Contrôle écrit
Writing about your work experience
4 You might be asked to write about your work experience as a controlled
assessment task. Use the Grade Studio to help you prepare.
Mon stage en entreprise
Dans mon collège, tous les élèves de troisième ont fait
un stage en entreprise au mois de mai. Le stage a duré
quinze jours et j’ai eu de la chance de trouver une
place dans un garage Toyota dans la ville où j’habite.
Je m’intéresse beaucoup aux voitures et un jour, je
voudrais devenir mécanicien ou même avoir mon
propre garage, donc je pensais que ce serait une
bonne expérience pour moi.
Controlled assessment practice
Module 6
Dans l’ensemble, mon stage a été très positif et j’ai
appris beaucoup de choses. Le travail était assez
varié. Je n’avais pas le droit de réparer les véhicules
tout seul, mais j’aidais les mécaniciens qualifiés et
on me laissait changer les pneus. Quelquefois, je
sortais en camionnette avec un de mes collègues
pour aider les clients dont la voiture était en panne.
De temps en temps, je devais faire des petits boulots
moins intéressants, comme laver les voitures, passer
l’aspirateur et faire le café pour mes collègues, mais
ça ne me dérangeait pas.
You need to use key tenses correctly and express opinions to achieve a Grade C.
◆ Lucas uses the present tense to say he is interested in cars.
◆ Look at how Lucas uses the perfect tense to say where he did his work experience,
how long it lasted, what he learned and how much he enjoyed it.
◆ To talk about your future plans (e.g. to continue studying next year or to leave school),
use either aller + infinitive or the future tense.
Candidates who are aiming higher than a Grade C should use other tenses, too, such as the
imperfect and the conditional.
◆ Look at how Lucas uses the imperfect tense to describe what kind of jobs he had to do.
◆ Lucas uses the conditional + infinitive to say that he would like to be a mechanic one day.
◆ Make sure you refer to other people, using the il/elle/ils/elles forms of the verb correctly.
Lucas does this when he describes his workmates and his boss.
◆ Make sure your account reads well by using a variety of connectives and time and
frequency expressions.
Je m’entendais bien avec mes collègues qui étaient
tous sympas et on s’amusait bien ensemble. Mon
patron, le propriétaire du garage, n’était pas toujours
de bonne humeur, mais il a dit qu’il était très
content de mon travail et il m’a proposé de faire un
apprentissage chez lui. Je ne sais pas encore si je continuerai mes études après mes
examens GCSE ou si je quitterai le collège à dix-sept ans, mais j’ai beaucoup apprécié
mon stage au garage et je voudrais bien retourner y travailler.
To really impress the examiner and aim for an A* Grade:
◆ include a complex sentence with si (if), which
combines more than one tense. Look at how Lucas does
this towards the end of his text.
◆ use relative pronouns (qui, que or dont). Look at how
Lucas uses two of these to refer to his workmates and
customers whose cars had broken down.
Lucas
5 Now write an account of your
Introduction
work experience.
Background to your work experience:
● Adapt Lucas’s text and use
When did you do it? (In which school
language from pages 118–119.
year? In which month?)
Write at least 200 words.
How long did it last?
Why did you choose to do your work
● If you need to write
expe
rience in this particular place?
something which is not
in the book you can
Main paragraphs
impress the examiner with
Say what types of jobs you had to do.
complex sentences, but
Talk about the other staff and how you
use a dictionary carefully,
got on with them.
especially if you need
specialised vocabulary such
Conclusion
as ‘computer parts’: des
Say whether you would like to work
pièces d’ordinateur.
there, or do a similar job, in the future.
Say why.
● Structure your text carefully.
Organise what you write in
paragraphs:
1 Find the French equivalent of these
phrases in the text and copy them
out.
1 all Year 10 pupils did work
experience in May
2 the work experience lasted a
fortnight
3 I am very interested in cars
4 I would like to become a mechanic
5 I learned a lot of things
6 the work was quite varied
7 from time to time, I had to do some
less interesting chores
8 I got on well with my workmates
9 my boss, the garage owner, wasn’t
always in a good mood
10 I really enjoyed my work experience
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2 Which tenses are used in the sentences in
exercise 1? For each sentence, write ‘present’,
‘perfect’, ‘imperfect’ or ‘conditional’.
3 Find the four correct statements.
1 Lucas spent a week working in the Toyota
garage.
2 He’d like to have his own garage one day.
3 He wasn’t allowed to change tyres.
4 He went out in the van to help customers
who had broken down.
5 He also had to do the vacuuming and make
the coffee.
6 His boss was not happy with Lucas’s work.
7 Lucas doesn’t know yet whether he will
continue his studies next year.
8 He would not like to go back to the garage to
work.
Épate l’examinateur!
◆ Include a sentence with comme +
infinitive (like doing something). See
how Lucas uses this to describe the
less interesting chores he had to do.
Check what you have
written carefully.
Check:
● spelling and accents
● gender and agreement
(e.g. adjectives, past
participles of être
verbs)
● verb endings for the
different persons: il/
elle/ils/elles, etc.
● tense formation
(e.g. j’ai commencé/
je continuerai).
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