Jeffers- SC 2022-23 - French, German, Hindi

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jeffers
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Re: Jeffers- SC 2022-23 - French, German, Hindi

Postby jeffers » Wed Apr 19, 2023 3:51 pm

badger wrote:nice quick update. :D

I really like this guy's stuff on YT. he doesn't have too much at A2 level, but I find his approach very methodical so you might find his B1 lessons of some use - he goes through the various possibilities of what you might get asked & there's a lot of commonality between the two levels:

Le French Club


I'm already subscribed, but haven't watched any yet, so thank you for the reminder! The video I want to watch "soon" is "DELF A2-B1 : se présenter en français en 2 minutes", but I will watch that one when I start on the oral section of my revision guide.

I mark a lot of things as "watch later" on YouTube but in reality I don't watch many videos. I prefer podcasts because I can listen while on the go, but some of these very exam focused videos will be super useful.

EDIT: while talking about useful YouTube channels, I should also mention Madame FLE, e.g. https://youtu.be/yexsNqT7HIs and especially French School TV which has a lot of exam prep videos. One of the most helpful things I've seen is a runthrough of an A2 speaking exam: https://youtu.be/La_eBz_sLqg. They have another example run through which I haven't watched yet.
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jeffers
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Re: Jeffers- SC 2022-23 - French, German, Hindi

Postby jeffers » Fri Apr 21, 2023 10:03 pm

I booked my DELF A2 exam this evening! I'm sitting my exam in London. Oxford was full, even though the bookings only opened today, so my choice was made for me. Anyway, London is great!

Not gonna lie, the more I prepare the more I have mixed feelings. As I've said, I'm certain that the listening and reading comprehension sections will be easy. However, I worry about my writing and speaking. This is obviously a consequence of how I've studied French for the past 10 years: 99% reading, watching and listening. My French is 2000 miles wide but an inch deep; I know a lot, but poke it anywhere and I'm likely to crumble! However, I have six weeks to go before the exam, which should be plenty of time. I'm writing a bit every day, and the videos mentioned above are helping me think through prep for the oral section. It's all in hand, pas de panique !
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jeffers
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Re: Jeffers- SC 2022-23 - French, German, Hindi

Postby jeffers » Wed May 10, 2023 10:51 am

3 weeks to go. Target date: 2 June 2023.

A quick update (yeah, we'll see how quick!)

Overall I feel like my exam preparation is going well, with one hopefully minor nuisance. I have more or less abandoned following and using the exam prep spreadsheet I started, but I like to think that's because I've outgrown it! Daily writing has become the cornerstone of my exam prep. I am still writing somethine every day and posting it on the Writestreak thread on Reddit. I've only received corrections a couple of times, but often get several upvotes so I hope that means whoever is doing that thinks the writing is fine as it is. Each day I am working on example questions which I got from a few YouTube videos (links below). Between them videos have 13 example questions for the writing tasks and 30 example questions for the spoken tasks, so that is plenty to be working on. This week I've started answering 2 questions per day for my writestreak, because otherwise I'll never get through all the questions!

Currently I'm working on the "reply to a message" task, for which I find it a bit difficult to write enough for the 60 word minimum. E.g. "Congratulations on the birth of your twin babies, I'm glad it went well. Can I come visit next Saturday? Can I bring a gift? What do you need?" .... that, in French, came to 64 words (with the greetings, etc). I'm please that today I will have written my 30th consecutive writestreak. This is something I always knew I ought to be doing, but it just seemed a bit too... something. What to write? How to know if I'm writing correctly? etc. The exam was a kick in the butt that got me started writing, so at least one positive point for signing up! Writing a bit every day has now become quite routine and I plan to keep doing it even after the exam is finished.

Other things I'm still doing regularly: Kwiziq, podcasts (mostly Paris o'clock, or exam prep topics), and of course some reading most days. I've done some A2 dictations on orthodidacte, but should probably do more of them. They are great because the topics are exam-relevant, and of course I need to keep practicing my spelling.

One thing I've stopped using, for now, is the DELF 100% réussite workbook. The sections on oral and written comprehension were very good, the secion on written production was OK, but the tasks so far for spoken production are pretty pointless, so I just stopped working on it. I should skip ahead to the actual exam-style practice tasks I suppose. I definitely intend to use the practice papers soon. There are 2 full exams in the book and 2 full exams online.

One thing I haven't done much is speaking out loud. I did arrange a chat with an old French acquaintance, which went over with mixed results. I definitely struggled to think of my words. I have made some attempts to set up language exchanges, but they all petered out at the "so when should we talk?" stage. One thing I plan to do but haven't yet, is to simply practice speaking out loud, and record myself doing so. I have been saying to myself that I'll do this with my writestreak efforts, but I just haven't done it as yet. All of the writing on exam-style questions will definitely help me to find my words, but I just need to bite that bullet and practice them out loud! I also need to practice introducing myself. I don't want a scripted introduction, but I want to be comfortable doing this part (apparently that's the purpose of it, to show the examiner what you can do without any pressure and give you confidence for the speaking tasks to follow).

My last thoughts are about what I should be doing during the final week of preparation. The exam takes place on the Friday of a week off, so I will have a lot of time available during that week.
  • I plan to keep up with my daily writing and practicing that out loud (because I'm definitely starting that tonight! or tomorrow!)
  • Regarding more strictly "study" oriented activities, I'm thinking of ramping up my use of Kwiziq and Orthodidacte from now until the final week, and then scaling them back to very little during the final week. I want to put them in the mental compartment labelled "yeah, I got this" by that time.
  • One more thing I'll do that week is probably try to do a full practice exam on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and then leave Thursday to do more relaxing French stuff.
  • Generally I want to cultivate a relaxed attitude, but do a lot of French reading, listening, and still a regular chunk of writing and practicing speaking out loud.

Does anyone have any specific suggestions for language exam prep for the final 3 weeks and for the final 1 week? I'd love to hear your ideas?



Video links from Madame FLE. I don't know why she wears that silly beret in the cover pictures. That put me off watching her videos at first, but she's very good, and claims to be a DELF examiner herself, so she knows what she's talking about.







EDIT: I forgot to mention one more thing I want to try. I haven't yet tried using a chatbot to practice a written conversation. I'll probably try that out tonight
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Re: Jeffers- SC 2022-23 - French, German, Hindi

Postby badger » Wed May 10, 2023 2:11 pm

glad to hear the prep is going well. :)
jeffers wrote:Does anyone have any specific suggestions for language exam prep for the final 3 weeks and for the final 1 week? I'd love to hear your ideas?

I would highly recommend doing a few sessions with an italki (or other platform) tutor - do a mock exam a few times & get feedback.

it needn't be expensive & proportionally you'll probably get a bigger boost in score by spending a couple of hours (& £20) speaking than by polishing up your more practised skills (law of diminishing returns).
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jeffers
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Re: Jeffers- SC 2022-23 - French, German, Hindi

Postby jeffers » Tue May 16, 2023 2:26 pm

17 days to go, and I've started to think about "what next". It's crazy to be thinking about that right now, but it's what I do! :lol:

I thought about diving right into heavy B1 work, like getting going on Kwiziq's B1 section, but I decided that I don't really want more of the same, so today I actually cancelled my Kwiziq subscription (it ends a few days before the exam). I definitely want to keep up my writestreak, because once you start something like that you can't quit! And because it has been very effective. I will also do my best to keep up with my French Super Challenge. But besides those two things, I was thinking maybe it would be time to refocus on one of my other languages, either German or Hindi. I'm not sure yet, just posting random thoughts really.
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jeffers
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Re: Jeffers- SC 2022-23 - French, German, Hindi

Postby jeffers » Wed May 17, 2023 9:20 am

To quote every 80s action film: "this s**t just got real!" Last night I received the email from l'Institut français in London with the details of my examination. The speaking exams take place in the morning, with different times for each candidate, and then we all do the rest of the exams in the afternoon at the same time. Fortunately, my speaking exam is one of the last ones, so I won't need to be there until around 12 noon. It will take me a few hours to get there, and I was worried I would have an early exam so would have to wake up at "stupid o'clock" (as my wife calls it).

Meanwhile, this week I'm continuing to focus on (in order of priority): writing, Kwiziq and Orthodidacte (one per day). For speaking practice, I am working on another potential language exchange partner, and I am planning on doing 2 or maybe 3 lessons with a tutor the week of the exam. I will be off that week, so will be able to be more relaxed with the lessons and hopefully take more in. This week I have also done some Assimil shadowing during my commute, to get some tongue exercise. When I previously did blind shadowing of Assimil (no reading), I was getting hung up around lesson 60 or so. This time round I'm getting into the 70s before having proper difficulties, so that's progress!
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jeffers
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Re: Jeffers- SC 2022-23 - French, German, Hindi

Postby jeffers » Mon May 22, 2023 10:17 am

This weekend I drove to the south coast after work Friday for an Ingress anomaly weekend. I didn't do much study, except that I did shadowing and listened to audiobooks in the car, and I managed to keep up my writestreak all three days. Which is surprising because Ingress events usually involve a lot of time in pubs, and this weekend was no exception. I did my Friday writestreak in my B&B before heading off the pub, and did my Saturday and Sunday writestreaks in the morning (following 4-5 hours of sleep) before meeting my team for breakfast. For my weekend writestreaks, rather than answer DELF style questions I decided to explain the game. I plan on taling about this on the exam day if they ask what I do for leisure.

For anyone curious about what Ingress is, I'm putting my three writestreaks below. Corrections are welcomed! I had to look up a few words, like augmented reality (réalité augmenté) and gameboard (plateau de jeu).

Streak 39 : Un week-end en réalité augmenté
Cette après-midi, après le boulot, j’ai sauté dans ma voiture et conduit en direction sud, pour aller à Brighton. Le voyage était un peu long, mais pas trop dure. Il y avait une voiture au bord de la rue qui était enflammé, mais c’était un jour normal sur l’autoroute. Ça ne me dérange pas de passer du temps en voiture, parce que j’écoute des livres audios et le temps passe vite. Je suis à Brighton maintenant, et je suis ici pour un grand évènement dans le jeu vidéo Ingress. Ingress est un jeu en réalité augmenté, et toute la ville serait notre plateau de jeu demain. Pour ce soir nous allons tous rassembler ensemble pour rigoler et boire quelques pots. Demain, c’est la grande compétition, et l’équipe Résistance va gagner ! Vive la Résistance !


Streak 40 : Le jour de bataille
Aujourd’hui c’est le jour de l’anomalie, la grande bataille d’Ingress. Dans ce jeu en réalité augmenté, la carte du monde fait le plateau de jeu. Les points d’intérêts, tels que les églises ou les statues, forment les portails dans nos écrans, et on peut les capturer, les défendre, et bien sûr ceux de l’équipe adverse peuvent les attaquer. On peut aussi « hacker » un portail pour obtenir le matériel du jeu comme des armes, des boucliers et des clés. Si on possède un portail, on peut faire un lien à un autre portail si on a la clé. Mais les liens ne peuvent pas se croiser. Si une équipe fait trois liens qui forment un triangle, un champ est créé et l’équipe marque le territoire sous la couche. Ça, c’est le jeu quotidien, mais aujourd’hui, seulement dans quelques sites sélectionnés, c’est l’anomalie, et des joueurs du monde entier se sont rassemblés pour la bataille. Vive la Résistance !


Streak 41 : On a gagné !
On a gagné, les doigts dans le nez ! Ils ont perdu, … hum….

Hier, le grand jour de l’anomalie, nous, la Résistance, avons gagné le champ de bataille. La concurrence était féroce, et les deux équipes se sont bien battus. Néanmoins, la victoire était à nous ! Après trois heures de combat virtuel, nous nous sommes tous réunis dans un bar pour une grande soirée ensemble.
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Re: Jeffers- SC 2022-23 - French, German, Hindi

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Mon May 22, 2023 5:19 pm

Vive Jeffers !
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Re: Jeffers- SC 2022-23 - French, German, Hindi

Postby jeffers » Sat Jun 03, 2023 12:44 pm

Voilà, c'est fini! Yesterday was the day of my A2 DELF exam. This won't be a short post because I have a lot to think through.

I needed to show up at the Institut française at 12:15, and given the vagaires of traffic down the M1 to London I left home around 7:15. Traffic was actually very light for a rush hour, so I arrived around 10:15, and wandered around Kensington (played Ingress) for an hour and a half. Better 2 hours early than 2 minutes late, right?

The production orale (at 12:30) was the hardest part of the day. You pick two topics for the oral presentation and two topics for the role-play, and then pick your preferred topic for each, after which you have 10 minutes to prepare and make some notes. I wasn't happy with my options, and for the presentation I picked one about how I use computers for work, and for the role-play it was one about meeting a French teacher at a party and discussing the difference in the educational systems. As a computer science teacher, these should be right up my alley, but very little in the history of my French reading, listening and watching had anything to do with the topics, so I knew I was lacking the vocabulary. Nevertheless, the session went, let's say "okay". It starts with a self-presentation before the presentation and role-play, and we went over time on that part because the examiner kept asking me more questions. I assume going too long is better than running out of things to say. I struggled a lot with the other two parts, but the examiner was very encouraging. When she asked what my students were like, I wanted to say "un peu dissipé", a phrase used a lot in Le petit Nicolas, but the word just left me. I had hoped for a question about what I do in my spare time, about a holiday I'd taken, or something similar, and I prepared more for those topics. Never mind, I was just relieved to get it out of the way.

I then had about an hour and a quarter before the rest of the exam, so I wandered around Kensington again, got an iced coffee and bought a pen. Yes, I had forgotten to bring a pen. Quel con ! They did a roll call outside the door and then led us to the examination room, where they told us the only things we should have on our desks is our ID, a pen, our canditate information and a bottle of water. Water! I had forgotten to bring that as well! Fortunately, it wasn't too hot a day. This part of the exam was in 3 sections, oral comprehension, written comprehension and written production. As I expected the comprehension sections were very easy but there were a couple questions which I found a bit difficult to answer confidently. In the written comprehension there was an article about a woman who recieved a letter 50 years after it was sent, and then there was a question about whether the article was about "mail", something else, or "courrier". I almost ticked "mail" then realized it had to be "courrier", which upon checking later was the correct option. I didn't remember this but in French "mail" on its own means "email". They were clever enough in the questions to not use the same word in the answers as was used in the articles.

The final section was the written production, which consisted of two questions, one about a day of sports (not a favourite topic of mine), and another accepting an invitation from a friend to celebrate his new appartment. For each question, I first wrote it out in rough form on the scrap paper they gave us, and then wrote it out carefully on the exam paper. This gave me the opportunity to rewrite sections, check my number of words, and make sure I had met all of the requirements of the question. The questions both said "60 mots minimum", nothing about a maximum number, but if I remember correctly I wrote about 77 words for one question and 81 for the other. I couldn't have actually gone over the word count because I used up all of the space provided, which is a good thing I suppose. I finished with about 15 minutes left, so started looking back over the previous 2 sections, and then I reread my writing. I realized I hadn't used any reflexive verbs, so I decided to add "On va s'amuser" at the end of the letter about the appartment celebration.

And finally, some predictions. For the oral production, it's anyone's guess really. I believe that I will get at least the 5/25 needed to pass (I bloody well hope so!), but if I had to make a prediction I would say I scored between 10 and 15 (probably closer to 10). For the oral and written comprehension sections, I predict I scored from 23 to 25 on each. Finally, the written production is another tricky one to guess at, but I expect I will probably score around 20/25 points. I won't really know until August.

Now I have the question about what next, but I'll let that one percolate in the back of my mind for a little while.
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Re: Jeffers- SC 2022-23 - French, German, Hindi

Postby badger » Sat Jun 03, 2023 2:58 pm

Bien joué ! I'm sure you will have walked it. :) do you know when you'll find out the result?

I always find it slightly bizarre that French GCSE is considered to be at approximately A2 level when I think about my atrocious French when I took the exam compared to your rather good writing that you've posted here. I still distinctly remember (35 years later) talking in the GCSE oral exam about wearing un chateau (instead of un chapeau) :oops: .
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