Using "que" as conjunction to mean "that"

I am told that que is used incorrectly in the following sentence and that the sentence needs to be restructured.

I don't see what the problem is in this sentence where I use que meaning "that" in English.

Je vous écris cette lettre au nom de toute la classe pour exprimer notre souci que nous ne sommes pas bien préparés à réussir à l'examen en quelques semaines.

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Key StudentPermalink Reply by Peter En on October 2, 2012 at 11:05am

I wish I could help you- but I believe I'm not qualified enough to- however, it's possible that by "restructure", the person in question could perhaps be referring to using a less transliterated structure- my general rule of thumb is that whenever something sounds too literal to it's english meaning- there's a problem...

perhaps you could use different verbs such as "s'inquiéter de" something like "les progrés qui nous inquiéte de..." I'm unsure.... we have to wait for someone fluent

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on October 2, 2012 at 5:20pm

Hi Peter -- I don't think there's a problem with "souci" per se (though you could indeed use "inquiétude"). I think it just turns out that speakers wouldn't tend to use it with "que" in this way. Instead, you can use "de" with the infinitive:

...notre souci de ne pas être bien préparés à passer l'examen dans quelques semaines.

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Permalink Reply by Raimund Strauck on October 2, 2012 at 5:37pm

Interesting. Yes I was told that the sentence sounds too transliterated from English, which is one of my main challenges when writing French.

I'll try your suggestion to use de ne pas être and see what feed back I'll get on that.