande Arche was one of François Mitterrand's famous grands projets, architectural monuments that are either glorious late-20th-century additions to the greatest city in Europe or monstrous displays of pharaonic self-aggrandisement, depending on your point of view. Some of the buildings have fared better than others. The Opéra Bastille is widely criticized as a white elephant, and there have been logistical problems with the National Library, which some say is not suited to storing books. But the Louvre Pyramid is still admired, and so, to a lesser degree perhaps, is the Great Arch of La Défense. Seen from central Paris, the Grande Arche completes the line leading from the triumphal arch in the Tuileries Gardens through the Arc de Triomphe, though, as the text notes, it is slightly off-center. It is an imposing monument, and the view from the top, which is really what the 500,000 visitors come for, is worth the trip to the district, which is otherwise grim, impersonal, and, outside office hours, rather scary. The architect Paul Andreu, who designed the "nuage," has been in the news recently. It was he who drew up the plans for Charles de Gaulle airport's ultramodern Terminal 2E, a portion of the ceiling of which collapsed in May 2004, killing four people. He insists his designs were not at fault. | |
| La Grande Arche de La Défense French Listening Comprehension Exercise |
||||
| Listen | Study | Test | ||
| Transcript Translation | ||||
| Sound files and transcript
were
originally published in Champs-Élysées audiomagazine (read my review) and are used with the permission of Champs-Élysées, Inc. |
||||
| Listening Index French Dictionaries | ||||
The free, twice-weekly About French newsletter keeps you informed about changes to this site, including new lessons, articles, and forum discussions. Subscribe today!
|
