Learning French to Study in France [Success]

[-JM-]

Hello everyone! I am learning French and firstly, I want to talk about myself and my story a little bit.

I am twenty years old. Finishing the high school, I started studying English Language and Literature. Not because I was really interested in English literature but I wasn't interested in any other major and my English was good so I didn't have to study to get a high score on the university entrance exam. Still, I was -at least I thought I was- ambitious to study it. Well, the plans didn't fit the reality. There was only one course I liked during the whole year and it was Advanced English Grammar. Was it my fault or teachers' fault? It was mostly their fault I guess. I especially hated the theory and criticism courses. Foucault, Barthes etc. I thought I didn't like modernist/postmodernist literature. But how could I had known? I never had read one before. We were just reading parts of dry theory texts and they didn't make any sense at all because we never read a book with the theories to apply on it. I thought they were non-sense and useless.

Last summer, thanks to a Turkish novelist, I have grown interest in modernist/postmodernist literature and theories about them. I realized I actually liked to read complex novels which include stream of consciousness, metafiction, intertextuality etc. Last week I even started watching theory lessons from a Yale professor, who is a real teacher unlike my teachers.

Anyways, in the end I decided to change my school and transferred to another school to study French Language and Literature. Again, not because I was interested in French literature. But I found out that the universities in France are almost free and I can go there if I learn French. I actually want to be a musician and if the US government give federal loans to foreigners I'd go to Berklee and be willing to pay the loans for fifteen years after I graduate, sadly they don't.

The new school has two years of language preparation for the literature students, I think it's called "tronc commun". It is co-founded by the French government, so I thought it must have been good but I was wrong again. I kept going for three months and learned absolutely nothing because they weren't teaching anything. I had two teachers, one of them was French. They always gave us the topics we needed to study and expected us to study them ourselves. We did nothing in the classroom. Then why was I spending almost three hours every day to get to the school and go back home? So I dropped it.

First two months I didn't study French at home. In February, I went to the French Cultural Center to enroll. The woman there said they had eleven levels to study to reach B2, which take a lot of time and I couldn't reach B2 in a year. I need to pass TFC-DAP exam (which will take place in the next February) with B2 level in order to study in France. So I didn't enroll and started studying myself.

My Study Materials

I've been studying regularly just for a month but not hard at all. I finished FSI Phonology, Pimsleur I and Michel Thomas Foundation courses. I learned a lot from them. I am doing one Pimsleur course everyday. I'll be done with Pimsleur II-III-IV in June. I'm planning to finish Michel Thomas Advanced and Language Builder courses in April, also the Duolingo tree, I'm 43% fluent now. I want to finish Assimil French with Ease by the summer and do the Using French in the summer. I listen to Coffee Break French once in a while. Last night, I discovered a very old book called Teach Yourself French and planning to study it. I'm also thinking of watching a long dubbed and subbed show like The Simpsons.

Do you have any other suggestions? Is it possible for me to reach B2 till the next February? Thank you for reading this very long post.

[Cavesa]

Welcome to the forum.

I am not sure whether my answer will be what you were hoping for, but I think some of it may be useful to you.

Preparation classes may have disappointed you, because you may have been expecting something completely different. In many countries, preparation classes are something between highschool and university, something to allow weaker students to catch up, or something filling in some gaps left by highschools, so that people can start their studies. In France, preparation classes are one of the toughest parts of the education system. It is basically a BA equivalent, just much harder. French media like to write about those, about the demands, about suicides among the students, they discuss whether the system isn't too tough and outdated, or how are families supposed to make their student the top priority, when it comes to support. And they are talking about native French students, who are often the best of their class until they enter the prépa. Prépa programs are known to have tight schedules, to require tons of self study, and to include lots of harshness. Sorry to say it so openly, but your plan to pass the preparation classes with not even B2 knowledge of French may have been very naive.

Why do you insist on studying literature and language, if you are not interested in it that much? Liking literature is nice, I like to read too. But studying it, that is something different. And usually, either we study what we love or we study something that will surely feed us. The luckiest among us combine both. But you seem to be choosing neither. There are so many people with a literature or langauge or another humanities degree. Of course they can succeed, when they are really good and passionate. Most get work outside the field. But in such a case, why not study something more practical? Which might as well happen to be less demanding in terms of the langauge? You complain about studying just theory and not reading the books. Well, that is the part you are supposed to do on your own. You cannot expect to read thousands of pages in class. Without any strong preference for a field of study (which is not bad, I understand you! It is a luxury and not the standard to have a strong childhood dream and pursuit it), perhaps you should just choose something easily employable. Most people not knowing what to study, from all those young people I know, choose something like economy, marketing, international relations, and so on. Those with more confidence, and still without those strong dreams, go for some kind of engineering, chemistry, maths. The times of X language+literature degree being something rare and sought out by employers are mostly gone.

And if your dream is become a musician, why don't you work on that? It requires tons of time and passion, it won't happen on its own. Even a job not requiring university education can feed you meanwhile, and leave you more time for music. There are lots of successful people without a university degree by the way. And a literature degree has nothing to do with music, why spend hours a day with obligatory books, instead of investing the same hours in music, if that is what you want to do?

Sure, language schools teach from 0 to B2 in many semesters. Guess why? Their priority is making the most money, not making people succeed as efficiently and fast as possible. You can get there much faster and this forum can give you all the information you'll need to succeed. But it's you, who will need to do the work, noone can do it instead of you.

You can get to B2 in time, but you'll need to intensify your studies a lot. Pimsleur and MT are good, but it can't be all you do. Duolingo is a nice supplement to use on the go, but it is not a full course. Tv series are awesome, I have extremely good experience with those, but you should get the basics down first.

An idea of a study plan, that might work:
1.Get the Assimil asap, work with it, listen to the audio a lot and repeat after it.
2.Get books Grammaire Progressive and Vocabulaire Progressif by Cle, niveau débutant and intermediare after débutant.
3.TY is good, but I think you might draw more from some purely French courses in the mix. Series Alter Ego or Édito are quite good and you can get the key to exercises usually, as part of the teacher's book. They have the advantage of giving you a lay out for each of the cefr levels up.
4.Coffee Break French or other podcasts are great, songs are awesome, easy readers are great, but all that should be a supplement that won't drag you away from your coursebooks. You need to be efficient, so use the courses (and their CDs) to the fullest first, and then dive into more interesting material (books, tv series) right away.
5.use Memrise or Anki for vocab driling,can be used for conjugations too.
6.writing and speaking practice is important, but it can wait till you have the basics. I actually think beginners looking for practice at all costs are doing themselves a bad service, as theyll just fossilize a lot of mistakes

This is just one idea, you will certainly read many more on the forum. Try out whatever looks promising, and choose for yourself. Just remember you have a deadline, so choose fast and stick to the plan.

I hope I haven't just scared you away
Good luck

[Xmmm]

Merhaba!

Literature and literary criticism is a trap for certain types of young people. I fell into it also. I was admitted to a Ph.D. program in English Literature at a top 50 American university. After one year, I ran away screaming and ended up in an entirely different profession. Two reasons:

1. You are not free to say what you think. You have to run everything you want to say through a filter before you say it, or you will potentially jeopardize your career. This is somewhat true in a lot of professions, but it's true to an extreme degree among literature professors. There's a scene in The Gulag Archipelago where Stalin has a given a speech and gets a standing ovation. And it goes on for five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. It goes on so long that the whole situation is absurd and everyone knows it, but everyone is afraid to do anything. Finally at the forty five minute mark, one guy sits down. Everyone sits down ten seconds after him. The next day, that first guy has disappeared and no one ever sees him again. That's what life is like as a professor of literature.

2. There are no jobs. I realized this (with shock) at the "welcome to the department" meeting. There were fifty new entries. I thought "wait a minute, there are are only forty English professors at the university. There are only one or two openings a year. Where will the other 48 people get jobs?" Answer: high schools and junior colleges. No thanks!

Literature is a great hobby, but a poor profession. The best advice I ever heard about careers was "do what you love -- after you follow the money!"

[aokoye]

So from what I can tell you want to study in France because of the free tuition right? What do you want to study? If you want to study music you should check the French proficiency requirements for different music schools in France and continue practicing music stuff.

I also doubt it would only take an average graduate of Berklee only 15 years to pay off the over $166,000 in loans that they'd have racked up (and that'd just be in tuition alone - Boston is an expensive city).

[-JM-]

Thank you for all the replies!

@Cavesa,

I won't study literature if I manage to go to France, maybe journalism. To be honest, even though I said I'd be willing to pay so much money for Berklee, I don't see a logic in studying music or literature. I'd like to go to Berklee only for the connections I could make there, not because it'd teach me how to compose good songs, I don't think it's really learnable (for pop and rock music at least). Everbody plays the same chords with Grammy awarded musicians. If you can create good songs with them (which I believe I can) then good for you. Being a writer is the same, first read, then just sit and write.

And if your dream is become a musician, why don't you work on that? It requires tons of time and passion, it won't happen on its own. Even a job not requiring university education can feed you meanwhile, and leave you more time for music. There are lots of successful people without a university degree by the way. And a literature degree has nothing to do with music, why spend hours a day with obligatory books, instead of investing the same hours in music, if that is what you want to do?

This is actually the part that causes all the scrambling. I think the same about the university degree, I definitely don't see it as a necessity. The thing is, since Turkey isn't in the EU, I can't just go to France (or any other European country) and get a job and start making music. I need to study something there in order to live there. Why don't I try to be a musician in Turkey? Well, it'd be hard to explain but this country has very different dynamics and I don't want to spend (or waste) the rest of my life here. So my first goal is to get out of here, then try to be a musician. That's why I need a degree.

Thank you for the suggestions, I'll get down the Assimil immediately and look for the books you mentioned.

Xmmm,

Merhaba! Thank you for the real life experience. I was thinking of doing the same thing (English Ph.D. in the USA) before I started studying it. I guess I'm lucky it won't happen now.

aokoye,

Yes, because it is free, otherwise I'd much rather study in English. But also it's a cool country to live in.

I'm not sure at the moment but I'm thinking of journalism. As far as I know France has conventional conservatories unlike music schools such as Berklee, and they wouldn't be the right choice for me. And well, I assumed I'd get a record deal before I'd even graduate haha.

[Cavesa]

Since the OP left and deleted the post, could we perhaps have the thread deleted? Or the initial post given back without the name?
It is kind of pointless without the first post. And I don't want to be the false OP.

Or should we just delete our posts individually?

[aokoye]

I think locking or deleting the thread would probably make more logistical sense.

[-JM-]

Since the OP left and deleted the post, could we perhaps have the thread deleted? Or the initial post given back without the name?
It is kind of pointless without the first post. And I don't want to be the false OP.

Or should we just delete our posts individually?

I didn't delete anything, after I edited my first message, the topic has disappeared and it said a moderator needs to confirm my post (again, don't know why). Anyway, it has come back now and I've already replied your message above.

[-JM-]

As of April 1:

- Pimsleur: Keep doing one per day
- Michel Thomas: Finish it in a week, then review it from time to time
- Grammaire Progressive Niveau intermédiaire: Finish one chapter per day. There are 52 chapters, I'll be done with it in May 22.
- Assimil French with Ease: There are 113 lessons. I have done the first 20 before. I'll quickly review them and keep doing two lessons per day until I reach the active phase. That'll take 16 days. In active phase, I'll do one lesson per day. It'll take roughly two months. So I want to be done with Assimil in June 15 or so.
- Teach Yourself French: Finish one chapter every other day. There are 32 chapters. The chapters aren't long but they don't look easy. I'll be done with it at the end of May.
- Duolingo, Lingvst, Memrise, Quizlet, Coffee Break French: Keep doing as much as I can.

That looks solid I guess. I hope I can make it.

[tomgosse]

As of April 1:
- Grammaire Progressive Niveau intermédiaire: Finish one chapter per day. There are 52 chapters, I'll be done with it in May 22.
That looks solid I guess. I hope I can make it.

I have a copy of Grammaire Progressive Niveau Intermédiaire, and I think one chapter a day is quite aggressive. Especially when you have all the other things to do. I could not do a chapter a week. My hat is off to you and I wish you the best.