Séries générales • LV2
angT_1405_09_00C
Formes de pouvoir
14
CORRIGE
Liban • Mai 2014
Séries générales • LV2
Text 1Cell phones in the city
What surprised me most my first few days walking around the city The most obvious thing – the cell phones. We had no reception as yet up on my mountain, and down in Athena, where they do have it, l’d rarely see people striding the streets talking uninhibitedly into their phones. I remembered a New York when the only people walking up Broadway seemingly talking to themselves were crazy. What had happened in these ten years for there suddenly to be so much to say – so much so pressing that it couldn’t wait to be said Everywhere I walked, somebody was approaching me talking on a phone and somebody was behind me talking on a phone. Inside the cars, the drivers were on the phone. When I took a taxi, the cabbie was on the phone. For one who frequently went without talking to anyone for days at a time, I had to wonder what that had previously held them up had collapsed in people to make incessant talking into a telephone preferable to walking about under no one’s surveillance, momentarily solitary, assimilating the streets through one’s animal senses and thinking the myriad thoughts that the activities of a city inspire. For me it made the streets appear comic and the people ridiculous. And yet it seemed like a real tragedy, too. To eradicate the experience of separation must inevitably have a dramatic effect. What will the consequence be You know you can reach the other person anytime, and if you can’t you get impatient – impatient and angry like a little stupid god. I understood that background silence had long been abolished from restaurants, elevators, and ballparks, but that the immense loneliness of human beings should produce this boundless longing to be heard, and the accompanying disregard for being overheard – well, having lived largely in the era of the telephone booth, whose substantial folding doors could be tightly pulled shut, I was impressed by the conspicuousness of it all and found myself entertaining the idea for a story in which Manhattan has turned into a sinister collectivity where everyone is spying on everyone else, everyone being tracked by the person at the other end of his or her phone, even though, incessantly dialing one another from wherever they like in the great out of doors, the telephoners believe themselves to be experiencing the maximum freedom. I knew that merely by thinking up such a scenario I was at one with all the cranks who imagined, from the beginnings of industrialization, that the machine was the enemy of life. Still, I could not help it: I did not see how anyone could believe he was continuing to live a human existence by walking about talking into a phone for half his walking life. No, those gadgets did not promise to be a boon to promoting reflection among the general public.
Philip Roth, Exit Ghost, 2007.
Text 2You’ll never learn!
Students can’t resist multi-tasking, and it’s impairing their memory.
Living rooms, dens, kitchens, even bedrooms: investigators followed students into the spaces where homework gets done. Pens poised over their “study observation forms”, the observers watched intently as the students – in middle school, high school, and college, 263 in all – opened their books and turned on their computers.
For a quarter of an hour, the investigators from the lab of Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University-Dominguez Hills, marked down once a minute what the students were doing as they studied. A checklist on the form included: reading a book, writing on paper, typing on the computer – and also using email, looking at Facebook, engaging in instant messaging, texting, talking on the phone, watching television, listening to music, surfing the Web. […]
Although the students had been told at the outset that they should “study something important, including homework, an upcoming examination or project, or reading a book for a course,” it wasn’t too long before their attention drifted: Students’ “on-task behavior” started declining around the two-minute mark as they began responding to arriving texts or checking their Facebook feeds. By the time the 15 minutes were up, they had spent only about 65 percent of the observation period actually doing their schoolwork.
Annie Murphy Paul, Slate magazine, May 3, 2013.
Compréhension
Text 1
11. Where does the scene take place (City Country )
2. Give two elements to justify your answer.
21. The narrator has been away from the city for a long time. How long has he been away
2. Justify by quoting from the text.
3 What main chance in city life does he notice
>Focus on lines 1 to 18.
41. How does he react to this change in city life Answer briefly in your on words and illustrate with a quote.
2. In what way is his reaction underlined (say what figure of speech is used.) Answer in your own words and quote from the text.
3. What element in the way the narrator lived could explain his reaction Answer in your own words and justify by quoting from the text.
>Focus on the whole text.
5 According to the narrator, what are the negative effects of this change on people in the city Answer in your own words. Give three elements. (40 words)
Text 2
1 Say if the following statements are true or false. Justify your answer by quoting from the text.
1. Doing several things at the same time stimulates students' memory.
2. Students were observed by investigators in classrooms.
3. For fifteen minutes the investigators noted what the students were doing every sixty seconds.
2 How long could the students concentrate on their homework with-out doing anything else
3 In your own explain words what “multi-tasking” is and give examples from the text.
Both texts
Les candidats des séries ES, S et L, LV2 obligatoire traiteront la question 1.
1 What is the common point between city people in text 1 and the students in text 2 Answer in your own words and justify with one quote from each text.
Les candidats de la série L, LV2 traiteront la question 2.
2 What is the common point between city people in text 1 and the students in text 2 What does it reveal about their needs
Expression
> Les candidats des séries ES, S et L, LV2 obligatoire traiteront l'un des deux sujets suivants. (200 mots, +/- 15 mots)
> Les candidats de la série L LVA devront obligatoirement traiter le sujet 1. (300 mots, +/- 15 mots)
1 Text 1, lines 31-33: “…everyone is spying on everyone else, everyone being tracked by the person at the other end of his or her phone…”
Comment on his quote. In your opinion is the use of a mobile phone an obstacle to freedom and privacy or not
2 You are supposed to be revising in your bedroom for an important examination. Your parents find you texting and consulting your Facebook page. Write the scene including the conversation.
Texte 1
L’auteur
Philip Roth (1933-) est un romancier américain. Il a, en plus de sa carrière d’enseignant en littérature, écrit de nombreux ouvrages, dont American Pastoral en 1997, qui lui a valu le prix Pulitzer.
Pour en savoir plus : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Roth
Résumé du texte
Le narrateur est de retour à New York après avoir passé dix ans loin de la ville. Il est stupéfait de constater que tout le monde est pendu à son téléphone portable. Il s’interroge sur l’impact de ce phénomène sur la race humaine – la disparition de la solitude, la différence dans l’appréciation du monde, la fin d’un sentiment de liberté…
On le comprend à demi-mot, le narrateur a passé une dizaine d’années loin de New York dans un endroit nommé Athena, en réalité non loin de l’université fictive Athena College.
Vocabulaire utile à la compréhension
Reception, l. 2-3 (réseau) to stride, l. 4 (marcher à grandes enjambées) uninhibitedly, l. 4 (sans complexe) the cabbie, l. 11 (le chauffeur de taxi) a boundless longing, l. 26 (une aspiration sans bornes) a disregard, l. 26 (une indifférence) to be overheard, l. 27 (être entendu par mégarde) a telephone booth, l. 28 (une cabine téléphonique) conspicuousness, l. 29 (le fait d’attirer l’attention) to dial, l. 33 (téléphoner) a crank, l. 37 (un excentrique).
Texte 2
L’auteur
Annie Murphy Paul est journaliste. Elle publie ses articles dans plusieurs journaux et magazines, en particulier Slate Magazine, magazine d’actualités en ligne créé en 1996. Au départ anglophone, avec un lien étroit avec le Washington Post, Slate existe désormais en version francophone.
Pour en savoir plus : www.slate.com/
https://anniemurphypaul.com/about
Résumé du texte
Une étude menée sur 263 élèves de tous âges a démontré que, même lorsqu’on leur donnait un travail scolaire à faire, à cause des sollicitations extérieures dues aux nouvelles technologies comme les SMS ou les réseaux sociaux, ils consacraient au bout du compte seulement 65 % de leur temps à réellement travailler.
Vocabulaire utile à la compréhension
To impair, l. 1 (altérer) pens poised, l. 4-5 (stylos tout prêts) at the outset, l. 16 (au début) upcoming , l. 16 (à venir) to drift, l. 19 (dériver).
Les points de convergence
Les deux documents critiquent l’impact des nouvelles technologies sur notre façon de vivre. Dans le premier texte, l’auteur s’interroge sur l’utilisation du téléphone portable dans les rues et sur les répercussions sur notre mode de vie dans le second, la journaliste constate les conséquences néfastes des outils technologiques sur la qualité du travail des élèves.
Le sujet d’expression 1
Pistes de recherche
Envisagez les avantages et les inconvénients des téléphones portables. Impact positif sur nos relations sociales : ils nous permettent de joindre de n’importe où nos amis ou collègues. Mais impact négatif sur notre vie privée : ils permettent de nous suivre à la trace. Vos parents peuvent savoir en permanence où vous êtes, et même qui vous appelez et combien de temps grâce aux factures détaillées ou à des logiciels espions. Et si vous ne pouvez plus vous en passer, c’est une perte de liberté.
Vocabulaire utile
To be traced (être pisté) privacy (la vie privée) spyware (logiciel(s) espion(s)) a text (un SMS) to get in touch (entrer en contact).
Le sujet d’expression 2
Pistes de recherche
Sachant que vous êtes censé être en train de réviser, vos parents ne vont pas se réjouir de vous trouver en train de faire autre chose ! Il est vraisemblable que, furieux, ils vous parlent de votre avenir, de votre dépendance aux écrans et réseaux sociaux, et cherchent à vous responsabiliser.
Vocabulaire utile
To be hooked on (être accro à) to jeopardise (mettre en danger) screen addiction (l’addiction aux écrans).
Correction
compréhension
Text 1
11. The scene takes place in New York, in the USA.
2. l. 6 : “Broadway”, l. 30 : “Manhattan”.
21. He’s been away for ten years.
2. l. 7-8 : “What had happened in these ten years for there suddenly to be so much to say”.
3 He notices that everyone in the streets is on their cell phones and they talk as they walk.
41. He is surprised and doesn’t understand how the city can have possibly changed so much. l. 1 : “What surprised me…”, l. 7 “What had happened in these ten years…”.
2. There is a kind of rhetorical question at the beginning, self-asked, to which the narrator answers at length, making an impressive list (enumeration) of all the various situations in which he saw people talking into the phone : l. 11, “the drivers”, l. 11, “the cabbie”.
3. Previously, the narrator lived in a remote part of the USA, on a mountain, where he had no reception. Even downhill, in Athena, people wouldn’t use their cell phones all the time as New Yorkers did. Therefore, he’s not used to it at all : l. 5 “We had no reception as yet up on my mountain, and down in Athena, where they do have it, I’d rarely see people striding the streets talking uninhibitedly into their phones.”
→ Ne pas confondre Athena et Athens, Athènes, en Grèce.
5 The first consequence is frustration when you can’t get in touch with someone immediately as you usually do. Second, it leads to a lack of privacy, as anyone can overhear your conversations. Finally, while people paradoxically believe that they enjoy more freedom, in fact they have less of it, as they can be tracked wherever they are.
Text 2
11. False : It’s impairing their memory (l. 1).
2. False : Living rooms, dens, kitchens, even bedrooms (l. 3) / the spaces where homework gets done (l. 4).
3. True : the investigators (…) marked down once a minute what the students were doing (l. 8-11).
2 They could only concentrate for two minutes.
3 Multi-tasking consists in doing several things at the same time, for instance doing one’s homework while consulting one’s Facebook account and texting (l. 20-21).
Both texts
Uniquement pour les candidats de LV2 obligatoire.
1 In both cases people are addicted to new technologies, which has a destructive impact on their way of life and their intellectual faculties as they can’t pay a hundred-percent attention to what they are doing and they lose their freedom as well as their intellectual faculties.
Text 1 : “I did not see how anyone could believe he was continuing to live a human existence by walking about talking into a phone for half his waking life” (l. 39-41)
Text 2: “Students can’t resist multi-tasking, and it’s impairing their memory” (l. 1-2)
Uniquement pour les candidats de la série L LV2-LVA.
2 In both cases people are addicted to new technologies, which has a destructive impact on their way of life and their intellectual faculties as they can’t pay a hundred-percent attention to what they are doing and they lose their freedom as well as their intellectual faculties. They can never switch off, as they need to be constantly in touch with the rest of the world and be connected all the time for fear of feeling isolated maybe.
expression
1 Guidelines
Since the 1990s, mobile phones have taken a more and more important part in our lives. Almost everybody has one, as it makes it much easier to get in touch with other people by calling or texting, whereas in the past, you had to find a phone box in order to phone someone.
Yet it raises problems regarding privacy.
First, it is easy for parents to trace their teenage children: by calling them wherever they are, they can find out who they are with and what they are doing. They can trace them. They might also use spyware or check the bills to know who their kids have been calling or even what texts they’ve sent.
Second, anyone who gets hold of your mobile is able to consult the texts that you’ve sent unless your phone is password-protected.
Finally, anyone nearby can overhear your private conversations and find out about your private life without you knowing or wanting it.
Some global monitoring groups like the NSA have made the headlines by having their phone tapping widely known. This has caused scandal all over the world, as it raised the question of individual privacy versus national security.
2 Guidelines
I was quietly checking my FB account while answering my best friend Dinah’s text, when my Mom burst into the room.
“I suppose you’re working hard on revising your paper for tomorrow Are you pulling my leg Can’t you just stop texting and going on Facebook for a while What about your future Do you think this is going to help ”
“Mom, cool down. I was just seeing what had been posted, give me a break!”
“Don’t answer back! Turn it off now! I’m worried about you, love. You seem to be hooked on your cell phone and social networks more than you should.”
I did as I was told. I just mumbled :
“I always get my work done, anyway. So don’t worry…”
“You know my mind. This is not real life. This is virtual. You’d be better off spending time with your friends, like I used to when I was your age, than staying in front of a screen like you do. This is nonsense to me.”
She left the room, and as soon as she had shut the door, I finished my text to Dinah.