Épreuve
Compréhension des écrits
Level
B2
Time
60 min
Marks
/25
Sizing up a text in 60 seconds
Sixty minutes, three exercises, twenty questions. One minute spent around a text turns your first read into a check instead of a discovery.
By the end of this lesson
- Scan the four parts of a press article's paratext before you read a line of the body.
- Pull Quoi, Qui and Quand out of a chapeau and name the theme in one sentence.
- Profile a source from the publication it ran in, how often it comes out, and who signed it.
- Sort a headline into one of the seven press rubriques in five seconds.
- Tell a neutral headline from an engaged one by three lexical markers.
The reading paper gives you three exercises and sixty minutes. Most candidates open at the first word of the body and read straight down. They meet the questions cold, then read the whole text a second time. That second read is where the hour goes.
There's a cheaper way in, and it costs one minute per text. Before you read a line of the body, you read what sits around it. This lesson gives you the four things to scan and a way to profile the source. Then come the seven press sections and the two tones you have to tell apart.
One minute on what surrounds the text
Compréhension des écrits runs for 60 minutes and is marked out of 25. Exercise 1 is a long text with 7 multiple-choice items, worth 9 points. Exercise 2 is a long argumentative text, again 7 items and 9 points. Exercise 3 gives you three short texts and 6 items, worth 7 points. There you match each viewpoint to the person who holds it.
That's twenty items in an hour. A workable split is 18 minutes, then 20, then 12, with 5 left to check. One minute spent outside the text is not a minute lost. It turns your first read into a check instead of a discovery.
The paratexte is everything printed around the body of the article. Four pieces of it carry information, and this is the order to take them in.
- Le titre. The headline names the subject, and often the angle as well. It's the first thing you hold against the questions.
- Les intertitres, the subheadings inside the article. Each one compresses the section under it, so together they hand you the plan of the text for free.
- La source. This is the line carrying the author, the publication and the date. It gets its own section below, because it predicts a lot.
- Le chapeau. This is the short lead paragraph set above the body, usually in bold. It sums the article up in two or three lines, so it's the densest thing on the page.
From the chapeau, pull three answers and note them in the margin. Quoi ? means what is happening. Qui ? means who is involved. Quand ? means since when. Add Où ? and Comment ? when the chapeau gives them to you. Then name the theme in one short sentence of your own.
Paratexte type · article de presseCE · Exercice 1
LES VILLES QUI RACHÈTENT LEURS BOUTIQUES. Faute de repreneurs, une centaine de communes moyennes ont acquis les murs de leurs commerces de centre-ville pour les relouer à bas prix. Six ans après les premiers rachats, le bilan divise les élus. Camille Rousset, Le Courrier des régions, hebdomadaire, 14 mars 2024.
ENTHE TOWNS BUYING BACK THEIR SHOPS. With no buyers coming forward, about a hundred mid-sized towns have bought their high-street shop premises in order to re-let them cheaply. Six years after the first purchases, elected officials disagree about the results. Camille Rousset, Le Courrier des régions, weekly, 14 March 2024.
Three answers come out of that block in seconds. Quoi: towns buying up their high-street shops. Qui: around a hundred mid-sized communes. Quand: over the past six years. One more thing is already visible. Le bilan divise les élus announces opposing positions, so expect items about who thinks what.
Point d'étape 1/4
0 / 3
Q1Which four elements make up the paratext you scan before the body of an article?
Q2What exactly is a chapeau?
Q3Which three questions do you answer from the chapeau before you start reading?
What the source line predicts
Ask the source line three questions. Each answer sets an expectation you carry into the text.
First, how often does it come out? An hebdomadaire is a weekly and a mensuel is a monthly. A weekly follows the news and writes briskly. A monthly has room for long analysis, figures and named studies. A blog carries one person's voice and usually a stated position.
Second, who reads it? A magazine généraliste addresses everybody, so it explains its own terms as it goes. A revue spécialisée is a trade or academic journal, and it assumes you know the field already. Specialized means denser vocabulary and more technical detail per line.
Third, who signed it? A journalist reports, quotes several voices and stays out of the way. A specialist argues from their own field, and the byline usually says so: économiste, chercheuse en sciences sociales, médecin. An expert rarely stays neutral, because they were asked for a view.
| What the source line says | What to expect from the text |
|---|---|
| Hebdomadaire d'actualité générale | Brisk writing tied to the news, everyday words, facts before opinion |
| Revue mensuelle spécialisée | Long analysis, technical terms, figures and named studies |
| Blog personnel | One voice, a position stated openly, an engaged tone |
| Signé par une chercheuse en économie | Expertise, a thesis defended, a formal register |
| Signé par un journaliste, sans titre | Reporting, several voices quoted, an author who stays back |
None of this is a verdict on the text. It's a hypothesis, and you drop it the moment the body contradicts it. Profiling isn't there to save you the reading, it's there to aim it.
It pays twice on this paper. Exercise 2 is argumentative by design, so you go in hunting a position rather than facts. And in Exercise 3 each short text belongs to a named person. The register of each one then helps you keep the speakers apart.
Point d'étape 2/4
0 / 3
Q1The source line reads: Revue de l'économie territoriale, mensuel, article signé par une chercheuse en économie. What do you expect?
Q2Why does it matter whether the byline names a journalist or a specialist?
Q3What separates a revue spécialisée from a magazine généraliste for you as a reader?
Seven sections, one headline
French papers sort their pages into rubriques, the subject sections of the paper. Seven of them cover almost everything the exam puts in front of you. Politique, Société, Économie, Environnement, Sciences, Culture, Sport.
The move takes five seconds. Underline the two or three content words in the headline, then match them to a section.
| Headline | Rubrique |
|---|---|
| Le président annonce un remaniement de son gouvernement | Politique |
| Les Bourses mondiales reculent pour la troisième séance | Économie |
| Une équipe lyonnaise ralentit une maladie neurodégénérative | Sciences |
| Les musées français courtisent les collectionneurs asiatiques | Culture |
| Le partage des tâches ménagères ne bouge plus depuis dix ans | Société |
| Vers l'interdiction d'un insecticide accusé de tuer les abeilles | Environnement |
Some headlines sit between two sections, and that's normal. A law protecting minors online is Politique if the article follows the vote, and Société if it follows what families actually do. Decide by what the text does with the topic, not by the nouns in the title.
No item ever asks you to name the rubrique. It's a shortcut, and here's what it buys you. Naming the section fixes the global theme in one word, and the first item of an exercise is usually the global one. It also tells you which lexical field is about to arrive, so the vocabulary surprises you less.
Point d'étape 3/4
0 / 3
Q1Which line names the seven press rubriques used to sort a headline?
Q2Headline: Le président annonce un remaniement de son gouvernement. Which rubrique?
Q3A headline about a law protecting minors online could sit in Politique or in Société. How do you settle it?
Neutral or engaged
Two tones matter at this stage. A ton neutre reports and a ton engagé takes a side. The headline announces which one is coming, and the wording gives it away.
Three markers put a headline in the engaged column. An evaluative adjective judges the thing it describes: inapplicable, scandaleux, absurde. An exclamation mark or a rhetorical question speaks straight to the reader. And a combat word calls you into a camp: contre, non à, halte à. A neutral headline does none of that. It names the fact, gives a figure or a date, and stops there.
Modèle · quatre titres, deux tons
La réforme de l'orthographe entre dans les manuels scolaires.
Ton neutre. The sentence names the fact and stops. No adjective judges the reform, and the verb only reports what happened.
Deux mille quatre cents mots concernés, moins de 4 % du lexique.
Ton neutre. Figures do all the work here. A headline that hands you a number is offering you information, not a side to join.
Une réforme inapplicable qui dénature notre langue.
Ton engagé. Two evaluative words carry the whole line. Inapplicable condemns the measure and dénature accuses it of damage, so the author has chosen before the body starts.
Non à la simplification de l'orthographe !
Ton engagé. A combat phrase plus an exclamation mark. A headline that calls the reader into a camp is never there to inform.
That reform is real, and its figures are worth carrying into the exam. France adopted a set of spelling tolerances in 1990, and school textbooks applied them from the 2016 school year. About 2,400 words are affected, which is under 4 percent of the lexicon. The change is small and the quarrel about it has lasted thirty years.
Two cautions before you commit. A headline is a hypothesis, so let the body confirm it or kill it. And an engaged text can sit under a perfectly flat headline, which happens often in Exercise 2.
This is the tone question in disguise. Several Exercise 2 items ask what the author is doing: informing, denouncing, or weighing two sides. Read an engaged text as a neutral one and you'll pick the l'auteur informe option every time it shows up.
Point d'étape 4/4
0 / 3
Q1Which headline carries an engaged tone?
Q2Which pair names two lexical markers of a ton engagé?
Q3The headline reads as neutral, but the body attacks the measure from the first paragraph. What do you conclude?
Key takeaways
- CE is 60 minutes for 25 points: two long texts with 7 items each, then three short texts with 6 matching items.
- Paratext first, in order: titre, intertitres, source, chapeau. The chapeau gives you Quoi, Qui and Quand.
- The source line predicts register: hebdomadaire or mensuel or blog, généraliste or spécialisé, journalist or expert.
- Seven rubriques cover the exam: Politique, Société, Économie, Environnement, Sciences, Culture, Sport.
- Evaluative adjectives, exclamation marks and combat words mark a ton engagé. Bare facts mark a ton neutre.