cacahuetes and accent grave, module 4, Food/survival kit

A peanut butter and jam sandwich - it was presented as un sandwich au beurre de cacahuetes et confiture. I think there should be an accent grave for peanuts, cacahuètes. When I do the tests and if I missed an accent the answers will always prompt me to my errors. If I forgot to put a space at the end of a sentence for ! and ?  it would point them out too.

My question is: Does it make any difference in practice in living language/communication? 

Here are my two cents on these:

Regarding the space after puncuations, this is now drilled in my brain, so I do it. But none of my French friends nor teachers add this space anymore even though it is a rule in "France" French. [Note that this is not a rule in Quebecois French, so they don't do it anyway.] So I seem to be the only doing it. :(

Accents actually tell you how to pronounce things, so yes, it makes a difference. Take the example of cacahuète. Without the accent grave, the ue pronunciation would be like "ooh" or "ca-ca-ooht". The accent grave is what specifies the "separation" of the 'u' sound from the 'e' sound (i.e. you have to pronounce the 'e' by itself because of the accent grave), so you get the u-e pronunciation or "ca-ca-u-et".

Another example of this is mai (May)/maïs (corn). Without the trema, mai is pronounced like "meh". With the trema, you have to separate the 'a' sound from the 'i', so the sound is "mah-ees".

Along the same line œ or e dans l'o in the past was a must for le bœuf, ma sœur, le cœur and la œuvre, beginner limited vocab. But in the test for "Food Survival Kit" le bœuf was a wrong answer and the right answer given was le boeuf. 

Is œ optional in modern day French? 

Ah, the œ I actually specifically asked my tutor (I couldn't find the keystrokes for it in Google Docs or something) and she says it's phasing out in favor of the oe, so that one is okay separated. :)

torusan, I know you are not doing the RF but for tests involving writing there is a keyboard available and the œ is in there. The only thing this key board doesn't do is capital letters but you won't be marked wrong. 

I remembered there were a couple of test questions (module?, lesson?) when I forgot about the œ in the keyboard and I was marked wrong typing oe instead of using œ from the keyboard. That's why I asked if it is now optional.

I always take your word for it until one day when I surpass you in my grasp of the French language and that's when I will be able to challenge you or discuss with you in a meaningful way. At the rate I'm going that won't happen. :-(