French - B2 and beyond

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Amandine
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby Amandine » Sun Jan 23, 2022 8:30 am

Aloyse wrote: :mrgreen: J'approuve! Pour info les bibliothèques de quartier avaient toute la collection des fantômettes dans les années 80.


Merci Aloyse! There is I note also a modern French animated series ... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6KFhT ... Fc02t7zUag Like Le Petit Nicolas there a best friend whose only notable trait is they are fat and they are always eating. If you modernised that, there's no reason imho Fantômette couldn't be a fun contemporary heroine. Like I said it was a similar level to the Nancy Drews but much more fun, so strike one on the French column vs American.

I finished (sort of) Notes sur l'affaire Dominici suivi d' Essai sur le caractère des personnages by Jean Gioni. I read it because I read it was like a French In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, maybe my favourite ever book. I posted about it in the French Reading Resources thread saying it was quite easy to read at my B1 level but I jumped the gun a bit. The first 60% which is Giono's impressions of the trial are indeed straightforward. Once I finished I was thinking it wasn't actually much like In Cold Blood, except that it was a nonfiction account by a novelist of a 50s/60s rural murder. But you notice the "suivi d'" part of the title above because this was actually two books. The first 60% of his writing about the trial and the final third which is his much more literary and dense history of the region (Haut Provence), the psychological character of the farmers there, the economy, its history over hundreds of years during the wars of religion (whole villages of nothing but Protestants!!) and so on and so forth.

Basically my take away was that this region is a Deliverance-style backwater than no sophisticated city dwellers could possible understand.

So yes, if you took this section and cut it up and spliced it throughout the trial passages, it would be very much like In Cold Blood actually (though published years before). But personally I found this last section much too hard to read comfortably and I skimmed it a bit. First 60% = B1. Last 30% = C1 imho. I am still super interested in it though I intend to revisit at the end of the year as a gauge of my progress.

One big difference is that In Cold Blood paints a vivid picture of the victims and Giono, while expressing the appropriate horror at the crimes, frankly couldn't care less about them. The (English) adult victims were a Sir and a Lady which would be enough for most people to elevate their story as a spicy context but to Giono this is a story of French people and French society and French geography and French history and France and the non-French victims just randomly intersected with French people and so aren't part of the story.
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Amandine
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby Amandine » Fri Feb 04, 2022 10:39 am

Just plodding along with what I've been doing above. I feel I've coasted a bit in January so due for a solid grammar session. It is only about 15 weeks until the B1 which should rather focus the mind. If Alliance Française does the delf prep course in March they have sort of hinted at, I'll do that and the safety net of that is making me a bit lazy on the hardcore work I think.

Really the most important things to report which affect my daily French study, chèr log, are the following:

1) the YouTube channel I was using to watch my daily jeu télé disappeared, one presumes for rights reasons although I did have the feeling they were quasi-official because they would edit out certain songs but not others which seemed the suggest a controlling hand. But anyway while I absolutely respect the intellectual property rights of all, it was very convenient. But watching Tout Le Monde Veut Prendre Sa Place had become a real daily habit of mine and I didn't want to give it up. That is the point with input, right? to find stuff in your target language that just becomes part of your life. So I was forced to get a VPN for my tablet so I can watch it on the official France 2 website. While more cumbersome than just chucking it in a youtube playlist, it has the benefit of subtitles that match 99%. And also I can watch the other offerings there. I've watched a couple of episodes of Secrets L'Histoire and tonight an episode (90 minutes!) of Science Grand Format on the Bayeux Tapestry which I loved. With the subtitles I can understand almost everything, some bits are a bit foggy if who did what to whom gets complicated but overall I learn a lot of things and if I had to recount back what happened in a fair bit of detail, I think I could (err in English anyway). This feels good. If I had to pick one thing in France I want to see in person, including everything in Paris, it would be the Bayeux Tapestry which I've been fascinated by since we first learned about it in history class aged 12 or whatever. Which brings me to the next development ...

2) Very unexpectedly, totally out of the blue I was offered a new job a couple of weeks ago. It is a lot more money (yay) and a lot more interesting (yay) and also a lot more work(boo). Going to France for five weeks in Oct/Nov as I was planning is OUT. So I won't be using my Fabrice Luchini theatre ticket I bought I mentioned earlier :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: - is anyone in Paris who wants it? ;) (serious question actually) I'm thinking its maybe possible to go over Christmas - being summer in Australia, everything shuts/slows down anyway. I will settle in over there (I start Tuesday) and gently broach the topic at a later point. Noël in Paris is hardly much of a sacrifice, I guess.
Last edited by Amandine on Fri Feb 04, 2022 10:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Amandine
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby Amandine » Tue Mar 01, 2022 7:40 am

Well since I started my new job on Feb 8, I have done basically nothing. My iTalki classes really is it. Haven't read, in either French or English. Listening to a lot of Charles Aznavour as comfort music, and discovered my tutor is surely the only Frenchman in his 50s or 60s who doesn't know anything abut him. Quelle honte! I accidentally lost my Kwiziq streak so haven't done that and didn't even watch my precious quiz show until this week again because it was off for the olympics. I'm assistant to a member of parliament now and, guys, it is very busy and there is a lot to learn!

Having said all that, I'm not super bothered as I'm starting the Alliance Francaise DELF prep course next Tuesday and that will be a good kickstart again. From there it will be 9 weeks to the B1 exam and I intend to be a bit more disciplined about how I spend my time outside work. I scheduled a couple of Lingoda classes for 6AM (!!!!) the rest of this week to get in some hours before work. We'll see how that goes, I guess.
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jackb
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby jackb » Tue Mar 01, 2022 1:23 pm

For some reason, Lingoda just popped onto my radar. The idea of small group class is interesting. What is your opinion of it and how long have you been a member?
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Amandine
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby Amandine » Wed Mar 02, 2022 7:50 am

jackb wrote:For some reason, Lingoda just popped onto my radar. The idea of small group class is interesting. What is your opinion of it and how long have you been a member?


I’ve been a subscriber on and off for about a year. I generally sign up for a month, either 4 or 12 classes, get my fill, unsubscribe and then a few months later have another round. They do make it easy to unsubscribe online which I always appreciate in a subscription service. I know some people go through it methodically in order but I just jump around all the A2/B1 levels depending on what looks interesting and what I need to review.

The format is they have a prepared document of about 30-40 pages of whatever the topic is which is the same for that lesson no matter the teacher. The better teachers “value add” a bit with extra explanations and really making things clear but basically its just working through the preset material. I find the material very good – I did a class this morning of expressing opinions and there was a lot of really good set phrases for this we got to practice. I like the fact they don’t shy away from ‘adult’ material in the themes – globalisation, immigration and diversity, workers’ rights … not just the same old anodyne textbook topics.

Being online its less dynamic than an in-person class, not really able to chat together, bit harder to stop and ask questions etc so a lot does depend on the teacher to create a good workflow. I’ve had good experiences with the teachers, I had one recently who was a very nice lady but a bit all over the shop. I probably won’t do a class with her again but generally I have no complaints. The lessons are broken down like B1.1, B1.2, B1.3 and since people are self assessing where they should be sometimes you do get a person who is out of their depth which can be a bit awkward. One thing I like, because the students are from all over the world and have differing levels of pronunciation you get exposure to that where you wouldn’t in an in-person class where most people would be speaking French with “your” accent or an accent you’re familiar with. I find the other students much harder to understand than the teacher but I think this is a good thing overall in training the ear and thinking in French.

The document of material can be downloaded before class as a PDF – in fact you don’t even need to be signed up to that class to download them. In fact you could just do the free 7 day trial of 3 classes and download all the material if you wanted.

So all in all, there are pros and cons and it is certainly not going to be everyone’s cup of tea but I find it a useful resource.
Last edited by Amandine on Wed Mar 02, 2022 6:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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jackb
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby jackb » Wed Mar 02, 2022 1:14 pm

Thanks for the review. It's nice to know that people actually use it and that it's good enough to keep you coming back. I was planning on using it mainly as a means to get talking, but it appears that the format of the classes don't really facilitate that. It certainly seems easier that trying to find the right teacher in iTalki.
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Amandine
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby Amandine » Wed Mar 02, 2022 6:52 pm

jackb wrote:Thanks for the review. It's nice to know that people actually use it and that it's good enough to keep you coming back. I was planning on using it mainly as a means to get talking, but it appears that the format of the classes don't really facilitate that. It certainly seems easier that trying to find the right teacher in iTalki.


Yeah, I have a great primary iTalki teacher but I tried a few others to get more practice and nothing really clicked, its one of the reasons I enrolled in the AF DELF prep course. There is an option to do private lessons on Lingoda however I've never done it so have no insight.
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Amandine
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby Amandine » Sun Mar 13, 2022 5:13 am

Had my first Delf B1 Prepa class last Tuesday. I'm not the worst in the class which was my (irrational) fear (its always my irrational fear). Being as coldly objective as possible, I think I'm probably towards the top of the group although its hard to tell with the limited exposure I guess - anyway its not a competition between us obviously, I just needed to know I wasn't going to embarrass myself too much every week I've been studying completely on my own for so long I felt a bit out of touch with how I might compare to others. Almost half if not more of the 10-12 people have French spouses so are doing the exam expressly for citizenship purposes, so for them just getting a 50+1 pass will tick the box.

We had a lot of homework, which may just be for the teacher to get a better idea of our level and will not be so much every week.
- do the full listening and written comprehension parts in a mock test
- write a self presentation to last 3 minutes
- do 10 minutes (exam conditions) written preparation for the 'expression d'un point de vue' part of the speaking section which was about people choosing to live without television
- do the written section under 'exam conditions' ie in the time given and without looking anything up to correct mistakes, about the changes that have happened in your country over the past 20 years
- a grammar level test, multiple choice

I've seen 5 films so far at the French Film Festival that runs all this month, have another two today and tickets for another 5 or 6. I also bought 10 French film DVDs from a great DVD shop (perhaps the last in Sydney) that is tragically shutting down. So I have a lot of flicks to be getting on with.

I still haven't got back into Kwiziq and reading. :? This week I promise!
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Amandine
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby Amandine » Wed Mar 16, 2022 6:39 am

As I would have predicted in my level test I got full marks in listening and reading, 18/20 on the grammar test and a lot of disappointed red ink on the writing. With writing and speaking it’s just a matter (“just”) of getting my theoretical knowledge aligning with my output in a quicker way. That’s why I forked out for the course so that’s fine I’m not there yet, I have eight weeks to drag myself up.

If you look at the rubric for marking the writing, 13 points are available from structure, coherence, appropriate tone (tu or vous depending on the question etc), basically just understanding the question and answering it in a logical way. That’s more than half of the 25 points before you even get to grammar, spelling, vocabulary. So I think the strategy has to be to try and max out on these structural things then if you make mistakes in the heat of the moment you still have a good base for a decent mark.

I also need to practice speaking in different situations to get the brain working more quickly. I get along really well with my normal iTalki tutor, we have a great personal rapport. In fact, I am so at ease with him that I think it hinders in a way since the exam is not with him, it’s with a random stranger and enthusiastic small talk and role play are not among my strengths in English, so definitely not in French. So, I am seeking out opportunities to talk with different people. The AF course is part of that, had a chat with a new iTalki teacher this morning (6.30am before work!!!!!) which was fine so I’ll probably book another, have RSVPed for a French conversation group via Meetup for Saturday morning …

I do want to re-start Kwiziq but for the rest, notably the reading and Anki, I’m going to give myself a break, not worry about it and just prioritise what I need over the next eight weeks for this exam.

Another big list of practice exam exercises to do for homework this weekend.

And a couple more French film festival movies including Illusions Perdus which just won everything at the Cesars. Can highly recommend La panthère des neiges “The Velvet Queen” a documentary set in the mountains of Tibet featuring Sylvain Tesson and wildlife photographer Vincent Munier trying to get a photo of the elusive snow leopard. I read one of Tesson’s books last year and found him kind of an annoying character however there’s not much of that here – just exquisite cinematography of breathtaking scenery and animals. Quite a balm.
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Amandine
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby Amandine » Thu Mar 17, 2022 11:12 pm

Forgot to add. One thing I’m quite a connoisseur of is the various ways English subtitles attempt to translate tu/vous related things. I saw a new one during On est fait pour s’entendre/Hear Me Out which I saw at the French film festival on the weekend. It’s a pretty charming romantic comedy. At the end, Sandrine Kiberlain says to Pascal Elbé (after they have already slept together and had all the usual romantic comedy misunderstandings) they should tutuoyer which was translated as “Shall we level up?” Never seen that one before and while I admire the attempt to do something different it was still a non-sequitur. Often I think English subs should just leave it out entirely – it just doesn’t mean anything to us and there’s no elegant way to translate the concept most of the time.
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