Writing — Task 2 (10 marks), in the spirit of the 2025 Lettres paper
II. WRITING — Task 2 (10 marks)
To launch a month of volunteering, the youth council of your town posted this statement on its Facebook page: “Society is not something that happens to us; it is something we build together, every day.”
Inspired by this statement, write a twelve-line Facebook post for the young people of your town, offering three practical ideas that would help them become responsible, engaged citizens in the world around them.
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1. Find the core message before the ideas. Idea: the post must show that it was inspired by the statement, so say its message in a few words first — citizens are builders, not spectators — and let the opening turn it into a question or a scene for the readers before announcing the three ideas.
2. Make each idea practical. Idea: a practical idea answers who does what, where, and what changes. Test each one before writing it:
| A slogan (no practical idea) | A practical idea |
|---|---|
| Protect our town. | Join the monthly clean-up of the park and sort what you collect. |
| Help others. | Give one afternoon a week to an elderly neighbour or a child who needs help. |
| Take part in public life. | Go to the open meeting of the municipal council and raise one problem. |
Take the three ideas from three different fields (the place, the people, public life) so that they do not overlap.
3. Model post (twelve handwritten lines).
Don't just live in your town — build it!
Hi friends! How often do we complain about dirty streets, lonely neighbours or a broken bench, and then do nothing? Our youth council is right: society is what we build together, so here are three practical ideas to start this month. First, join the clean-up team that meets in the park every first Sunday: two hours with gloves and bags, and the place where our little brothers play is clean again. Second, give one afternoon a week to someone who needs it — read the newspaper to an elderly neighbour or help a child with his homework at the youth centre. Third, make your voice heard: go to the open meeting of the municipal council and ask about the problem that annoys you most in your street. Small actions repeated by many change a whole town. Who's in? Comment with the idea you choose and tag a friend!
4. What is credited — criteria printed for the 10-mark Lettres writing task in the official correction of the 2019 contrôle (no official correction of the 2025 paper is available):
- Adherence to task and content adequacy (4 marks). The post takes up the statement (society is what we build together), gives three distinct practical ideas — a clean-up, an afternoon of help, the council meeting — each with its action, place and result, and has the marks of a post: a catchy title, Hi friends!, a question to the readers and an invitation to comment.
- Language (lexical appropriacy and grammar accuracy) (4 marks). Imperatives for the suggestions (join, give, go), ordinals that let the examiner count (First, Second, Third), civic words (clean-up, neighbour, municipal council, youth centre).
- Mechanics of writing (2 marks). Capitals in the title, question marks after each question, apostrophes in Don't and Who's, the spelling of neighbour, council, elderly.
5. Three ideas that are not ideas. Idea: compare with a copy whose English is correct but which never leaves the level of slogans.
Citizenship is very important. A good citizen must love his country. He must respect others and help them. He must also protect the environment. If everybody is a good citizen, our society will be better.
Every sentence is a principle: none says who does what, where or with what result, so the « three practical ideas » are missing; the youth council's statement is never taken up, and nothing marks a Facebook post (no title, no readers addressed, no invitation). That costs most of the 4 adherence marks, whatever the grammar.