French - B2 and beyond

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LanguageLearner0007
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby LanguageLearner0007 » Wed Jul 06, 2022 1:52 pm

I sent you a PM.
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Amandine
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby Amandine » Thu Jul 07, 2022 6:53 am

Thanks everyone :) :) :)

My iTalki prof insisted we celebrate so I bought a mini bottle (ok i bought 2 mini bottles) of cheap australian "champagne" on the way home from work and he had a shot of elderflower liqueur (11am for him in Paris!) and I got over myself. :-D

I'm going to see a French film tonight Haute Couture, which looks like a very thin excuse for 90 mins of Dior product placement but I do love Nathalie Baye.
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Inge
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby Inge » Sat Jul 09, 2022 11:02 am

..
Last edited by Inge on Sun Oct 02, 2022 9:52 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Amandine
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby Amandine » Sun Jul 10, 2022 10:07 am

Merci, Inge. Oh yes, I intend to keep going. Bon courage with your exam, I'm happy to help anyway I can.
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Amandine
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby Amandine » Mon Jul 11, 2022 7:10 am

Two things I started on the weekend
- the Hugo InnerFrench course Raconte Ton Histoire opened for enrolments, so I did. I did the Build a Strong Core and it was worthwhile. This one is a bit more advanced and focused on speaking about your experiences etc and it is speaking I want to focus on for the rest of the year.
- last year I got some podcasts and transcripts from Luc of LogicLanguageLearning YouTube channel. I'd been putting off doing anything with them until after the Delf which is now. I like thinks like FSI/Pimsleur/Glossika and when I can get a head of steam up on them, have had good results. My schedule's just a bit volatile to do really put together a lot of consecutive days so I was thinking about things I could do that were the same concept but a bit different. So I decide to learn at least some of these monologues off by heart and see if that helps my ability to quickly find the thing I want to say. I'm starting with one about a bus trip - only a minute in normal speed speech and simple but very natural native French.
Last edited by Amandine on Wed Jul 20, 2022 12:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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DaveAgain
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby DaveAgain » Mon Jul 11, 2022 9:49 am

Amandine wrote:Le jeudi soir, je suis allée au cinéma pour regarder le film français Haute Couture. Il a été réalisé en 2019, je ne sais pas pourquoi il diffuse maintenant. En plus d'être francais, je l’ai regardé parce que Nathalie Baye est mon actrice française préférée.
I looked up Ms Baye on Allocine.fr, of her films I've seen La Retour de Martin Guerre, and Les Gardiennes, both of which I remember liking.

I also liked Sommersby which I think was an English-language adaptation of Le Retour de Martin Guerre.

EDIT
Alexandre Dumas wrote a version of the Martin Guerre story (which is based on a real event) in tome 7 of his Crimes Célèbres, p.233. There's also a novella by Janet Lewis, La femme de Martin Guerre.
Last edited by DaveAgain on Sun Jul 17, 2022 2:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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LanguageLearner0007
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby LanguageLearner0007 » Mon Jul 11, 2022 2:43 pm

Cavesa wrote:An excellent score, congratulations!!!

Don't be so unreasonably hard on yourself, enjoy your success to the fullest! Be proud!

Really, this kind of an exam is not supposed to be aced by most people, which is something hard to accept for people from some education and testing traditions (typically americans, who seem to be overall used to exams that are easy and not that important to get a good score at, but it matters a lot whether you get a near perfect or near near perfect one. Perhaps your experience and culture is similar). A part of the wiggle room is really meant for "messing up" a particular task, a particular topic not suiting you, being stressed out, etc. While there is probably a difference between someone scoring 50 and someone scoring 95, there isn't really much of a difference between people scoring 85 and 100. Or between person getting 60 and 70. Not in the real life, which is a much bigger sample than the exam.

So, when are you planning the B2? :-) I think we all knew B1 was likely to be too easy for you ;-)


I wonder what kind of jobs in French-speaking countries would be available to someone with B1/B2 level?

From my experience, the French have little patience for someone who is not fluent, in a professional setting.

Is it really all or nothing, or it's possible to find a job with an intermediate level?
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Cavesa
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby Cavesa » Mon Jul 11, 2022 9:37 pm

LanguageLearner0007 wrote:I wonder what kind of jobs in French-speaking countries would be available to someone with B1/B2 level?

From my experience, the French have little patience for someone who is not fluent, in a professional setting.

Is it really all or nothing, or it's possible to find a job with an intermediate level?


Oh, there are lots of options for people at B1/B2!

-Any kind of manual job, anything perceived as "beneath" the locals. Even people with significantly less than B1 do those. And even some less manual but still less qualified and less paid jobs.

-B2 is officially enough for medicine, and perhaps even for other highly demanded fields. It is not really enough for doing the job well, but it is enough for getting many such jobs, and such a hospital in distress is primarily looking for anyone to fill the staff, not for job well done. If you go this path, you should really view the B2 as the starting point and you'll need to work hard on improving.

-Typical expat jobs that can be purely in English, and then the people just embarass themselves outside of the professional environment (as unlike typical imigrants/refugees, they clearly have the means and ability to learn, they just don't care and don't respect the country).

-any job you do with and for non-francophone people in that francophone country. For example: I've met an electrician (so a qualified and well paid job), who spoke nearly no French in Wallonie. He worked with and for Arabic and Hebrew speakers. You don't really need French at all in some neighbourhoods :-(

Only the first and second path actually lead to integration, based on my observation. Your work is less prestigious than being either a typical expat in education or management, or than being part of a paralel society, but you are part of the normal society and the normal multiculturalism done right. You can improve at the language, you get normal contacts, and you can rise from that point. And your kids, if you stay, will be normal members of the francophone/multicultural society.
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Amandine
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby Amandine » Mon Jul 11, 2022 9:43 pm

DaveAgain wrote:
Amandine wrote:Le jeudi soir, je suis allée au cinéma pour regarder le film français Haute Couture. Il a été réalisé en 2019, je ne sais pas pourquoi il diffuse maintenant. En plus d'être francais, je l’ai regardé parce que Nathalie Baye est mon actrice française préférée.
I looked up Ms Baye on Allocine.fr, of her films I've seen La Retour de Martin Guerre, and Les Gardiennes, both of which I remember liking.

I also liked Sommersby which I think was an English-language adaptation of Le Retour de Martin Guerre.


Oh look, I would not say she is a greater actrice than Adjani or Huppert or whoever but there is a warmth and spark about her I've always responded to. I think she would be a lot of fun to prendre un verre avec. I first saw her 25 years ago in Une liaison pornographique with Sergi Lopez. Depsite the title its mostly just people talking to camera. In Australia the title was A Pornographic Affair and in the USA: An Affair of Love, a difference which still amuses me. I also saw another film she was in on the weekend on a streaming platform, Beautiful Lies/Les Vraies Mensonges, a romantic comedy with Audrey Tatou and Sami Bouajila. It was pretty good actually, I laughed quite a bit and Nathalie plays a much daffier character than normal.

I cannot leave the topic without mentioning her Instagram account. I have a memory of mentioning it on this thread before but I am what I am - and what I am is a person who loves to talk about Nathalie Baye's instagram account. There is the occasional film thing but it is 99% regrams of cute animal videos to which she has added a cute comment. If there is a video on the internet of a kitten doing something funny or a baby duck who is best friends with a capybara, Nathalie Baye has you covered for content. It must be her personally because no social media minion to a star would run an account like this. :lol:

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Amandine
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Re: French - towards B1 and beyond

Postby Amandine » Fri Jul 29, 2022 10:54 pm

I picked up our old friend the novel coronovirus and while I feel completely fine (got my fourth shot a few weeks ago, thank you Dolly Parton) we have 7 days mandatory isolation so I have been at home. Technically working but not much more than monitoring emails and dealing with anything urgent can be done from here so I was able to finsh my French book Il Etait Deux Fois by Franck Thilliez, at over 500 pages by far the longest book I've read in French, and watched 6 hours of La Carte Aux Tresors, a game show with people being helicoptered around from one painfully picturesque French beauty/heritage spot to the next following clues to win 5000 Euro. Its a good comfort watch, and the official youtube channel has three full episodes so far
https://www.youtube.com/c/LaCarteauxTr% ... Officielle

Both activities very good for my SuperChallenge numbers which are currently 27 'films' and 21 'books' (1050 pages)
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