The French C1/C2 Group

An area with study groups for various languages. Group members help each other, share resources and experience. Study groups are permanent but the members rotate and change.
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Carmody
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Re: The French C1 Group

Postby Carmody » Tue Jun 27, 2017 1:58 pm

Postby tastyonions »
Je n'ai aucune intention de passer un examen mais je suivrai avec intérêt le parcours de ce groupe. Bon courage à tous!
+1

Moi aussi, bien sûr ! :D
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Ani
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Re: The French C1 Group

Postby Ani » Tue Jun 27, 2017 5:37 pm

I saw this thread at 3 pages and I thought I must have missed weeks of discussion.. But nope!

I have a cold and I'm sitting around feeling sorry for myself :roll: so I won't write a long intro right now, but absolutely count me in. I don't know if I can actually sit an exam due to where I live, but I am considering flying out next November to sit the C2 (in NYC, making the assumption they will have one around then).
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PeterMollenburg
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Re: The French C1/C2 Group

Postby PeterMollenburg » Tue Jun 27, 2017 11:30 pm

Ani wrote:absolutely count me in


You're in! ;) Shall we see how many courses we can do concurrently? :?
Last edited by PeterMollenburg on Wed Jun 28, 2017 12:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
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schlaraffenland
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Re: The French C1/C2 Group

Postby schlaraffenland » Wed Jun 28, 2017 12:05 am

Thank you for creating this group, PM, and thank you to all of the advanced learners who have already made such great suggestions: prohairesis, Ani, whatiftheblog, and cavesa come to mind. I plan to sit the C1 in the first few months of 2018.

Background (tl;dr)

When I was little, we lived for a while near Versailles. Back in the U.S., I had six years each of French and Spanish in school. I took the AP exam and the SAT II, then I laid aside modern languages, focusing in college and graduate school exclusively on ancient languages. I would dig up my French for the occasional venture into L'Hexagone during vacations, or forays to Strasbourg and Brussels for important provisions (Uniqlo, the Gap ;)). Otherwise, I hadn't touched French until January of this year.

I have been in the middle of a career change. I would like to study and settle in the German-speaking world. For the programs in which I'm interested, however, I'll need proof of C1+ competency in French as well. The moment I realized this, I parked myself back in a local French class at the dawn of the new year. By late March, though, I realized that non-intensive classroom work was not for me. I've made steady progress on my own since then due to the excellent suggestions and techniques shared by the people in this forum. I may try for another course early next year, but intensive and in-country.

Materials and plan

I've spent the time since March rebuilding my vocabulary with Langenscheidt's Grund- und Aufbauwortschatz Französisch. I should have learned the ~4000 terms in this book by the end of 2017.

I've acquired the following books due to others' excellent suggestions in the forum:
Expression et style B2-C1 : Français de perfectionnement
Le résumé, le compte-rendu, la synthèse : Guide d'entraînements aux examens et concours
ABC DALF - Niveaux C1/C2

I plan to work through the books in that order during the second half of 2017. I kind of hope I'll absorb the grammar I need in the process of working with those books, but I will bridge any gaps by referring as needed to the Großes Übungsbuch Französisch Neu and its companion reference grammar. I had begun the Spring systematically working through the former but found it was too detailed for my needs at that time.

I plan to write 100 words per day until the end of the year.
I plan to read 400 pages per month.
I plan to watch ten hours of media per month.
I will be reading news sites and listening to news radio, but I don't intend to log these activities, since they will be somewhat sporadic.

And that's it! Let's see where we are in six months. PM, I am with you: the first of July marks our epic start!
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schlaraffenland
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Re: The French C1/C2 Group

Postby schlaraffenland » Wed Jun 28, 2017 12:09 am

PeterMollenburg wrote:Mission time PM, no room for procrastinating reading about Occitan...


Heh heh... this is exactly my dilemma as well. If I'm good, I will permit myself to get Assimil's Occitan course in October or so. I see some risk of interference between the two languages, but as long as French is well anchored by that point, then hopefully it'll work out. But I really have to have been making good progress in the other languages to earn this privilege.

In short, if you choose to go down the Occitan path at some point, you may well have a partner in crime/another devil on your shoulder...
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PeterMollenburg
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Re: The French C1/C2 Group

Postby PeterMollenburg » Wed Jun 28, 2017 12:49 am

schlaraffenland wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:Mission time PM, no room for procrastinating reading about Occitan...


Heh heh... this is exactly my dilemma as well. If I'm good, I will permit myself to get Assimil's Occitan course in October or so. I see some risk of interference between the two languages, but as long as French is well anchored by that point, then hopefully it'll work out. But I really have to have been making good progress in the other languages to earn this privilege.

In short, if you choose to go down the Occitan path at some point, you may well have a partner in crime/another devil on your shoulder...


My reading about Occitan yesterday evening is pretty common- the reading that is, not the language. The language changes, and 9 out of 10 times I'm reading about any given language in French and the other one 10th of the time I get lazy and use English. Occitan does interest me, but not as much as Dutch is beating back at me with a stick! However I have a bigger stick and a broom and keep shooing away Dutch and beating it back into submission. I'm not touching another language until I reach my French objectives. I'm simply not willing to compromise, particularly as I've never taken any language this far, so I don't want to potentially derail myself now.

Unfortunately Occitan really is in a poor state for a once huge language group. My reading yesterday evening brought me to the understanding that Alscace (which I also like perhaps to a lesser degree, but still interests me, as do all the regional languages of France) appears to be in the healthiest state of all regional languages of France, but even then it's future is not guaranteed. For practically all the others, including Occitan, the future looks bleek, a direct result of language policies in France.

I would like to learn a minority language some day, but I do want there to be speakers within a reasonable distance, thus, I will not decide just yet which language that will be, nor will it be before Dutch in all likelihood, and perhaps even Spanish and German.
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Ani
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Re: The French C1/C2 Group

Postby Ani » Wed Jun 28, 2017 12:53 am

PeterMollenburg wrote:
Ani wrote:absolutely count me in


You're in! ;) Shall we see how many courses we can do concurrently? :?


Eh.. I am doing 231 courses concurrently with a variable block length that follows the sine curve.... don't know if you can keep up ::blows on nails::

In truth what we should do, you should challenge me on course hours and intensive work and I should challenge you on extensive reading/media consumption. I can eat novels for breakfast but I am not actually that good finishing courses. The single biggest jump I made in French was last summer when we were doing ALL the courses.
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But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

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PeterMollenburg
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Re: The French C1/C2 Group

Postby PeterMollenburg » Wed Jun 28, 2017 1:30 am

schlaraffenland wrote:Thank you for creating this group, PM

Geen probleem... uhhh :? which language are we learning? Oh, right... we're on a mission with Occitan! :? I mean Occi...French!!! :ugeek:


schlaraffenland wrote:Materials and plan

Looks pretty decent!

schlaraffenland wrote:I am with you: the first of July marks our epic start!


Coincidently the Tour de France begins 1st of July, ironically something I've not been able to bring myself to watch in French being so used to the English speaking Australian and English commentators. Still, I'll squeeze in my French and Le Tour, and work, and family, and.... eat? what? No time for that! :shock: I assure you I'm still aiming for 100 hours of French in July, no turning back now! Good luck schlaraffenland!!

Ani wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:
Ani wrote:absolutely count me in


You're in! ;) Shall we see how many courses we can do concurrently? :?


Eh.. I am doing 231 courses concurrently with a variable block length that follows the sine curve.... don't know if you can keep up ::blows on nails::


Pfft, pas de problème ! En fait, c'est beaucoup trop facile pour moi ! Mais, rapelle-le-moi, c'est quoi 'the sine curve'. Je veux dire, je le sais déjà bien sûr, mais je veux tout simplement vérifier que tu... eh que tu... eh... aies des ongles :? ? Eh, euh, et 231 est plus que 200? Je ne m'en souviens pas exactement..

Ani wrote:In truth what we should do, you should challenge me on course hours and intensive work and I should challenge you on extensive reading/media consumption. I can eat novels for breakfast but I am not actually that good finishing courses. The single biggest jump I made in French was last summer when we were doing ALL the courses.


Well, reading, would you believe, I know I know, it's shocking, IS included in my rotation now. And i'm doing only one lonely course, but believe me there's plenty more on that list, and since i've kept my routine to a 4 hour rotation, in theory I'll be doing that course most days of the week. I would love to be working on 5 courses, sorry 255 courses, at a time, but I simply cannot. Where reading gives me much needed extensive language exposure, courses it seems give you much needed intensive focus. So if I hear you've cut your list below 231 courses I'll have to get out that stick i've been beating Dutch into submission with and.. .umm... wave it around to see how it... umm... glides through the air? :?
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schlaraffenland
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5831
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Re: The French C1/C2 Group

Postby schlaraffenland » Wed Jun 28, 2017 2:16 am

PeterMollenburg wrote:My reading yesterday evening brought me to the understanding that Alscace (which I also like perhaps to a lesser degree, but still interests me, as do all the regional languages of France) appears to be in the healthiest state of all regional languages of France, but even then it's future is not guaranteed. (...) ...nor will it be before Dutch in all likelihood, and perhaps even Spanish and German.


I'm sure you already knew this, but if you go back to Dutch and German first, Elsässisch will be a snap! I only have German, but I can follow written Alemannic dialects (e.g., a Wikipedia article) without trouble.
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lavengro
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Re: The French C1 Group

Postby lavengro » Wed Jun 28, 2017 3:14 am

Ani wrote:I saw this thread at 3 pages and I thought I must have missed weeks of discussion.. But nope!

I have a cold and I'm sitting around feeling sorry for myself :roll: so I won't write a long intro right now, but absolutely count me in. I don't know if I can actually sit an exam due to where I live, but I am considering flying out next November to sit the C2 (in NYC, making the assumption they will have one around then).

I believe C2 testing goes on in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories at the Centre Delf-Dalf des Territoires du Nord-Ouest . I don't know where you are in Alaska, but Yellowknife will undoubtedly be closer geographically for you than New York, though not necessarily easier for you to get to. Actually, prolly a lot harder to get to.

Yellowknife does have the advantage of being way less distracting than New York would be (quite a few less museums or interesting attractions, for example, unless you are easily distracted by snow), and the considerable advantage for you of not requiring a de-thaw decompression period before taking the test after arriving from Alaska.

lavengro
(been there; ignore the above advice; go to NYC)
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