French - B2 and beyond

[emk]

OK, a small update. To close the loop on the above post, I tried to Migaku an episode of Represent but didn't find it very amusing so stopped. I'm almost finishing Migakuing Tapie but I got distracted by the whole AI thing.

Interesting! How are the Migaku flash cards working out for you? I found their tools rather clunky, but their flash card creator looked really promising.

So, I have lately been using AI transcription a lot. My goal this year is improving comprehension of series and films -- first of all the scripted kind which are easier and secondarily more reality type shows as a bridge to French as actually spoken

When I couldn't find transcriptions, I discovered a second excellent source of spoken French: BDs. Paper versions are expensive, especially outside France. But looks like Izneo still has their "Izneo pass" for $11.29/month. That was one of my favorite ways to get tons of written dialog.

But yeah, transcriptions feel game-changing, and now that I can prepare bilingual subs for a movie-length video in about 5 minutes, I'm temped to work back through my list of especially annoying French films where I never got my comprehension much above 75%.

I've forumalted a little plan to do the DELF B2 exam in December. The date the Alliance Francaise does it in Sydney is quite inconvenient for me with work.
...
My speaking is still horrible compared to my other skills, and the only one I would be worried about for the exam but I have a fair bit of time to prepare and I'm hoping the deep dive into transcripts I'm doing will pay off at some point ....

For the DELF B2 spoken section, it's honestly worth practicing the format: 20 minutes of prep with no dictionary, then toss your notes, give a basic 10 minute presentation (with an intro/sections/summary structure), and answer questions for 10 minutes. I got really lucky and found an excellent DELF/DALF tutor who specialized in just this, and I did it several times a week for a while. She'd email me a topic 20 minutes before the start of our sessions and I had to open with a presentation. Some tricks she taught me:

1. Find out what the common DELF B2 topics are these days, and specifically prep them. The environment, school and living in a foreign country are very common, for example.
2. When given a question, choose whether you'll argue pro or con based on what you have the vocab to argue, not on what you actually believe.
3. Try to connect the topic to one you can actually talk about. And don't hesitate to use real-life annecdotes as "evidence", if that's easier.
4. Pick up some fancy "connector" phrases from the newspaper and drill them.

Once you reach the DELF B2, it's not purely a language test. It's a test of pratical skills you'd need in work/school. And a good fraction of the points are based on having a clear structure, some good transitions in appropriate places, etc.

I am very curious to see how Migaku works out for you!

[Amandine]

For the DELF B2 spoken section, it's honestly worth practicing the format: 20 minutes of prep with no dictionary, then toss your notes, give a basic 10 minute presentation (with an intro/sections/summary structure), and answer questions for 10 minutes. I got really lucky and found an excellent DELF/DALF tutor who specialized in just this, and I did it several times a week for a while. She'd email me a topic 20 minutes before the start of our sessions and I had to open with a presentation. Some tricks she taught me:

1. Find out what the common DELF B2 topics are these days, and specifically prep them. The environment, school and living in a foreign country are very common, for example.
2. When given a question, choose whether you'll argue pro or con based on what you have the vocab to argue, not on what you actually believe.
3. Try to connect the topic to one you can actually talk about. And don't hesitate to use real-life annecdotes as "evidence", if that's easier.
4. Pick up some fancy "connector" phrases from the newspaper and drill them.

Once you reach the DELF B2, it's not purely a language test. It's a test of pratical skills you'd need in work/school. And a good fraction of the points are based on having a clear structure, some good transitions in appropriate places, etc.

I am very curious to see how Migaku works out for you!

Thanks emk. Excellent advice on the Delf. I did the DELF B1 in May 2022 and definitely the point about hoovering up as many points as possible from adhering to the structure they want. I got 18.5/25 in the B1 Speaking, my worst mark, and I know I lost a bunch of points on the monologue portion because, out of nerves, I just blabbed away au hasard in French without hint of a coherent beginning/middle/end. Lesson learned! I'll start to think more seriously about a plan for it six months out, which will be June/July.

Since Easter, I've managed to study flashcards on Migaku almost every day and it's been working well. My general approach is just to start using something and randomly press buttons until something vaguely approaching what I want starts to happen. As opposed to reading the instructions first. Therefore some of my cards are a bit wonky and in general aren't my ideal format but its worked well enough. I don't pay it much attention but the Migaku Discord is constantly being pinged by announcements of updates and new features so when I'm ready to make more cards, I'll try to bone up more on what options are available and the optimal way to do it.

I didn't mention in my previous post, but I decided to not read so much in French this year. I really prioritised it last year but essentially it is a question of time. I also love reading in English and I can't spend all this time improving my listening and speaking, plus read alot in French plus read a lot in English. So I haven't stopped reading in French but I'm deprioritising it. I've read one book this year - a true crime thing I bought in Paris - and I dug out a B2 graded reader of a Maigret story I also have the audio for which I'll read next but I've really had a lot of pleasure reading English books so it's the right decision. I'll aim for maybe 3 or 4 books in French during the rest of the year.

Just watched an old episode of the French game show Money Drop on youtube in which the contestants lost 150,000 euros because they thought Stongehenge was either in Britanny or Ireland but absolutely, definitely not in England. Oh la la la la la!!!!!!!!!!

[jeffers]

I can't remember where or why, but a podcast episode I was listening to last year while prepping for my A2 exam mentioned the importance of des connecteurs logiques. She said that any argument should be structured with these, and gave three as an example:
Tout d'abord… to open your case
De plus…. to continue with further points
Enfin… to make your conclusion or final point.

I'm sure there are other examples, especially as you get to B2. I reckon it would be worth familiarising yourself with as many as possible, but prepare one or two sets of them to be used in your own monolgue for the production orale.

When I was prepping, I used those three connectors in most of my practice writings, but on the actual day I didn't use them at all!
However, it was only A2.

[Kraut]

Tout d'abord… to open your case
De plus…. to continue with further points
Enfin… to make your conclusion or final point.


When I was prepping, I used those three connectors in most of my practice writings, but on the actual day I didn't use them at all!
However, it was only A2.

There is tons of material for the school sector that teaches French, all categories.

"mots charnières":

https://fr.tsedryk.ca/grammaire/redacti ... lation.htm

[jeffers]

Tout d'abord… to open your case
De plus…. to continue with further points
Enfin… to make your conclusion or final point.


When I was prepping, I used those three connectors in most of my practice writings, but on the actual day I didn't use them at all!
However, it was only A2.

There is tons of material for the school sector that teaches French, all categories.

"mots charnières":

https://fr.tsedryk.ca/grammaire/redacti ... lation.htm

That looks like a helpful page, and I've never learnt the word charnières, so that's a bonus. What is strange about the page is it doesn't have anything about putting it all together as a whole, which is what the podcaster I was listening to explained how to do. "Start with this, move on to this, conclude with this" is the sort of thing needed for overall organisation.

[Kraut]

Tout d'abord… to open your case
De plus…. to continue with further points
Enfin… to make your conclusion or final point.


When I was prepping, I used those three connectors in most of my practice writings, but on the actual day I didn't use them at all!
However, it was only A2.

There is tons of material for the school sector that teaches French, all categories.

"mots charnières":

https://fr.tsedryk.ca/grammaire/redacti ... lation.htm

That looks like a helpful page, and I've never learnt the word charnières, so that's a bonus. What is strange about the page is it doesn't have anything about putting it all together as a whole, which is what the podcaster I was listening to explained how to do. "Start with this, move on to this, conclude with this" is the sort of thing needed for overall organisation.

Yeah, I was too lazy to add the comment "beware of learning pure word lists by heart without any context". But you could take a list of ten of these words and tell an AI to write you a little story around them.