Three minutes on a poster: turning description into critique
You have five minutes' preparation for a three-minute spoken presentation in French, followed by two questions from your teacher. The stimulus is a poster for a francophone film festival: a black-and-white photograph of a crowded street, the slogan 'Le cinéma, c'est la liberté', and a 60-word blurb claiming the festival 'donne la parole à celles et ceux qu'on n'entend jamais'. You may annotate the poster but you may not read from a script. Your first rehearsal lasted 1 min 40 s and consisted almost entirely of describing the photograph. One required element is a critical evaluation of the slogan's claim; you must also use at least one conditional and one expression of doubt, and refer to the stimulus at least twice without quoting more than five consecutive words.
1. Turn the description into a critique in the first 45 seconds. What do you actually say, and what do you deliberately leave out?
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The first 45 seconds need one sentence of orientation, then a claim about what the poster is doing.
« Cette affiche annonce un festival de cinéma francophone. À première vue, elle célèbre la liberté ; pourtant, le slogan « Le cinéma, c'est la liberté » et la photo en noir et blanc d'une foule anonyme ne disent pas exactement la même chose. Je vais montrer que l'affiche promet une voix à ceux qu'on n'entend pas, tout en restant elle-même très contrôlée, très esthétique. »
Leave out: the colours, the number of people, the position of the logo. Description earns nothing unless it is interpreted. The rule is 'describe one thing, then say what it does'. 'La photo est en noir et blanc' is worth saying only if followed by 'ce qui donne un effet de souvenir, voire de nostalgie'. If you cannot supply the second half, cut the first half - an uninterpreted detail is filler that eats your three minutes.
2. Your teacher asks: 'Vous ne trouvez pas que ce slogan est un peu hypocrite ?' Model an answer that neither collapses nor blindly agrees.
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Three steps:
- Acknowledge the force of the question. « Je comprends pourquoi on pourrait le voir comme ça. »
- Partly agree, then distinguish. « Il y a peut-être une part de marketing, c'est vrai. Cela dit, « hypocrite » me semble un peu fort : le festival programme aussi des films de réalisatrices africaines, donc le slogan n'est pas entièrement creux. »
- Hold a position, with a condition. « Si le festival ne montrait que des films français grand public, oui, le slogan serait hypocrite. Mais ce n'est pas le cas. »
Useful language to have ready: 'disons que...', 'dans une certaine mesure', 'je nuancerais', 'il ne faut pas exagérer non plus'. 'Je nuancerais' is a high-value verb - it signals critical thinking rather than contradiction.
Avoid two failure modes: 'Non, vous avez tort' (confrontational, and often simply wrong) and 'Oui, vous avez raison' with nothing following (you have abandoned your argument). If the challenge genuinely lands, concede and shift - « effectivement, j'avais surestimé... » - which is a legitimate critical move, not a defeat.
3. How do you fill the remaining 80 seconds with something that earns 'critical response' rather than repetition?
Read the worked answer
One minute forty is roughly 200 spoken words; three minutes is about 350–400. The missing 150–200 words must be argument, not adjectives.
- Evidence from the stimulus (about 30 s). Pick two details and interpret them: the abstract noun 'liberté', the absence of faces in the crowd. Use 'ce qui suggère que...', 'on peut y voir...'.
- A counter-reading (about 30 s). 'On pourrait objecter que... / Certes, ... mais...'. This is where the conditional earns its mark: 'Un tel slogan fonctionnerait mieux si le festival précisait sa programmation.'
- A judgement with a limit (about 30 s). 'En fin de compte, l'affiche est efficace, même si son message reste vague.' An evaluation with a limitation reads as critical; an evaluation without one reads as a summary.
Two safeguards: rehearse at 2 min 30 s so you have headroom, and prepare one sentence you can cut if you overrun plus one you can add if you finish early. Do not fill with 'euh', and do not circle back over the description in different words - the second pass over the same content is exactly what makes a presentation sound padded.