English - Reading comprehension, language and written production
The Probatoire English paper tests three things: how well you understand a written passage, how accurate your grammar is, and whether you can produce a short, organised text. For francophone candidates it is a second-language paper; for anglophone candidates it is English Language, with a more demanding composition. In both cases, marks are lost on grammar accuracy and on answers that copy the passage instead of reformulating it.
What the paper asks
- Reading comprehension: true/false statements with justification, reference questions (« what does it refer to? »), inference, and vocabulary in context.
- Language: tense choice, reported speech, conditionals, passive voice, question tags, word formation, phrasal verbs, subject–verb agreement.
- Writing: a guided composition, an informal or formal letter, or a short argumentative essay.
Rules that earn marks
- Justify every true/false answer with a quotation from the passage, placed in inverted commas.
- Keep tenses coherent: past simple for finished actions, present perfect for a past action with a present result, past perfect for the earlier of two past events.
- Reported speech: shift the tense back one step and adjust pronouns, time and place markers (today → that day, tomorrow → the following day).
- Conditionals: If + present simple → will; If + past simple → would; If + past perfect → would have + past participle.
- In a letter, respect the layout: address, date, salutation, body paragraphs, sign-off.
Worked example
Direct speech: « I will send the report tomorrow, » she said.
- The reporting verb (said) is in the past, so backshift is triggered.
- will → would; I → she; tomorrow → the following day.
- Result: She said (that) she would send the report the following day. No backshift is needed when the reporting verb is in the present: « She says she will send the report tomorrow. »
The traps that cost marks
- Answering comprehension questions by copying whole sentences instead of answering and quoting.
- Forgetting the backshift or the pronoun change in reported speech.
- Writing informations, advices, peoples - these nouns are uncountable.
- Mixing British and American spelling inside one text.
- Writing a composition with no paragraphing, which is penalised automatically.