LAN-ALanguage: gap-fill, right option, tense and form

Fill in the blanks with words from the box

Idée directrice

The Language section opens, in every session of both papers, with a short paragraph and a box of words — always one or two more words than there are blanks. Each word is used once; the distractors are near-synonyms or the wrong part of speech. The mark is half a point per blank, so the method is mechanical: read the whole text first, classify the box words (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, linker), then fill each blank from grammar before meaning.

Signature de reconnaissance — l'énoncé se trahit ainsi

« Fill in the blanks with 6 words from the box » ; « Fill in the blanks with 7 words from the box below » ; « Fill in the blanks with six words from the list below » ; « There are two extra words »

Sujet principal

Language — Task 1: fill in the blanks (3 to 3.5 marks)

1 questionCorrigé masqué

III - LANGUAGE. Fill in the blanks with 7 words from the box. (3.5 marks)

Box

volunteers / patience / rewarding / although / donated / whereas / regularly / skills / carefully

Every Saturday morning, a group of thirty ………… meets at the old harbour to clean the beach. Most of them come ………… , some for the tenth year in a row. ………… the work is tiring, nobody complains: sorting glass, plastic and nets requires ………… , and the youngest members learn practical ………… from the older ones. Last year a local company ………… the bags and gloves, ………… the town council still provides nothing. « It is the most ………… hour of my week », says Salma, 17.

Voir la correction commentéeAprès avoir posé votre démarche

Answers (in order): volunteers — regularly — Although — patience — skills — donated — whereas — rewarding. Two words are left unused, as always: carefully (an adverb that would need a verb to modify) and the extra distractor of the pair although / whereas, which both survive here because the text needs a concession and a contrast in two different places.

Move EN-LANG-01 — gap-fill from the box. The classification decides everything before meaning does: blank 1 follows a group of thirty → plural noun (volunteers); blank 2 closes come … → adverb of frequency (regularly); blank 3 opens a clause before a comma → conjunction, and the clause is concessive (Although the work is tiring, nobody complains); blank 4 is the object of requires → noun (patience); blank 5 after practical → plural noun (skills); blank 6 between a subject and its object → past-tense verb (donated); blank 7 contrasts two subjects → whereas; blank 8 after the most → adjective (rewarding).

What is marked. 0.5 per correct word, no half credit for a word of the right kind in the wrong blank; a word used twice loses both blanks. Spelling must copy the box exactly.

Exercices d'entraînement — une nuance à la fois

Entraînement 01 / 03

Drill LAN-A.1 — Six words from the list (common paper)

1 questionCorrigé masqué

III - LANGUAGE. Fill in the blanks with six words from the list below. (3 marks)

List: mostly / shortage / recruit / unless / applicants / has risen / attractive / abroad

The number of nurses leaving the country to work ………… ………… sharply since 2019. Hospitals now face a ………… of qualified staff, and the ministry has decided to ………… five hundred graduates a year. ………… salaries become more ………… , however, the best ………… will keep looking elsewhere.

Voir la correction commentéeAprès avoir posé votre démarche

Answers: abroad — has risen — shortage — recruit — Unless — attractive — applicants; unused: mostly. (Seven blanks are printed here on purpose: the paper sometimes says « six words » and prints seven blanks for a two-part verb phrase — count the blanks, not the sentence.)

Move EN-LANG-01. has risen is the only verb form that fits since 2019; Unless is the only conjunction that opens a condition; applicants is the only plural noun left after the best.

Entraînement 02 / 03

Drill LAN-A.2 — Seven words, two distractors (Lettres paper)

1 questionCorrigé masqué

III - LANGUAGE. Fill in the blanks with 7 words from the box below. (3.5 marks)

Box: performance / whose / despite / injured / achievement / recovered / gave up / finally / determined

Nadia, ………… left leg was badly ………… in a car accident at fourteen, was told she would never run again. ………… the doctors' opinion, she trained every morning in the hospital garden. She ………… slowly, and ………… took part in the regional championship six years later. Her ………… that day was not a medal but a finished race — the greatest ………… of her life, she says.

Voir la correction commentéeAprès avoir posé votre démarche

Answers: whose — injured — Despite — recovered — finally — performance — achievement; unused: gave up and determined. The two distractors are chosen to tempt by meaning (the story is about not giving up) — grammar excludes them: no blank needs a verb phrase in the past or a bare adjective.

Move EN-LANG-01. Relative pronoun after a name and before a noun → whose; past participle after badly → injured; preposition opening a noun phrase → Despite.

Entraînement 03 / 03

Drill LAN-A.3 — A box with a grammar trap

1 questionCorrigé masqué

III - LANGUAGE. Fill in the blanks with 6 words from the box. (3 marks)

Box: neither / almost / facilities / either / undoubtedly / entrance / compensation / ideal

Taking a weekend trip with young children can be expensive. However, the island of Djerba is ………… an ………… destination for families: the hotels offer good ………… for children, reductions are ………… always available on ferries and museums, and there are no ………… fees to the beaches. Children are ………… bored nor tired at the end of the day.

Voir la correction commentéeAprès avoir posé votre démarche

Answers: undoubtedly — ideal — facilities — almost — entrance — neither; unused: either and compensation.

Move EN-LANG-01. The trap is the pair neither / either: only neither … nor fits the last sentence, so either is the distractor. Blank 1 sits between is and an → adverb; blank 2 before destination → adjective; good … for children → plural noun; … always → adverb almost; … fees → noun entrance.

Méthode / Automatismes

Read the whole paragraph once before touching the box.
Label every box word with its part of speech, and note pairs of near-synonyms: one of them is the distractor.
Fill the blanks that grammar fixes first (after the most → adjective; after a group of thirty → plural noun), then the meaning blanks.
Cross out each word as you use it; count: number of blanks = number of words used.
Reread the finished paragraph aloud in your head — a wrong collocation sounds wrong.

Pièges classiques

The classic loss is filling by meaning alone and putting an adverb where a noun is needed, or using the distractor because it « also fits » — the box always has extra words, so a word that fits loosely is exactly the trap. The second loss is copying a word with a spelling change (volunteer for volunteers).