Duo does not much like contractions or abbreviates that are not compulsory, so "a man's cooking" may not be recognized by the checking software.

About the verbal form "is cooking", please re. to the rule below:

In English, to mean that an action is in progress at the time you speak, you use the continuous verbal form, ie verb BE + action verb in the gerund form (-ing).

o he is eating means he currently eats

In French, this verbal form does not exist (directly translated “il est mangeant” or "il est mange" are incorrect).

Therefore, you can translate either “il mange” or “il est en train de manger”, where the construction verb être + en train de + infinitive correctly expresses the English continuous form.

It is another good reason not to contract "is" with a noun. Sorry to those who have done this all their lives. When « 's » is used with a noun, it is generally understood as meaning possession. Thus saying, "a man's cooking" could refer to some cooking done by a man. If we contract "is" with the noun, we now have two different forms of contractions with completely different meanings. Add the contraction of "has" and now we have three completely different meanings. The Duolingo computer does not know what you mean; it only knows what you type. Sometimes, contractions are natural and efficient. At other times, they are ambiguous and confusing for everyone who reads them. Contractions which may be well understood are not always effective when programmed into a computer without using stringent qualifiers for when they are acceptable and when they are not. Thus, we have the infamous Duo sentences: "Did you've a dog?", "Have you'd a dog?" and "She's a new car".

1. the present participle of "cuisiner" is "cuisinant". In French the present participle (re. gerund) is not used as it is used in English, and never after verb "être". Ex: "j'écoute la radio en cuisinant" = I listen to the radio while cooking.

2. "il/elle/on cuisine" is 3rd person singular, present tense

3. "un homme cuisine" cannot be the addition of 2 nouns, notably because "une cuisine" = "kitchen"

4. a cook = un chef, un cuisinier, un chef cuisinier

you forgot the verb: either "a man is cooking" or "a man cooks"

emily- a man- is un homme. You use one when you want to say how many. Who's cooking? A man cooks. How many men are cooking? Only one man.

Mitaine forgot to stress that the word "a" was originally "an", so you don't add an "n" when the next sound is a vowel, rather the "n" was dropped from "an" when preceding a consonant. I won't go into the historical reasons for that in detail, since this is all to say the "an" is etymologically linked to "un", as is "one". So "a" always meant and continues to mean a single unit.

the word "cuisine" can be 3 different things:

• "une cuisine" = a kitchen

• "il/elle or on cuisine" = he or she is cooking

• "la cuisine espagnole" = Spanish cuisine (gastronomy)

Continous tenses with BE + Verb-ING do not exist in French.

a man is cooking = un homme cuisine OR un homme est en train de cuisiner.

cuisine can be:

a noun = une cuisine (a kitchen)

a verb : from infinitive "cuisiner", "il/elle/on cuisine" is 3rd person singular in indicative present.

to cook = faire cuire or cuisiner

Remember:

• in English, he/she/it prompt the addition of an -s to the verb in present.
• in French, il/elle/on never get an -s but "tu" always gets one (all verbs, all tenses, except imperative for 1st group verbs, like "mange !")

It is really difficult to explain this in writing. You may get a better grasp of these with forvo.com:

http://fr.forvo.com/word/je_mange/#fr

Note that "mange", "manges" and "mangent" are pronounced the same.