Most Linux distributions are configured to use a US english keyboard. If you need to write on a french or any other kind of keyboard, you will want to change the locale so special keys like accents appear in the console.
The way to do this is to change the system locale with a program called loadkeys. For example, to enable a canadian-french locale, you need to add this line in your startup files:
loadkeys cf
Here cf means the canadian-french keyboard. Other locales are us, fr and more.