Fluent in French but fails DELF B1
A few weeks ago, I was contacted by someone we will call Jane Doe. She messaged me in French so I didn’t even think she needed to take lessons in the first place.
She said she would go for the DELF B1 exam the next day and asked to meet 2 hours before… Whaaaat? 😲
It didn’t give a good impression because I immediately wondered what I could possibly do for her at the last minute.
I mean: if you want to practice for an exam and be seriously prepared both for the content you can expect and the way it happens, you don’t start to feel concerned the day before the exam, do you?
Anyway, I was not available as she wanted.
A few weeks later, she got back and sent me her results.
And I was taken aback.
Look: her listening and reading skills don’t match her speaking and writing skills! Obviously, she didn’t pass DELF B1
Honestly, it is the very first time I see results like this.
Jane Doe didn’t provide more information about her learning routine, what she does to progress or how she got prepared for the exam. Nor did she ask for help.
I felt like she just wanted to share the disappointment and was probably not ready yet for some change.
You know, my method to Start French Now is really frustrating but so effective because we go through a long and essential way to build habits like we build a house.
We take time to work on the 4 skills at the same time so it is not about SPEED, it is about STURDINESS.
So until your A2 level is confirmed – with a practice test of real DELF at the end of my Beginner course – this is exactly what we will do because you will then keep developing your skills by yourself and hopefully also keep the method: you listen to something, confirm the writing, pronounce it the proper way and write it on your own.
See: the 4 skills work together
Typical example is the apostrophe to terminate a vowel when followed by a vowel:
le ami ➞ l’ami
If you get the bad habit of pronouncing “le ami””, you will write “le ami” and vice versa!
Now let’s go back to Jane Doe.
I assume her skills in French are “self-centered”: when she has to say something or write something, she does pretty well.
But what about when someone wants to communicate with her like I did?
Does she listen to listen and then reply with relevance? Is she interested in what happens around her: local news, social issues, etc.? Is she growing her general knowledge?
I was curious so I asked her if she got her library card at Médiathèque Montpellier.
“Non” was her answer. And it ended there.