JohnnyD's French C1 Journal

[johnnyd]

Hello,

I have been learning French without much of a plan for a while now and I have reached a level where I can read literary books in French and I'm beginning to understand spoken French. I intend to pass the C1 French exam in December. Ambitious but, I think, achievable.
I intend to study three hours a day, on average, with at least half of that being active e.g. writing, speaking. I will be using Assimil Using French as my only formal textbook, and will primarily rely on tv, films, radio, news, books and other native media. I've tried flashcards in the past but they are so, so boring that I've given them up completely.
I'll try to update this journal every day.

JohnnyD

[tomgosse]

Bonjour et bienvenue. N'hésitez pas à rejoindre notre groupe Les Voyageurs.

[johnnyd]

Thank you for the invitation, tomgoose.

End of Week 1

I've been recording all my hours on an excel spreadsheet. There are eight categories: writing, translation, speaking, extensive and intensive listening, extensive and intensive reading, and flashcards.

My average hours per day is 2.5 and 60% of those hours are active learning i.e. not passive tv watching or extensive reading.
I've been using Assimil New French with Ease by translating each of the lessons from English into French and then comparing with the actual translation. I've been using Assimil Using French in the usual way for intensive listening along with RFI journal en francais facile. I claimed in my first post that I won't be using flashcards, but I think I will have to if I want to increase my vocabulary level to C1.

For the second week I'm going to try to get my active percentage above 70% and get my average hours closer to 3.

[Cavesa]

Hi JohnyD,

welcome to the forum! I'm looking forward to following your log!

DALF C1 in December is an ambitious goal, yet achievable. At the intensity of 3 hours per day definitely. Your pace is definitely an inspiration, thanks!

Your focus on native input is great and will definitely help you. Good news: you won't need the SRS, if you consume enough input. Enough usually means a few hundred hours of listening and a few thousands of pages reading. My example 250 hours of listening, and 10000 pages, but there are various examples on the forum. But it trully requires time. SRS can help, but it is not necessary, from my experience.

However, Assimil as your only coursebook won't suffice, I'm afraid. It's not just the fact some of the forum members with experience with it don't think C1 is a realistic assessment. It won't suffice, as you need to practice the skills required in the DALF exam. There are various courses and resources on those, I found writing to be the hardest, as the resources cover it the worst, in my opinion. Even if you want to avoid regular courses (like Alter Ego) or skill specific ones (like Production Ecrite or Grammaire Progressive perfectionnement by CLE), you should probably get one or two DALF preparatory courses. The classical big red book DALF C1/C2 serves well, but there are various books on the market now, with sample assignments, and some good online resources.

Have you already considered whether to take the science or humanities oriented version?

[tomgosse]

Thank you for the invitation, tomgoose.

You are quite welcome. I have added your name and a link to this log to the first post in Les Voyageurs.

All the best,
Tom Gosse

[PeterMollenburg]

Good luck JohnnyD! We're on very similar missions. Rdearman too. Perhaps we can all compare notes along the way.

[johnnyd]

I received your message, Peter, but I can't reply because my account is too new. I think a dedicated C1 French group is a good idea. We can motivate each other and share tips.

Thanks for adding me to the group, Tom. I've been looking through all the other French journals there and they are very motivating.

[PeterMollenburg]

I received your message, Peter, but I can't reply because my account is too new. I think a dedicated C1 French group is a good idea. We can motivate each other and share tips.

Thanks for adding me to the group, Tom. I've been looking through all the other French journals there and they are very motivating.

Cool, thanks for your message JohnnyD, I shall go ahead and add you now

[tomgosse]

I received your message, Peter, but I can't reply because my account is too new. I think a dedicated C1 French group is a good idea. We can motivate each other and share tips.

Thanks for adding me to the group, Tom. I've been looking through all the other French journals there and they are very motivating.

After three posts you can send private messages.

[johnnyd]

End of Week 2

I did 15 hours of studying, mainly listening and writing. This is less than I'd like, but it's good enough. I have 23 weeks until the exam, so if I stayed at this level I would have done 375 hours, which is pretty respectable.