CORRIGE TYPE

Matière : AN01
Devoir n° : 03

Epreuve de recette du : 21/04/10 statut: 00

7AN01CTPA0306

1. Compréhension (80 points)

1. a. The narrative is a conversation which sounds like some sort of autobiographical passage (it may also be a fictional
autobiography). (3 points)
b. The narrator’s name is Faith. (1 point)

2. The other characters are Carl; he is Faith’s brother. Then there is Wade, Faith’s father, and he apparently owns a small
business. As for Faith’s mother, her name is not mentioned but we learn that she is a nurse. (4 points)

3. a. “now we were adults” (line 13)

b. “He used to do this when it was time to discuss the could-do-better bits in my school report” (l.28)
c. “our old council flat where Carl and me had grown up” (l.44) (3 points)

4. a. “my dad followed my mum, Carl and me into the living room to sit down” (l.2)
“It used to be strange for us to go into the living room at all” (l.9)
“as I walked into the room I saw six, maybe seven of my mum and dad’s boxes piled up in a corner” (l.17) (3 points)
b. The family breaks with their habits, because they stay together after dinner. They do not head for the ordinary place but
go to the living room, a place whose higher status indicates that some important things are to be said. (41 words) (7 points)

5. a. – “he began to finger the knuckles on his hands” (l.16)

“my dad spoke first” (l.15)
“Dad continued to stutter his various permutations” (l.23) (3 points)
b. The father knows he has something difficult to tell his daughter, so he is ready to accept his responsibility by joining the
group in the living room and by doing the talking. However, he is nervous and embarrassed, so he falters pathetically. He is
embarrassed. He is afraid of his reactions. He does not want to be brutal. (7 points)
c. I think the mother shares the feeling of awkwardness, and finds it hard to break the news so she does not face her
daughter: “nobody looked at me” (l. 14) (6 points)

6. a. The narrator's attitude :

excluded : “nobody looked at me” (l.14)
puzzled: “I knew something was odd” (l.1)
trustful: “Fantastic!” (l.39) (4 points)
b. Faith refuses to take the part her family wants her to play, and she is prepared to face whatever is coming with courage
and a sense of responsibility. She does not want to be treated like a weak, immature little girl. (6 points)

Cned – 7AN01CTPA0306 1/2

7. a. The narrator’s parents want to tell their daughter that they are going to return to live in their native country, far from where
they all live now. (4 points)
b. For the narrator, the word “home” means the place where she grew up, that is certainly not Jamaica. (3 points)
c. Faith believes that her parents have lost all their savings, because her mother has been laid off, and her father has gone
bankrupt. She thinks that as a consequence they have to move houses because they can no longer afford this one.
(42 words) (8 points)
d. She is completely wrong: “We’re thinking of going home to Jamaica” (l.38) (2 points)

8. I suppose that Faith’s parents never completely integrated their new country and always felt like foreigners. Because she was
not born in Jamaica or because she had become assimilated into her new country, Faith’s home is where she was brought up.
(41 words) (8 points)

9. The family comes from Jamaica, a poor country which they left to try their luck somewhere else. They moved to a council flat
in Stoke Newington, probably in a poor neighbourhood, but now they finally moved into a house in the more affluent area of
Crouching End. This shows that they have moved up the social ladder and enjoy increasingly high standards of living.
(64 words) (8 points)

2. Expression (60 points)

Répartition des points : 36/60 pour la langue et 24/60 pour le fond, soit 12/20 et 8/20. (respect de la consigne, traitement du
sujet, clarté, cohérence, idées, connaissances, originalité …)
I was devastated.
“How could you do this to me? To us I mean, to Carl and me? Why didn’t we discuss this before?” I blurted out.
But, when I saw Carl blush and avoid my eyes, I knew that I was wrong: he had known their plans all along. Once more they
had discussed things behind my back under the excuse of wanting to protect me, the youngest, the girl. I was fed up with their
underhanded ways. In my family they never talked, they worked as if silence needed to be filled. It now seemed to me that
conversation, real conversation, had never taken place at home. It might have led to disagreements or some revelation of truths
which might have hurt. The display of feelings was to be avoided at all cost.
“But why? What will happen to me? You know I want to go to university. I can’t go to Jamaica.” I yelled at them.
“We know that, Faith,” Mum said quietly. She didn’t seem perturbed by my disarray. She had foreseen it no doubt. I was living
up to my reputation of the immature girl of the family.
“You are not coming with us. You will stay here with Carl.” She continued in a clear and decisive voice. She didn’t hold up my
glaze for long but in the short time our eyes met I had time to see the pain in them.
Poor Mum, how could she leave me, her only daughter? My granddad, her father, was still alive and I knew he would have liked
to have her close by. Over there, in Jamaica, he had no other daughter. Was it for granddad’s sake that they had decided to go
back? Or was it something else? The longing she always had for the sand and the beaches, her bare feet all day long when we
were there for the holidays. She never complained, here in England but I remembered now the crying that went on at times, for
no reason I thought. I remember how she used to get angry for the old Jamaican people she nursed, here, alone in their home
and I began to understand.

3. Traduction (60 points)

J’ai compris que quelque chose n’était pas normal à la maison, quand, après dîner, papa nous suivit, ma mère, Carl et moi dans
le salon nous demandant de nous asseoir. D’habitude, cela ne se passait pas de cette manière. Le dîner n’était qu’une
interruption dans les tâches que papa effectuait à la maison. Le dimanche, après l’église, papa faisait toujours des travaux de
réparation, de peinture, d’ajustage, de remise en état. Il était toujours “au beau milieu d’un travail”, qui réclamait une
concentration totale et un profond silence de sa part, en plus d’une clé anglaise. Si jamais je lui demandais ce qu’il faisait, il
répondait invariablement: “j’répare quelque chose, alors viens pas m’embêter maintenant.“

Cned – 7AN01CTPA0306 2/2