Les sciences et le progrès

Document 1. Extract from a British science website for young readers.
« In 1796, Edward Jenner, a country doctor in Gloucestershire, England, noticed that milkmaids who had caught cowpox, a mild disease, never caught smallpox, a terrible illness that killed one child in three. He decided to test his idea. He took some liquid from a cowpox blister and injected it into the arm of James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy. A few weeks later, he exposed James to smallpox: the boy did not fall ill. Jenner called his method « vaccination », from vacca, the Latin word for cow. At first, many doctors laughed at him and newspapers published cartoons of people turning into cows. But the method worked, and in 1980, the World Health Organization declared that smallpox had disappeared from the planet — the first disease ever eliminated by humans. »

1. a)What did Jenner notice about milkmaids, and what did this observation lead him to test?
2. b)Describe Jenner's experiment in two sentences (who, what, result).
3. c)How did people react at first? Quote the sentence that shows it.
4. d)Explain in English why the year 1980 is important in this story, and why the text calls it « the first disease ever eliminated by humans ».

Document 2. Survey of 200 British teenagers (2025): « Which invention has changed your life the most? »

1. a)Which invention got the most votes, and what percentage of the teenagers chose it?
2. b)Which is the oldest invention in the table, and which is the most recent? Write your answer as one sentence with a superlative.
3. c)Write two sentences about the World Wide Web using the table: one in the preterite with « invent », one with « one drawback is that… ».
4. d)Do you find it surprising that the vaccine got fewer votes than the smartphone? Give your opinion in two sentences with an opinion phrase and « although ».

1. a)Conjugue au prétérit : « In 1903, the Wright brothers (fly) ___ for twelve seconds ; they (build) ___ the plane themselves and (become) ___ famous. »
2. b)Corrige les trois erreurs : « Scientists have done many progresses, but there are still few evidences that this treatment works. »
3. c)Complète avec allow / prevent et la forme du verbe : « Solar panels ___ families (to save) ___ money, but clouds ___ them (to produce) ___ energy. »
4. d)Relie les deux phrases avec « although », puis avec « on the one hand / on the other hand » : « AI can diagnose diseases. AI can make mistakes. »

1. a)Donne le nom correspondant à chaque verbe : to invent, to discover, to improve, to develop.
2. b)Traduis en anglais : « une avancée majeure », « de pointe », « un inconvénient », « l'espérance de vie ».
3. c)Explique en anglais la différence entre « an experiment » et « an experience », puis entre « to invent » et « to discover », avec un exemple pour chacun.
4. d)Associe chaque scientifique à sa découverte ou invention et à une date : Fleming, Bell, Darwin, Berners-Lee — the theory of evolution (1859), penicillin (1928), the Web (1989), the telephone (1876).

Your school magazine asks: « The invention that changed the world ». Present an invention or a discovery of your choice (80 words minimum), following the four steps.

1. a)Introduce the invention or discovery: who, when, where (two sentences in the preterite with a date).
2. b)Explain how it changed people's lives, with « before » and « today » (use « used to » or a comparative).
3. c)Present one advantage and one drawback, with « on the one hand / on the other hand ».
4. d)Conclude with your opinion (« all things considered », « in my view ») and say what progress you hope for in the future (« will » or « be going to »).