I'm continuing to procrastinate on work, so some more scattered reflections that I didn't include yesterday.
First on my French level. I've been thinking about this a bit today--somehow it feels like my French has improved respectably over the last year even though I'm not fully sure how. Once we got back from Paris in July I mostly dropped French for quite a while and only in the last couple months have I picked it up again--and hardly intensively at that, as you can see from my anemic SC stats. Yet somehow I feel like my listening comprehension has improved a fair amount and that my vocabulary has been growing as well. I went back and looked at recordings of my last Chatterbug lessons (last May) and they were super painful to watch, so I have to imagine that my speaking is better now too (just based on when I talk to myself), even though I haven't really put it to the test recently.
As one data point for my improved listening comprehension, I rewatched a whole bunch of Bref episodes this weekend (probably 30+). There are still some pieces that I miss here and there but my overall comprehension is solid and I'm not struggling nearly as much as I was when I watched these last year. It helps a lot having learned a lot more common argot (kiffer, pécho, taf, etc) lately too.
When looking back to my log last year for my last updates on French, I came across last year's TV5Monde simulated TCF results, from April 30, 2020:
rpg wrote:An abbreviated pre-Super Challenge update:
First, inspired by a post from dicentra8 in the 6WC thread, I took the TV5Monde simulated online TCF. My results: 7 incorrect responses (77% correct) for compréhension orale, 3 incorrect responses (85% correct) for structure de la langue, and 4 incorrect responses (87% correct) for compréhension écrite. Altogether this is 66/80 and they tell me:
Votre score pour l'ensemble du test est égal à 83 % de bonnes réponses. Vous êtes du niveau d'un utilisateur indépendant (niveau B défini par le Cadre européen commun de référence) pour la compréhension orale, la compréhension écrite et la maîtrise des structures de la langue.
For oral and written comprehension, they further say "Votre niveau de compréhension écrite (orale) en français est celui d'un utilisateur indépendant (niveau B défini par le Cadre européen commun de référence)." but for the structure de la langue part they say "Votre maîtrise des structures de la langue en français est d'un niveau fin de B2 (utilisateur indépendant), début de C1 (utilisateur expérimenté)." so that's nice at least.
With that said I'm still a little annoyed at the results because I already knew I was in the doldrums of the B levels (I'm certainly better than A2 and certainly worse than C1!), so I wish they had given me something more conclusive after I spent all that time doing the test. I'm not really sure how far along I am on the B1/B2 spectrum any more. And I already knew that I was decent at grammar and reading comprehension and that my listening comprehension was weaker.
I went back and re-did the test now and happily my score has improved. This time around I missed 3 on compréhension orale (90% correct), 3 on structures de la langue (85%), and 2 on compréhension écrite (93%), for a total of 72/80 correct. Progress! Most of the improvement is in the listening comprehension, which aligns with my own impressions, but I improved reading comprehension as well. This time the overall result, as well as each of the three sections, is "fin de B2, début de C1". So that's nice. Still eager to take this exam for real this year and see how I measure up!
I'm also gratified when I think about how I've only actually been learning French seriously for around a year and a half of calendar time (besides maybe a half-dozen or so French in Action lessons I did before that point). Of course that includes several months of full-time French study and a period of being in France (albeit mostly interacting with my English-speaking girlfriend thanks to covid). In terms of # of hours I don't think it's anything impressive. But I think it's great in terms of calendar time because it lets me dream big for, say, 5 or 10 years down the line. But that's easy to do when you're young...
On the German side I ping-pong between really great lessons and not-so-great ones. Just about every tutor I have on Lingoda (a lot--they don't repeat very often) has complimented me on my pronunciation, so that's nice. The only sound I'm uneasy on is the ich-laut (/ç/) which I don't feel like I nail consistently in speech (one tutor remarked on this a few weeks ago as well). I had a tutor a couple days ago who went so far as to say that if I were talking on the phone the other person would think I was German. I never really take compliments like that too seriously (especially since I'm still a beginner...) but it's still nice to hear. I've also had a number of teachers suggest I move up to a higher level (and got another memorable compliment, that the teacher wished that her A2 students in her language school spoke so well!), but meanwhile some of my other classes are real struggles where I flounder around unimpressively, sitting in silence for 20+ seconds trying to think up a sentence that I actually knew how to say that contains a particular word (this is always the least enjoyable thing in language classes for me, when my vocabulary isn't very good and I can't come up with anything that I actually know how to say).
I also have a lot of still-basic grammar and vocabulary to learn, so I'm in no rush to move up a level. But it's nice to feel like I'm on track and making appropriate progress and that if I trust the process I'll get the results I want, and to try to keep this in mind the next time I'm floundering in a lesson (so, tomorrow, probably
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