BACCALAURÉAT GÉNÉRAL
Session 2015
ANGLAIS
Langue Vivante 1
Durée de l’épreuve : 3 heures
Séries ES/S – coefficient : 3
Série L langue vivante obligatoire (LVO) – coefficient : 4
Série L LVO et langue vivante approfondie (LVA) – coefficient : 8
L’usage de la calculatrice et du dictionnaire n’est pas autorisé.
Ce sujet comporte 6 pages numérotées de 1/6 à 6/6.
Dès que ce sujet vous est remis, assurez-vous qu’il est complet.
Répartition des points
Compréhension 10 points
Expression 10 points
Page 1 sur 6
15 LV1 ANGEIN1 DOCUMENT A
1 The move to Pagford had been the worst thing that had ever happened to
Gaia Bawden. Excepting occasional visits to her father in Reading, London was
all that she had ever known. So incredulous had Gaia been, when Kay had first
said she wanted to move to a tiny West Country town, that it had been weeks
5 before she took the threat seriously. She had thought it one of Kay's mad ideas,
like the two chickens she had bought for their tiny back garden in Hackney (killed
by a fox a week after purchase), or deciding to ruin half their saucepans and
permanently scar her own hand by making marmelade, when she hardly ever
cooked.
10 Wrenched from friends she had had from primary school, from the house
she had known since she was eight, from weekends that were, increasingly,
about every kind of urban fun, Gaia had been plunged, over the pleas, threats
and protests, into a life she had never dreamed existed. Cobbled streets and no
shops open after six o'clock, a communal life that seemed to revolve around the
15 church, and where you could often hear birdsong and nothing else: Gaia felt as
though she had fallen through a portal into a land lost in time.
She and Kay had clung tightly to each other all Gaia's life (for her father
had never lived with them, and Kay's two successive relationships had never
been formalized), bickering, condoling and growing steadily more like flat-mates
20 with passing years. Now, though, Gaia saw nothing but an enemy when she
looked across the kitchen table. Her only ambition was to return to London, by
any means possible, and to make Kay as unhappy as she could, in revenge.
1 She could not decide whether it would punish Kay more to fail all her GCSEs , or
to pass them, and try and get her father to agree to house her, while she
25 attended a sixth-form college in London. In the meantime, she had to exist in
alien territory, where her looks and her accent, once instant passports to the
most select social circles, had become foreign currency.
J. K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy, 2012
1. GCSE: diploma for students aged 14 to 16 in Britain
Page 2 sur 6
15 LV1 ANGEIN1 DOCUMENT B
1 Isabel put her fingers lightly across her eyelids, and opened her eyes
slowly behind them. She was not, of course, at school. She was at home, in her
own bedroom, at number seven, the Quadrant, Larkford Camp, Wiltshire, which
had been home for nearly for two years. Before that home had been a bit in
5 Germany, and a bit in Yorkshire and a bit in London, and before that, when it
was just Mum and Isabel on their own, a bit in another part of London in a high-
up flat with the top of a tree right outside the windows, which Isabel believed
she remembered with a passionate nostalgia. There’d also been schools to go
with all these places, school after school.
10 “Five schools by year six,” Mum had said to Isabel, trying to make the
1 case for boarding school . “It’s too much. It’s too much for you. It isn’t fair. You
make friends and then you move and lose them. Don’t you think you’d rather
have continuity, even if it means sleeping away from home?”
Isabel didn’t know. Even now, technically settled into boarding school,
15 she didn’t know. She wanted to feel steadier, she wanted to please, she
understood that if Dan got a promotion they might move again – but then, if he
didn’t, if they didn’t, why was it necessary for her to be away from home when
home wasn’t, after all, changing? And then there were the twins. The twins went
to a local nursery school, and when they were five would go to the local primary.
20 “But the twins —” Isabel began.
Mum looked at her. Isabel could see she understood and hadn’t got a
real answer. She just said, “We – can’t plan, you see. Not if we want to stay
together. As a family. But if you go to boarding school, at least you know – I
know – that one thing, at least, will go on as before. That’s all.”
25 In Isabel’s experience, it was only the small things that went on as
before, like the smell of the linen cupboard and the twins’ refusal to eat anything
orange and the way one fingernail on her left hand grew at a very slight angle.
The big stuff, like what was going to happen next, to all of them, was always a
giant question mark hanging in the air, affecting everything, every mood. And
30 even when the question mark was answered, it was always replaced by another
one. Like today. Today was a big day, a day they had been looking forward for
six months, a day that was circled on the kitchen calendar, and for which the
twins had made a huge messy paper banner randomly stuck with patches of
shiny coloured paper and scraps of pink feather from a dressing-up boa.
35 Today, Dan was coming home from his mission, with his whole battery.
Adapted from Joanna Trollope, The Soldier’s Wife, 2012
1. Boarding school: a school where students can live during the school year
Page 3 sur 6
15 LV1 ANGEIN1
COMPRÉHENSION (10 POINTS)
Les candidats traiteront le sujet sur la copie qui leur sera fournie et veilleront à
- respecter l’ordre des questions et reporter les repères sur la copie (lettre ou
lettre et numéro ou lettre, numéro et lettre). Exemples : 1. ou 1.a. ;
- faire toujours suivre les citations du numéro de la ligne ;
- répondre à toutes les questions en anglais.
En l’absence d’indications spécifiques, le candidat répondra brièvement aux
questions.
Tous les candidats traitent les questions de I à X
DOCUMENT A
Read the whole text.
I. How does Gaia feel about moving from London to Pagford? Quote 2 elements
from the first paragraph to support your answer.
Read from line 10 to the end.
II. Quoting from the text, what elements does she associate with London (3
elements) and Pagford (5 elements)?
III. To what extent does this move change her relationship with Kay, her mother?
IV. How does Gaia intend to punish her mother for moving to Pagford? Find 2
elements in the text.
V. “In the meantime, she had to exist in alien territory, where her looks and her
accent, once instant passports to the most select social circles, had become
foreign currency.” (l. 25 – 27)
Identify and explain the two metaphors linked to the “alien territory”. (30 words)
Page 4 sur 6
15 LV1 ANGEIN1 DOCUMENT B
Read the whole text.
.
VI. List the characters and say how you think they are connected.
VII. What do you learn about Dan’s professional situation? Support your answer
with two elements from the text.
VIII. “It’s too much. It’s too much for you. It isn’t fair.” (l. 11)
1. What “isn’t fair”?
2. Why does her mother insist on sending Isabel to boarding school?
IX.
1. Explain Isabel’s mixed feelings about her mother’s decision.
2. What does it reveal about her vision of stability as compared to her mother’s?
DOCUMENT A AND DOCUMENT B
Read the two documents again.
X. Compare and contrast Gaia’s and Isabel’s situations.
Seuls les candidats de la série L composant au titre de la LVA (Langue Vivante
Approfondie) traitent également la question XI
XI. Show that Gaia and Isabel have a different conception of “home”. (50 words)
Page 5 sur 6
15 LV1 ANGEIN1 EXPRESSION
Seuls les candidats des séries S et ES et ceux de la série L qui ne composent
pas au titre de la LVA (Langue Vivante Approfondie) traitent le sujet I ou le
sujet II, au choix.
SUJET I
Leaving home can be scary but it’s a necessary step towards growing up. (300
words)
SUJET II
Gaia writes to her father about living in Pagford. Imagine the letter / email. (300
words)
Seuls les candidats de la série L composant au titre de la LVA (Langue Vivante
Approfondie) traitent le sujet III ou le sujet IV, au choix.
SUJET