Advice on my plan to go from A2 to B2 in French

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Re: Advice on my plan to go from A2 to B2 in French

Postby rdearman » Wed Jul 13, 2022 9:05 pm

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Re: Advice on my plan to go from A2 to B2 in French

Postby Pikaia » Wed Jul 13, 2022 9:18 pm

darren wrote:4. I listened to a lot of French podcast episodes, all targeted to the Intermediate level learner. This helped a lot with my listening skills.


Can I ask which podcasts you found most useful? Thanks!
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Re: Advice on my plan to go from A2 to B2 in French

Postby darren » Thu Jul 14, 2022 2:30 pm

I have listened extensively to two:

1. InnerFrench
2. Little Talk in Slow French

InnerFrench is fairly well known as one of the best "Intermediate" level podcasts. The host never uses English, and picks interesting topics to discuss. The episodes are all around 30 minutes. This is now the primary the podcast that I listen to (I still have a backlog of several dozen to work through)

I started, however, with listening to "Little Talk in Slow French". The host is a French native speaker of Japanese descent. She does use English quite often to explain French idioms, slang and interesting bits of the language. I found this to be very helpful to me when I just started listening to podcasts and was probably around an A2 level. In many of her episodes she takes the last five or six minutes of the episode to repeat the entire episode, but talking at a normal (i.e. "fast") French speaking cadence. This also has been quite helpful to me.
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Re: Advice on my plan to go from A2 to B2 in French

Postby Cavesa » Thu Jul 14, 2022 4:25 pm

darren wrote:I've been studying French for 10 months and was assessed recently via an online test to be at an A2 level.

Congratulations! That's a very respectable result!

As I get closer to "intermediate level" with my French learning, I'm revising my learning approach and plan for going from where I'm at now (~A2) to where I want to be at: a high B2 level, maybe B2/C1. I'm giving myself another almost full two years to get there - as I have a target milestone of vacationing in France in the Summer of 2023.


A very reasonable goal, totally possible. However, I wonder why you don't use any really CEFR aimed resources, if you choose to define your goals with CEFR.

Also, a good coursebook is the learners best friend imho, it can even save you a lot of time and money on tutors, as the tutor will be doing just stuff you cannot do just as well or better on your own with the book.


Looking ahead to my next year I am asserting that with 6-7 hours a week of studying using the following plan that I can go from A2 to a solid B1:

1. Two, one hour Italki sessions a week (different instructors) focusing on speaking and listening, with help on various grammatical structures
2. Continued use of my vocab tool (~5, 10 minutes a day)
3. Watching 1-2 hours of French TV a week and listening to an hour or so of French podcasts per week
4. Continued use of Anki for SRS memorization of vocab and grammar
5. Reading French magazines daily (I just subscribed to two monthly periodicals, "Le Monde Diplomatique" and "Detours en France" a French travel magazine).
6. Continued study and practice of grammar using a "Verb Tenses" workbook that I have, and working through Carnegie Mellon University's Online French I and French II courses (which I have access to given that I work at the university)


It is one of the options. However, I'd really recommend one cefr labeled resource, if you want to follow the cefr levels. Also, there is much more than verb tenses to the intermediate grammar. Grammaire Progressive or Kwiziq can help a lot. And no clue what are the University's courses like, whether they are the B1.

A lot of the stuff is excellent though. TV can be challenging at A2, but if you manage, great, it will cumulatively work. Anki is a very good tool. And about the tutors: why not, if they are good. However, I always find it a bit curious, that people use them for listening, when there are so many better tools, and grammar, for the same reason. Btw you might want to think about also practicing your writing, it is an often underestimated skill

Is the above enough to move solidly into B1 territory in a year's time? That would be 600 hours cumulative study... but do you feel it is the "right" studying? Should I be looking at programs like Glossika or Pimsleur? The only "writing output" in my plan is the Verb Tenses workbook... is that enough? Will the above plan and approach, if I push forward another year after that, get me to high B2 by Summer 2023?


Yes, it could be enough, even though I'd still recommend to follow one B1 coursebook (such as Édito for example), to be sure you are on track. 600 hours would be enough for much more! You probably "wasted" many hours on Duolingo, as it is rather slow, but the important thing is the result. You can definitely get to B1 in a year at a convenient pace. But perhaps earlier would be better, to have time for the "high" B2 in the first half of 2023. Usually, every level requires more work than the previous one. So if you have a deadline (objective or self-imposed), don't forget about that.

Pimsleur: nope, it does have value for some beginners, not at this point imho. Glossika: I think it is a sort of half baked tool. Some things about it are great, but I am overall not convinced about the method of using it. It is in some ways the opposite of any sort of personalised learning and it allows too much passivity in learning.

Verb tenses workbook: it is probably not bad, but there is much more to learn than just verbs, as I've said. And I recommend more writing. Do your textbook or other exercises out loud and in writing. Write supplemental exercises, like your opinion on what you read, summaries of read articles, etc. Have them corrected, that's what a good tutor is useful for. And/or participate on websites like langcorrect or oplingo, to get at least basic corrections. Writing is very useful and underestimated.

Good luck!
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Re: Advice on my plan to go from A2 to B2 in French

Postby anitarrc » Mon Aug 01, 2022 7:14 am

Unfortunately, I didn't see where you live (forgive me if I was blind).
Personally , I learned French seriously when I was 15 because I went to a French school and had to. The French prof gave me books to read till i was better.
Here is some general advice which will not make you a grammar expert, but it will help you to go RIGHT now to a French speaking country and try your luck
A few years back, I was offered a job in São Paulo and my Portuguese was next to zero.
Like you, I went for Duolingo since in my then residential country the closest Portuguese speaking country is a 10 hour flight. In 3 months I finished the English to Portuguese 1st level, which was OK but not REALLY to the point because it trains you to think in english instead of the target language.

Duolingo still had groups then so we formed a whatsapp group to chat in Portuguese.
Now that DID work. After a short while (2 months) I understood most of my future employer's voice messages. Friendly Brazilians sent me adolescent books and that worked, too.

Bolsonaro came and in the end I went to Europe instead of Brazil.
After not practising much for a year, i restarted Duolingo, this time Spanish to Portuguese so that I don't talk portunhol. Now I read Portuguese pretty frequently at work and my writing has made a leap forward, I can now write business (mostly technical) correspondence without problems.

So what is the key to success:
REad books. Join a whatsapp group and:
Watch something like "Engrenages" "Le baron noir" with subtitles. After a while, you won't need them much.
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