Culture G = 0

My husband teases me a lot about not knowing French movie stars or cultural references (culture générale), but I've adopted the Gallic shrug and not worried much about it.

But the idea of having to pass a concours in order to keep working at the University in the long term (and to have some career mobility) has made me realize that I should brush up on my proper written French and my culture g.

Since I really liked the FLE books I got from CLE International, I decided to check out what they have for cultural knowledge. "Civilisation Progressive du Français avancé" was available right away at my local bookstore, but I had to order "Administration.com".

Civilisation Progressive is set up like the other Progressive workbooks: lesson on the left, exercise on the right. The workbook has a number of chapters to cover things like the after-war period, African independence, French literature, movies, social issues, philosophy, politics, etc. The articles are obviously brief in order to cover everything in just over 200 pages, but you get the main events/references, and often the exercises recommend looking up more information about a specific person or event. I haven't done very many exercises yet, but in the few that I have, I've begun understanding the historical/cultural background to stories like this about the fourneau de Dunkerque.

During my lunch break today I went and picked up the other workbook I ordered: Administration.com

This workbook explains French administration and goes through the different ways its organized (d'Etat, territoriale, interaction with EU, etc). Just thumbing through it I think I will understand a lot more about my daily life doing this workbook, let alone be better prepared for a possible concours. This workbook isn't as segregated lesson-exercise like the Progressive series, so you'll have a paragraph of explanation or a chart, then some things to fill in, then boxes to check true or false, and so on. The last pages include an answer key (which the Civilisation book does not have).

Flipping through the pages before I went back to work this afternoon, I happened upon the following exercise:
Indiquez par une croix dans quelle situation les formules suivantes sont utilisées (choices are 'd'égal à égal', 'd'un supérieur hiérarchique à un subordonné' and 'd'un subordonné à un supérieur hiérarchique')

1. Je vous prie d'agréer, Monsieur l'assurance de ma considération distinguée.
2. Je vous prie d'agréer, Monsieur, l'expression de mes salutations distinguées.
3. Je vous prie d'agréer, Monsieur, mes respectueuses salutations.
4. Je vous adresse, Monsieur, mes salutations distinguées.
5. Je vous prie d'agréer, Madame, l'expression de ma haute considération.

And I just about died. Because I usually pick one at random when I have to write a French business letter. Or I reply back with what the other person used as a closing to their letter. I had no idea there were certain phrases I shouldn't use when replying to my boss! My go-to solution was this site, and I'd just mix it up a bit, changing phrases every once in a while.

So for once I'll agree with my husband that I have "zéro culture g". But if I make it through these two workbooks I should make a little less fool of myself!