Courriel au proviseur : 180 à 220 mots, une seule demande
You are class representative in a French lycée. The proviseur has announced that the salle polyvalente is free on Thursday 21 November from 13 h to 15 h. The conseil des élèves wants to hold a « journée des langues » there: stands, a quiz in French, English and Irish, and a former pupil who will talk about her Erasmus year in Cork. You must write a formal email of 180 to 220 words to the proviseur to request permission to use the room, present the project in three points, and ask for a budget of 80 € for posters and drinks. Constraints: formal register, one explicit request, no « tu », no unnecessary anglicisms, and a complete closing formula. Your draft currently begins « Salut Monsieur, » and ends « Merci, à plus »; you must revise it before sending.
1. Quelles formules d'ouverture et de clôture conviennent ? Proposez-en une de chaque et justifiez.
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Opening: « Monsieur le Proviseur, ». Closing: « Je vous prie d'agréer, Monsieur le Proviseur, l'expression de mes salutations respectueuses. » The opening uses the addressee's title because he is identified and holds a formal function; « Madame, Monsieur » would be correct only if the recipient were unknown. « Salut Monsieur » mixes informal greeting with formal title and is incoherent. For the closing, the full formula belongs to a formal written request, especially from a pupil to a headteacher. « Cordialement » is acceptable in professional email but is less formal; « Merci, à plus » is far too casual. The judgement is not merely memorising one formula: it is matching register to the relationship of hierarchy. If the email were to a classmate, the informal closing would be fine; here it would undermine the request.
2. Le projet doit être présenté en trois points : lesquels, et dans quel ordre ?
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A strong order is: (1) what, where and when - the journée des langues, salle polyvalente, Thursday 21 November, 13 h–15 h; (2) the programme - stands, a trilingual quiz, and the former pupil's Erasmus talk; (3) the request - permission to use the room and 80 € for posters and drinks. This order lets the proviseur picture the event before being asked to approve anything. Putting the money request first sounds demanding; burying the date until the end makes the request hard to evaluate. The programme point also justifies the room and the budget: stands need space, the quiz needs the room, posters need funding. Note the constraint « one explicit request »: permission and budget should be presented as one coherent request, not scattered through the email as several separate demands. The three points are therefore a plan for the reader, not a list of sentences.
3. Corrigez et justifiez : « On voudrait que vous nous donnez la salle » et « Nous avons besoin de 80 € pour faire de la publicité et des boissons. »
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First sentence: « Nous voudrions que vous nous donniez la salle ». Two corrections are needed. « Voudrait que » triggers the subjunctive, so « vous donnez » becomes « vous donniez ». « On » is grammatically possible but vague and less appropriate in a formal request from a representative body; « nous » identifies the conseil des élèves. Second sentence: the meaning is ambiguous because 80 € seems to cover both publicity and drinks, and « faire de la publicité » can suggest advertising rather than printing posters. Better: « Nous aurions besoin de 80 € pour l'impression d'affiches et l'achat de boissons. » The conditional « aurions besoin » is more polite than the blunt present. The judgement is to fix grammar and ambiguity together, because a request that can be misread as covering two different costs is a weak request.