122 devoir synthese 2021 corrige

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2020-2021
UE 122 – ANGLAIS DES AFFAIRES
DEVOIR DE SYNTHESE
CORRIGE

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Durée de l’épreuve : 3 heures
Le corrigé comporte : 4 pages
I - COMPRÉHENSION : 5 points
II - VERSION : 5 points
III – CORRESPONDANCE COMMERCIALE EN LANGUE ANGLAISE : 5 points
IV - ESSAY : 5 points
CORRIGÉ
__________________________________________________________________________________________
EXERCICE 1 : COMPRÉHENSION (5 points : 0.5 par bonne réponse ET justification)
1. Chez Valve, les employés peuvent choisir leur bureau.
VRAI. “If you hate who you are sitting next to simply move”
2. Certains économistes connus sont en poste dans les start-ups.
FAUX. “The company has some exciting quirks like a massage room, an in-house radical economist”
OU
“economist in residence”
3. Le fonctionnement interne de Valve reste confidentiel.
FAUX. “In 2012 Valve’s new employee handbook was leaked”
OU
“flattering articles about this unique company …. appeared everywhere”
4. Dans une entreprise, les niveaux hiérarchiques sont parfois invisibles.
VRAI. “There is actually a hidden layer of powerful management structure in the company”
5. Les cadres d’entreprise sont souvent issus de milieux sociaux privilégiés.
NON MENTIONNE.
6. L’avantage des entreprises comme Valve est d’avoir une organisation plus souple.
FAUX. “The lack of formal rules and hierarchy masks a vicious informal power structure”
7. Le secteur public est épargné par l’engouement pour l’ horizontalité hiérarchique
FAUX. “Like firms, the famously bureaucratic public sector has also fallen for flatness”
8. Se passer des règles établies amène à des décisions innovantes dans tous les domaines.
FAUX. “the military misadventures of the early 21st century were often due to the passion and enthusiasm of
elected officials”

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9. L’absence de structure hiérarchique peut cacher beaucoup d’autoritarisme.
VRAI. “structure lessness easily “becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned
authority over others”
10. La bureaucratie a tout de même certaines vertus.
VRAI. “rules can be absurd, and bosses can be toxic. But not having these things, can be worse”
EXERCICE 2: VERSION (5 points)
1. On your first day, you are given a handbook for new employees. (1,5 point)
Lorsque vous démarrez dans l’entreprise, on vous remet le manuel destiné aux nouveaux entrants.
(1 point pour la forme « on » en français, 0,5 pour le reste)
2. Someone described how the firm would hire employees, make them grand promises, then fire them
once they were no longer useful. (1,5 point)
Quelqu’un a décrit comment cette entreprise embauchait du personnel, leur faisait de grandes promesses et
puis mettait les gens dehors une fois qu’ils ne faisaient plus l’affaire.
(Temps imparfait pour tous les verbes 1 point, 0,5 pour le reste)
3. Like firms/ the famously bureaucratic public sector/ has also fallen for/ flatness. (2 points)
Tout comme les entreprises, le secteur public, réputé pour ses lourdeurs administratives, a, lui aussi,
succombé à la mode de « l’horizontalité ».
(0,5 point par segment)
EXERCICE 3 : CORRESPONDANCE COMMERCIALE EN ANGLAIS (5 points)
Vous êtes le/la responsable d’une équipe comptable d’une dizaine de personnes, dans une anglophone. L’équipe
passe, ou est passée, en mode « télétravail » et vous devez les informer que, dorénavant, les réunions de service
se dérouleront sous forme de visio-conférence. Vous leur précisez les modalités et les raisons de ce changement.
Vous rédigez un mémo interne, sous forme de mail, d’environ 150 mots (plus ou moins 10%).
En-tête et formules de rigueur attendues.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Date: 6th January 2021
Re: Online weekly meetings
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Everyone/ All/ colleagues (or no salutations at all)
Our business organization has been modified a lot following all the recent events. We
worked from home during the pandemic lockdown and experienced our first online
weekly meetings. We have mostly reverted to physical attendance since September.

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Taking into account all the sanitary constraints is strenuous and we are all doing our best
to keep the company operating. As you all know, all the departments are now working
from home on a part-time basis, following an assigned schedule.
It has been decided to abandon traditional face-to-face meetings and a new meeting time
slot has been set for the accounting department: our weekly online accounting meetings
WILL take place on Tuesday mornings at 9am.
In order for all of us to attend those meetings serenely, a technician from our IT
department will soon be checking that you are all provided with the right templates and
VPN connectivity.
Every Monday, I will be sending you the meeting agenda. Please, make sure to send me
your agenda requests and suggestions ahead of time.
I trust that everybody will be playing by the rules. Do not hesitate to get back to me for
any further information and attendance difficulty. (198 words)
Regards
Maya Rackjavik
Barème:
En-tête et formules de politesse: 1 point
Vocabulaire : 1.5 point
Grammaire : 1.5 point
Idées : 1 point
EXERCICE 4: EXPRESSION ÉCRITE (5 points)
A cartoon on “Corporate Diversity”.
Describe the document below. Add your comments.
(150 mots environ, + ou – 10%)
Ce corrigé est plus long que ce qui était attendu des étudiants.
(Description)
The cartoon portrays a male and a female character standing and talking in front of an office desk. Actually,
only the man whose mouth is open and who is pointing his finger, is talking; it looks as if he was giving
instructions to a woman who is staring at him with bulging eyes.
The drawing sketched in 1999 is rather old, as illustrated by the typewriter sitting on the desk.
The man is wearing a business suit and tie; he is not young, slightly overweight, partially bald and wearing
glasses. He features a typical “white male executive” in the 1990s.

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The woman is wearing a jacket, a long skirt, and heeled shoes; she is holding a sheet of paper.
In that old-fashioned company, as expressed by the boss, there is a “need to focus on diversity”. However,
although apparently committed to implementing diversity, the man wants the new hires to “look different” but
expect them to think just like him! This is a caricature of a very important issue.
Equal opportunity employment has been promoted in the U.S. since the 1960s and it has been proven that higher
performing companies usually have more race, gender, and cultural diversity. However, changes are
extraordinarily slow, especially at the top of the corporate ladder. The higher the position is, the less gender
and race diversity can be found. Boardrooms are often described as filled with “male, pale, stale” executives,
ie. mostly men, white and old. Some explanations for this could be that executives prefer to deal with their
peers; they want others to agree with them and their own kind tend to self-perpetuate. (250 words)
Les étudiants ne seront pas pénalisés pour une rédaction trop longue (sauf en cas de problèmes rédactionnels…)
parce que le sujet s’y prête.
Barème:
Description: 1.5 point
Idées (implicite): 1.5 point
Grammaire : 1 point
Vocabulaire : 1 point