I. Reading comprehension — the complete block (12 marks, about 40 minutes)
I. READING COMPREHENSION. Read the text below carefully, then answer the questions that follow it.
1. When the textile factory in Ben Arous where she had sewn jeans for twenty-seven years closed in 2019, Najet Mansouri was fifty-two. She spent the next four months looking for work, but every workshop she visited wanted younger women, and most of them said so openly. One manager told her that at her age she should be thinking about her grandchildren, not about a job. At the same time, her husband's heart condition had become so serious that he could no longer drive his taxi, and someone had to stay close to home to look after him. "I could not work far away, and nobody would hire me nearby," she says. "So I decided to hire myself."
2. She started with what she knew best: her mother's recipes. Every morning at five, she cooked couscous, lablabi and stuffed peppers in her own kitchen, packed them in plastic boxes and sold them to the workers of a building site at the end of her street. She wrote the day's menu on a piece of cardboard and hung it on the fence of the site. The meals were cheap, the portions were generous and the food was still warm at noon. Within a few weeks, the workers were bringing friends from other sites, and her son had to deliver the boxes in his old car. By the end of the first year, she was preparing ninety meals a day.
3. The beginnings were far from easy. In the second month, a customer disappeared without paying for three weeks of meals, and Najet lost almost all her savings. She burned her right hand on a pot of boiling oil and went on cooking with her left. Her daughter, a pharmacist in Tunis, begged her to stop. "She thought I was too old for such a hard job," Najet remembers. "I told her that sewing jeans ten hours a day had not been easy either." In 2021, she rented a small professional kitchen two streets away.
4. Today, the kitchen employs eleven women and delivers about three hundred meals a day to building sites, offices and a clinic. Najet only hires women over forty who have been widowed, divorced or left without work, "because nobody else will give them a chance, as nobody gave me one". Each of them earns the same salary, whatever her job, and every Friday the women eat lunch together before going home. Her husband, whose health has improved, now answers the phone and takes the orders. Her next project is modest: "I want a second kitchen, and a bigger pot."
Practice text written in the style of the adapted press articles of the bac papers.
I- COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS (12 marks)
1. Tick (✓) the most appropriate option. (1 mark)
The text is mainly about a woman who
a. lost her job when a textile factory closed. ☐
b. turned a personal setback into a business that gives others a chance. ☐
c. gave up cooking to look after her sick husband. ☐
2. Complete the gapped passage below with three words from paragraph 2. One blank, ONE word. (3 marks)
Najet's business began modestly in her own ① ____________. Her meals soon became popular: they cost little, and the portions were so ② ____________ that nobody left hungry. Her son helped her ③ ____________ them to other building sites.
3. For each of the following statements, pick out ONE detail from the text showing that it is FALSE. (3 marks)
a. Najet's first customers were office workers from the centre of town. (paragraph 2)
b. Najet's family encouraged her from the start. (paragraph 3)
c. The women Najet employs are paid according to their position. (paragraph 4)
4. Focus on paragraph 1 and pick out the two reasons that made Najet decide to start her own business. (2 marks)
a. ______________________________________
b. ______________________________________
5. Pick out words / expressions meaning nearly the same as: (2 marks)
a. asked strongly and anxiously (paragraph 3): ____________
b. not large or ambitious (paragraph 4): ____________
6. Give a personal justified answer to the following question. (1 mark)
Do you think that starting a business after fifty is a good idea? Why? Why not?
I think that starting a business after fifty ____________ a good idea because ____________.
Voir la correction commentéeAprès avoir posé votre démarche
Idea: read the six questions first and write in the margin the paragraph each one names (item 2 → paragraph 2, item 3 → paragraphs 2, 3, 4, item 4 → paragraph 1, item 5 → paragraphs 3 and 4). Then read the text once for the story line, and answer in order, going back to the named paragraph for each item. The story in one line: a factory worker who loses her job at fifty-two starts cooking at home, survives a hard beginning and now employs women whom nobody else would hire.
1 Idea: the gist covers the whole story. a. is paragraph 1 only: true, but too narrow. c. is contradicted: she never gave up cooking, and her husband now takes the orders. b. covers the setback (paragraph 1), the business (paragraphs 2–3) and the chance she gives other women (paragraph 4).
Answer: b.
2 Idea: one blank, one word, copied from paragraph 2 in the form printed there. Read the grammar of each blank first, then find the word.
① after her own comes a noun, a place: kitchen (« in her own kitchen »).
② so … that nobody left hungry needs an adjective about quantity: generous (« the portions were generous »). Warm is in the same sentence of the text, but warmth does not stop anyone being hungry; cheap is already given by they cost little.
③ after helped her comes a base verb: deliver (« her son had to deliver the boxes »). Delivers is also in the text, in paragraph 4, but it is the wrong paragraph and the wrong form.
3 Idea: for each statement, copy ONE detail from the paragraph given in brackets that makes it impossible. Copy; do not explain, and do not write False alone.
a. « sold them to the workers of a building site at the end of her street »
b. « Her daughter, a pharmacist in Tunis, begged her to stop. »
c. « Each of them earns the same salary, whatever her job. »
4 Idea: two reasons = two separate facts from paragraph 1, each of which pushed her towards working for herself.
a. Every workshop she visited wanted younger women (nobody would hire a woman of fifty-two).
b. Her husband's heart condition: he could no longer drive his taxi, and she had to stay close to home to look after him.
The closing of the factory is the situation, not a reason for this choice: on its own, it would only have sent her to look for another job — which is what she did first.
5 Idea: the answer has the same word class and form as the definition: a past verb for asked, an adjective for not large.
a. asked strongly and anxiously = begged
b. not large or ambitious = modest
6 Idea: the official keys accept any plausible answer as long as the reason does not contradict the position. Fill in the frame with one clear choice, then give one reason for that choice.
Accepted: « I think that starting a business after fifty is a good idea because you already have experience and skills, as Najet had her mother's recipes and years of hard work behind her. »
Accepted too: « I think that starting a business after fifty is not a good idea because a failure can take all your savings when there is little time left to rebuild them, as Najet nearly lost everything in her second month. »
0 mark: « … is not a good idea because Najet now employs eleven women. » The reason argues for the other side.