I’m often asked for feedback from learners of French, usually about something they’ve written. I notice there’s hesitation over how to word the question.
How do you ask for feedback in French?
There are many different ways, but I’ll stick with just a few simple ones here.
Let’s say you’ve written an essay, and now you want some feedback on what you’ve written. You can ask:
Qu’est-ce que vous pensez de ma rédaction?
Qu’est-ce que tu penses de ma rédaction?
You can replace ma rédaction with whatever it is that you want feedback on.
If you both already know that it’s your rédaction that you’re talking about, you can ask:
Qu’est-ce que vous en pensez?
Qu’est-ce que tu en penses?
When people speak informally, you’ll also hear qu’est-ce que tu en penses contract to qu’est-ce que t’en penses, or even qu’est-ce t’en penses, which sounds like kess t’en penses.
If you’re writing content for the web and need to put a tab or link asking visitors for feedback, it’s good to remember just what feedback is anyway.
Feedback is really just comments.
Although the word feedback does exist in French, you can simply use the word commentaires.
You can write:
Envoyez-nous vos commentaires.
Envoyez-moi vos commentaires.
You can also write Commentaires or Commentaires? with a link.
This reminds me of a French word that I saw on the Postes Canada website, where they ask visitors for feedback.
There’s a link in the top right corner of the page that reads: Rétroaction sur le site Web. This is their way of asking visitors for feedback about the website.
To me, rétroaction here seems like an unnecessarily complicated way of asking for commentaires.
