Arts et débats de société

1. a)The author is unknown: "nobody knew who had painted it". It appears on the side of an old grain warehouse on Dock Street. (1)
2. b)Some councillors considered it vandalism on private property and wanted it painted over; others valued it because the empty warehouse had attracted more visitors in one week than the tourist office in ten years. (1)
3. c)1984 is the year the port closed and four hundred dockers lost their jobs. The historian turns the mural into a memorial for workers who never received one, which shifts the debate from legality to memory. (1)
4. d)The mural denounces the loss of working-class jobs, but once preserved behind glass it becomes the selling point of a shopping arcade: protest art is absorbed by the commerce it criticised. (1)

Erreur fréquente — Une réponse de compréhension cite le texte pour le repérage mais reformule pour l'inférence : recopier une phrase entière en guise d'explication ne rapporte pas les points.

1. a)banned — passif au prétérit : was banned. (1)
2. b)self-censorship — nom composé avec trait d'union, indénombrable. (1)
3. c)awareness — collocation figée : to raise awareness about / of. (1)
4. d)lift — to lift a ban = lever une interdiction ; jamais « to raise a ban ». (1)

À retenir — Le lexique de la censure fonctionne par collocations fixes : to ban, to lift a ban, to raise awareness, self-censorship.

1. a)to — to draw attention to, préposition obligatoire. (1)
2. b)sheds — to shed light on ; troisième personne du singulier au présent simple. (1)
3. c)stands — to stand for = symboliser. (1)
4. d)What — What is at stake is… ; what est sujet, donc pas d'auxiliaire. (1)

Repère — Trois prépositions à ne jamais intervertir : draw attention TO, shed light ON, deal WITH.

1. a)As — As far as I am concerned, expression figée. (1)
2. b)Admittedly — concession suivie d'une objection introduite par however. (1)
3. c)In my opinion, street art is a real art form. (ou To my mind, …) — « at my opinion » n'existe pas. (1)
4. d)There is no denying that the controversy made the work famous. (ou … that the controversy brought the work to public attention.) (1)

Le point clé — Une opinion notée au lycée est une opinion nuancée : une concession (admittedly, to a certain extent) suivie d'une objection (however) vaut mieux qu'une affirmation répétée.

1. a)Attendus : format de lettre (Dear members of the council, … Yours faithfully), longueur respectée, position claire annoncée dès les premières lignes. (1)
2. b)Attendus : trois amorces différentes au moins, dont une concession ; la répétition de « I think that » est pénalisée. (1)
3. c)Attendus : deux termes de l'axe employés correctement, en contexte et non juxtaposés. (1)
4. d)Proposition rédigée : « Dear members of the council, I am writing about the mural on Dock Street. In my opinion, it should remain where it is. Admittedly, it was painted without permission, and the owner's rights matter; however, the wall had been empty for eleven years and nobody had ever paid attention to it. To my mind, this work is committed art rather than vandalism: it raises awareness of a history the town has never commemorated, and it has brought a forgotten street back to life. I would argue that removing it would look like censorship, and that banning a work usually spreads it further, as the Hays Code showed in Hollywood. To a certain extent, I understand those who fear that the mural will simply become an advertisement for a shopping arcade. That risk is real. But it is a better risk than an empty wall. Yours faithfully, … » (177 mots) (1)

Attention — Une lettre d'opinion se juge à sa structure : position, concession, argument, exemple précis — l'accumulation d'adjectifs forts ne remplace jamais l'exemple.