Consignes
- Answer ALL the questions.
- Write complete sentences. Answers in French will not be marked.
- Dictionaries are not allowed.
Part I — Reading comprehension
TEXT — The village library
Boureima is twenty-two. He lives in a small village near Ziniaré, and he has a strange job: he lends books.
Three years ago, when he came back from the lycée in Ouagadougou, he noticed something. The children of his village could read, but they had nothing to read. There was no library, no bookshop, no newspaper. « At school they learn the letters, » he says, « and after school they forget them. »
So he wrote to his old teachers, to associations, to everybody. Little by little, books arrived: novels, dictionaries, science books, and many old magazines. Today he keeps four hundred and twelve books in two metal trunks, under the roof of his father's house.
Every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon, he opens the trunks under the mango tree. Children come with their exercise books, sit on mats and read. Boureima does not ask for money. He only asks for one thing: « When you bring the book back, you must tell me the story. »
The head teacher of the primary school says that the results have improved. « The children who come to the mango tree are not the best pupils, » he explains. « They are the ones who now want to become the best. »