FeRWAE | HCYOSS 04 |ZOONCA 20H. NONE «C400. A LOUKHH Sy all Ld PU hall 13g JI pleads ROYAUME DU MAROC Ministare de Enseignement Supérieur de le Recherche Scientifique et de Innovation ipl otleal Lie daeigl dySal Vi Pon tin HOCK 4sCSOF fle | Gv. GOOLE prea xd Obwtoppeme Donble ECOLE NATIONALE SUPERIEURE DES MINES DERABAT — oiprimmedrictenmentnepnes Su sc gb CNC =, 2022 Concours National Commun d’Admission dans les Etablissements de Formation d’Ingénieurs et Etablissements Assimilés Epreuve d’Anglais Filigres : MP, PSI, TST Durée 2 heures Test Instructions and Guidelines: Use the test sheets carefully. Only ONE set of test sheets will be provided. You must write your answer in the space provided for each question. If you decide to change aan answer, erase your old answer completely and write the new one. Make sure your handwriting is clear. You are not allowed to use any document, electronic device or communicate with anyone during the testing session. Evidence of cheating (during the test administration or paper correction) will automatically disqualify the candidate Cette épreuve comporte 7 pages au format A4, en plus de la page de gardeSECTION 1: CRITICAL READING Read the texts below and answer the questions that follow: After several false starts, office workers are returning to their desks—for good this time, employers hope. As covid-19 restrictions are scaled back, people must again get used to crowds. Financial giants such Wells Fargo have joined Wall Street titans such as JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley in urging people back to the office. The great return is afoot in big tech, too. Meta and Microsoft have asked employees to return by late March. Most big Silicon Valley campuses will be fuller from April. Many bosses share the sentiment of James Gorman, Morgan Stanley's chief executive: if you can eat out, you can come to the office. The return to the office will be no picnic for employers, either. Most are scrambling to figure out what the future of work will look like. For many, the most pressing question is: how hybrid will that future be? In the short run, almost certainly pretty hybrid. Apple is bringing staff back to the office one day a week to start, By May 25rd, the iPhone-maker will require them to come in three days a week. Citigroup, HSBC and Standard Chartered let their bankers work from home on some days. If people can work well from anywhere, the problem remains [according to Katsikakis, a property consultancy at Cushman & Wakefield] that “all of the other elements are suffering.” In one global survey of more than 600 company leaders and human-resources professionals, for example, more than 50% responded that hybrid set-ups were emotionally exhausting for employees. Many ringing endorsements of it made by bosses and workers in mid-2021 turned into deep reservations just a few months later. As more people return to the office, concerns about hybridisation are likely to become ever more acute Rather than being the best of both worlds, is hybrid work really a rotten compromise? ‘The hybrid workplace is failing to live up to expectations in a number of ways. For one thing, it is no substitute for the buzz and the chatter of the pre-pandemic office. Many people hanker after the socialising, camaraderie and shared experience, even if getting used to it again may take time. Even small amounts of remote work can have a big impact on the frequency of face-to-face interactions in the office. By one estimate, spending an average of three days each week in the office can limit encounters between any two workers by 64% compared with pre-pandemic norms. The gap widens to 84% in potential interactions for those in the office two days a week. As offices fill up, workers who turn up in person may therefore forge closer bonds with their teams and company leaders than remote ones. Proximity bias—the subconscious tendency to value and reward physical presence—may then disadvantage women, minorities and parents of young children, who are keener on home working than other groups. A related drawback is the decline in casual encounters outside an employee's inner circle. In the 1970s ‘Thomas Allen, 2 management scholar, discovered that communication between office workers dropped off exponentially with distance between their desks; those on separate floors or in separate buildings almost never spoke. A study of more than 60,000 employees at Microsoft, a tech giant, in the first half of 2020 showed that virtual workers, too, were less likely to connect with people they were not already close to, Some managers have tried to boost connections in the hybrid world by scheduling more virtual meetings, sending more emails or firing off more instant messages. This, though, leaves workers feeling drained as a result of virtual overload. Video calls leave people feeling tired and uneasy.’That, in turn, makes them likelier to avoid social interaction, without quite knowing why, according to researchers at Stanford University. (Possible reasons include excessive eye contact, which human brains associate with either conflict or mating; staring at yourself, which can lead to feelings of insecurity; or the difficulty of interpreting non-verbal cues on screen.) Electronic communication limits physical movement, which impairs cognitive performance, And constant chat notifications are a distraction. Providers of virtual workspaces believe that these shortcomings can be fixed with better technology. Microsoft's Outlook platform now allows employers to tailor their employees’ scheduling settings by inserting breaks between video calls and, the tech giant claims, helps bosses spot underlings at risk of burnout. It even offers a “virtual commute” for those hybrid workers who struggle to separate work and home life. Users are reminded to wrap up their tasks, prepare for the next day, log their emotions and unwind with Headspace, a meditation app. To make online communication more seamless and less MINES - Rabat CNC 2022exhausting, Zoom has launched a digital whiteboard, real-time automated translations and desk-phone fiware. Not all employers are convinced. Some cannot reinstate pre-covid working patterns fast enough. Wall Street is the prime example. Blackstone, a private-equity firm, has asked key staff to return to the oxfice full-time. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, has argued that remote working kills creativity, hurts new employees and slows down decision-making. Fears that forcing employees back to the office will drive them away may be overblown, bankers say. Mr Gorman has reported that Morgan Stanley received about 500,000 job applications last year despite its strict return-to-work policy Adapted jrom The Economist Newspaper Limited 2092 DISPLAYING COMPREHENSION Answer the question below using your own words. (Heavy reproduction of the text language will be penalized). 1. Identify the arguments that show the author's attitude towards the future of hybrid work and evaluate their credibility, then compare them to how you experienced hybrid working mode as a student 2. Based on evidence from the text, explain how the balancing act between physical, mental and social well-being at work is important for the future of a proper integration of hybrid work in the post Covid era B. COMMENTING Comment on the following picture. Do not exceed 100-word paragraph. “the old is dying and the new cannot yet be born” SECTION 9: TRANSLATION Theme: Translate the following statements fiom French into English 1, Cette année davantage encore, la rentrée de septembre s'est accompagnée d'une forte reprise des activités avec le retour du travail en présentiel, des activités sportives et culturelles et des sorties entre amis ou en famille, 2. Grisés par ce retour ala vie sociale qui leur a tant manqué, ils font peu attention a l'ambivalence qui s'installe entre l'envie de remplir son emploi du temps d'activités et la difficulté d'assumer ceite envie MINES - Rabat 38 CNC 2022"Cette peur de lovper une information, de ne plus étre dans le cercle communautair’, améne lee gens a étre constamment sur les chaines d'information, sur internet et cela crée beaucoup Ganxiété et done de fatigue émotionnelle.” Extracts Published in franceinfo on October, 2021 SECTION 8: WRITING Choose ONE of the writing assignments below: Topic 1: Write a synthesis of the suggested documents, — Document 1: the reading text (pp.2-8) — Document 2: the poster (p.3) — Document 3: the sentences to translate on Theme (pp.3-#) Compulsory indications: — Write your synthesis in 200- 250 words, — Indicate the number of words between brackets at the end of your product (title included). — Refer to the documents as (Doc1, Doc 2, Doc 3). Topic 2: Write an argumentative essay in favour or against the statement below highlighting your point of view: “The COVID-19 pandemic has already reshaped science, technology and innovation” MINES - Rabat 4/8 CNC 2022