Préparation à l'épreuve écrite du baccalauréat (LVA)

Exercice 1 — Reading comprehension
1) The teacher wrote it because the essay had not been written by Amara herself: it 'had in fact been written in seconds by an AI chatbot' and 'Amara had not even read the books on the syllabus'. The work did not reflect her own thinking or effort. (1 pt for the idea, 1 pt for a relevant quote.) 2) Mr Reyes says he 'can spot it immediately' because 'the sentences are too smooth, the ideas too safe': machine-written essays are grammatically flawless ('too smooth') but lack risk-taking and the mistakes a real teenager would make. 3) The defenders argue these tools are 'simply the calculators of writing': just as a calculator does arithmetic, AI can handle spelling and grammar instantly, so (they claim) there is no point memorising them. Accept any clear reformulation. 4) The hidden cost is that students may 'never learn to think for themselves' if 'they never wrestle with a blank page'. Writing is presented as 'the slow, sometimes painful process through which ideas are actually formed', so skipping it means losing the very act of forming one's own thoughts. 5) Expected: although her marks fell, Amara went back to her own writing because her essays, though 'messier', are genuinely hers — 'when I read them now, I recognise myself'. She values authenticity and personal thinking over an easy, impersonal high grade. Reward any nuanced answer linking lower marks to a gain in personal voice and genuine thought.

Exercice 2 — Decoding the writing prompt
1) The format is a speech. A formal feature: an apostrophe / direct address to the audience (e.g. 'Dear fellow students,' / 'Ladies and gentlemen,'), or the use of rhetorical questions and direct address ('you'). 2) The audience is the writer's classmates / fellow students; the tone should be persuasive but accessible — engaged and slightly formal, addressing them directly while remaining respectful (not slangy). 3) The task is to argue / persuade ('to convince'): the verb 'convince' shows it is an argumentative, persuasive task, not a narration or a description. 4) Sample rewrite: 'Dear fellow students, today I want to convince you that nothing should replace the essays we write with our own hands and minds.' (Reward any version that removes the slang 'Hi guys / kind of bad', adopts a persuasive tone and addresses the audience directly.)

Exercice 3 — Written expression
Assessment criteria (indicative scale out of 6): respect of the consigne, format and word count (1.5 pt); structure — for an essay: hook + thesis statement, two P.E.E. paragraphs, conclusion with an opening; for a formal letter: correct opening ('Dear Sir or Madam' / 'Dear Mr…'), organised body and matching closing ('Yours faithfully' / 'Yours sincerely') (1.5 pt); range and accuracy of language: varied lexis, hedging, connectors (1.5 pt); grammatical correctness: tenses, agreement, articles, syntax (1.5 pt).

Sample production (Subject A, essay):
"In an age where a single click can produce a flawless essay, schools face a difficult question: should AI writing tools be banned altogether? While these tools undeniably have their uses, I believe an outright ban would be both unrealistic and counter-productive.
Admittedly, there is a real danger. If students rely on machines to write for them, they may never learn to structure an argument or to think independently. Writing is, after all, a way of forming ideas, not merely transcribing them.
However, banning a technology rarely makes it disappear. It would be far wiser to teach pupils to use these tools critically — to draft, to check, but never to replace their own voice. Calculators did not destroy mathematics; they changed how it is taught.
On balance, the solution lies not in prohibition but in education. Schools should not ban AI, but teach students when, and when not, to depend on it." (≈170 words) Reward any coherent, well-structured and linguistically rich production, whatever the stance defended.