Courriel à la régie : ce que le brouillon coûte sur la grille
Writing task: you rent a 22 m² studio. The heating has been broken for three days, indoor temperature 14 °C, and a first phone call went unanswered. Task: write an email to the property agency, 160–180 words, to report the problem, request a repair, and offer two appointment slots. A candidate's draft opens: « Salut, c'est moi. Ton chauffage marche pas, c'est chiant, viens vite. » It runs to 212 words over three paragraphs and ends « Bizoux ». The draft does contain the temperature, the three days and the two slots, but the request for a repair is only implied by « viens vite ».
1. Rank the draft's problems by how much they cost on the DELF B1 writing grid, and justify the ranking.
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1. Register (heaviest cost). Salut, ton chauffage, Bizoux build a friend-to-friend relationship with a property agency. The task defines a formal transaction; the grid rewards sociolinguistic appropriateness, and a wrong register contaminates the whole copy - the examiner reads every later sentence through it.
2. Task completion (near-equal cost). The task has three required elements. Demander une réparation is only implied by « viens vite », which reads as an emotional appeal, not a request with a deadline. An unaddressed element is penalised as non-traitement du sujet, however good the French is elsewhere.
3. Structure. Three paragraphs with no connecteurs and no salutation or formule de politesse at either end: the reader has to reconstruct the logic. Costs coherence marks, but a reader can still follow it.
4. Length: 212 for 160–180. Over-length is usually tolerated when the content is complete; here it signals an inability to select. It is the least damaging item because it is fixable by deletion, whereas register and task completion require rewriting.
Principle: at B1, task completion and register outweigh grammatical accuracy at the margin. Fix the frame before fixing the verbs.
2. Rewrite the first three sentences and justify each choice.
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Madame, Monsieur, Je vous écris pour vous signaler que le chauffage de mon studio (22 m², 3e étage) ne fonctionne plus depuis trois jours, malgré un premier appel resté sans réponse. La température intérieure est descendue à 14 °C.
Justifications:
- « Madame, Monsieur » - the recipient is an agency, no name is known: the safe formal default. Madame, Monsieur never offends; Salut always does.
- « Je vous écris pour + infinitif » - announces the purpose in the first sentence. The reader of an agency inbox decides in five seconds whether to forward the email; give the reason immediately.
- Numbers in brackets, not in a separate sentence - the surface and floor are identification data, not arguments. Putting them in parentheses keeps the main clause readable.
- « malgré un premier appel resté sans réponse » - records the prior attempt (which protects the tenant) without accusing anyone. Compare « vous ne répondez jamais », which is the same fact turned into a reproach and which invites a defensive reply.
- State the temperature as a fact, not a feeling. « Il fait un froid glacial, c'est inadmissible » conveys indignation; « 14 °C » conveys a measurable problem. In a formal complaint, the number is the argument.
3. The draft is 212 words. How do you get to 175 without losing points?
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Budget first, then cut. A 175-word email to an agency:
| Block | Words |
|---|---|
| Salutation + purpose | 25 |
| Problem (dates, temperature, prior call) | 45 |
| Request + deadline | 40 |
| Two slots | 35 |
| Closing formula | 25 |
Cut (safe):
- repeated restatements of the cold (« et en plus il fait froid, on gèle ») - said once, with the number, it is enough;
- the narrative of the first phone call beyond one clause;
- flourishes at the end (« merci d'avance, bonne journée, cordialement, à bientôt » stacked) - one closing formula;
- adjectives of indignation.
Never cut (required):
- the two appointment slots - they are a listed task element;
- the explicit request (« je vous demande d'intervenir » or « je souhaite qu'un technicien passe ») - the draft's main weakness; adding it costs 10 words and buys back the task-completion marks;
- the deadline, which converts the request into something actionable.
Merge rather than delete: the two slots in one sentence with a semicolon (« je suis disponible mardi 14 h–17 h ou jeudi matin ») saves about 12 words with no loss of content. Students lose points by deleting required elements to hit a word count - the count is a constraint, the three elements are the task.