Two texts, one decision: reading irony and pronoun chains
The reading paper (5 credits) gives you two short texts, about 260 words in total, on the same decision: the town of Vitry has made buses free for everyone under 25. Text A is the mairie's notice: 'Nous avons le plaisir de vous informer que... cette mesure, dont bénéficieront près de 4 000 jeunes...'. Text B is a letter to the editor from a shopkeeper: 'Bravo. Encore une mesure géniale. Il paraît que les jeunes vont désormais prendre le bus pour aller au centre-ville - on verra bien. Pendant ce temps, les commerçants du centre, eux, paient toujours leur place de parking.' The question asks: 'Explain the author's attitude in Text B and support your answer with two pieces of evidence.' You have 45 minutes for the whole paper, five questions, and this one carries the most marks. No dictionary is allowed.
1. How do you decide whether Text B's author supports or opposes the measure? Identify the language features that carry the attitude.
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Text B opposes the measure, but never says 'je m'oppose'. The attitude is carried by:
- Irony markers. 'Bravo.' as a one-word paragraph, followed by 'Encore une mesure géniale.' In a context where nothing positive follows, 'génial' signals its opposite. The abrupt full stop is the tell.
- 'Il paraît que...' - 'it is said that...' distances the writer from the claim. It reports the mairie's argument without endorsing it.
- 'on verra bien' - a shrug, not a prediction.
- 'eux, ... toujours' - the contrastive pronoun plus 'toujours' constructs an unfairness: young people ride free, shopkeepers still pay for parking.
So: hostile and sceptical, and the specific criticism is that the measure is announced as a gift to young people while the cost to local traders is ignored.
A candidate who writes 'Text B supports the measure because it says « génial »' has read the dictionary, not the text. When a question asks for 'attitude', name it with an adjective (ironique, sceptique, critique) and then attach two features - not two quotations with no commentary.
2. Explain the reference of 'dont' in Text A and 'eux' in Text B, and why getting them wrong would damage the answer.
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These are cohesion questions and they are usually cheap marks.
- 'dont bénéficieront près de 4 000 jeunes': 'dont' replaces 'de + noun' - here 'bénéficier de cette mesure'. Reconstructed: 'cette mesure, dont [= de cette mesure] bénéficieront près de 4 000 jeunes'. The subject of 'bénéficieront' is 'près de 4 000 jeunes'. Read 'dont' loosely as 'that/which' and you may still get the gist, but you cannot answer 'who benefits, and from what?' precisely.
- 'les commerçants du centre, eux, paient...': 'eux' is a stressed pronoun used for contrast. It points back to 'les commerçants', not to 'les jeunes', and marks a comparison with the group just mentioned. It is emphatic, not a new referent.
Getting these wrong hurts twice: you mis-assign who does what, and you miss the contrast that carries the whole argument. A reliable test is to delete the pronoun, put the noun back, and check that the sentence still makes sense - if it does, you have found the right referent.
3. Separate fact from opinion in the two texts. Which statements could be checked, and why does the question's wording ('attitude') matter?
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Facts (checkable): the measure exists; it applies to under-25s; roughly 4 000 young people are expected to benefit; shopkeepers pay for parking.
Opinions and evaluations: 'génial', 'il paraît que', 'on verra bien', and the implication that the policy is unfair.
The wording matters because 'attitude' is an evaluation. A fact alone cannot answer it: 'the text says 4 000 young people benefit' is true and tells you nothing about the author. The best evidence pairs a fact with the evaluative frame around it - 'the writer mentions shopkeepers' parking fees immediately after the free-bus announcement, and the contrastive « eux... toujours » turns a neutral fact into a complaint.'
One further caution: in a letter to the editor, facts may be unsourced or wrong. 'Il paraît que' signals the writer has not verified the claim, and a strong answer can note that the writer is attacking an argument they are themselves hedging. That observation is worth more than another quotation.