Learning French, Starting at Age 61

Here’s my experience about going from zero to passing the DELF A1 French test six months later. You can read my story about passing the Italian C2 exam here, and the German C2 test here. You can read my comparison of the two C2 tests here. I explain why I found the Italian test more rigorous. No reports yet on my continuing Japanese studies; I’m waiting until I have more positive news before writing it up.

If you’re not familiar with the CEFR language proficiency levels, such A1 or C2, read the Wikipedia descriptions here. It will make it a lot easier to understand the text below.

Why did you do this?

The very short answer is to feel better after getting clobbered by Japanese.

I was feeling discouraged after failing the JLPT N4 for the third time, so I wanted to do something that would boost my spirits. I had passed the N4 practice tests, so I was surprised when I failed for the third time. To make matters worse, my score on the reading comprehension section did not improve a single point after a year of daily study. Ouch!

My original plan was to start learning French after I passed the JLPT N1 test. However, based on my recent experience, it seems like it might take another five, six, seven, or more years to get to that point. Meanwhile, I live in Germany, near the French border, and I go shopping in France every month or so, so I can use French immediately. I started learning French as a side project. My main focus is still Japanese, and I spend the most hours per week on Japanese. French is in second place, then Italian. You can see that below in my weekly study spreadsheet.

As I wrote about in my entry about taking the Italian test, I think it’s a great motivator to have a specific goal and a set date on the calendar to help keep you on track for studying. I thought it would be possible for me to pass the DELF A1 French test with six months of study, which is what happened. I also wanted to see what it’s like to take each of the six levels of a CEFR exam. So far, I only have experience at the highest (C2) level. Many people think it’s useless to take an A1 exam because it doesn’t get you anything, and the level is so basic, but I think it’s worth the effort, particularly if it’s not so difficult to arrange, as in my case.

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Why are you learning French?

The short answer is because I don’t like going to countries when I can’t speak the language. Now it’s one thing if you go to, say, Korea for three days, most of us are probably not going to spend a lot of time learning Korean first. However, I live about 30 minutes away from France, and I go to France a number of times per year for grocery shopping, and usually at least one other time to Strasbourg to take the Japanese test. I like France, French food, and wine, so I would like to be able to speak French when I visit the country.

However, I’m not really interested in French politics or society. I don’t particularly like the sound of the language, (it’s just too nasally for me). Sorry to all you Francophiles, but to my ears, Italian is a much more beautiful language, no contest. Lots of people seem to think French sounds quite romantic, but not to me. Still, in case a French person ever asks me why I’m learning French, I’m ready with my standard answer: "Because it’s the most beautiful language in the world." This is a great sentence to learn in any language. It works every time.

I am not interested in French literature, art, music, or architecture. I don’t like churches, and I’ve been to lots of castles in Germany and elsewhere. As a matter of fact, I have promised myself I will never read "The Little Prince" in French. I do plan to eventually subscribe to Science & Vie.

I have several issues already, which I glance through from time to time.

You have to love a country with all those different kinds of cheese and wine. And then I am reminded of this quote from Charles de Gaulle:



"How can you govern a country that has 246 varieties of cheese?"

In reality, I think good old Chuck was off by a factor of at least 10 regarding the number of cheese varieties in France.

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One year before I started learning French

I had a subscription to Glossika, which is a language learning system in which you repeat sentences spoken by native speakers. There are no explanations, or grammar, etc. You just repeat sentences in the language of your choice, and you are shown the English translation below the text of the target language.

When you subscribe to Glossika, you get access to all the languages they offer, about 20 or so. I signed up for Glossika so I could practice my Japanese, but since French was also one of the languages they offer, I decided to practice some French pronunciation before I actually started to learn.

What that means is, every day I would hear five new sentences, which I would repeat after hearing the French speaker, along with some sentences from the previous two days. All in all, it took about five minutes a day.

Here’s a screenshot of my French totals after the year:



I can say that after a year of spending five minutes a day of repeating French sentences a total of 13,531 times, the only thing I remembered were the words for "now" and for "today." My Japanese didn’t get any better either, even though I repeated over 88,000 Japanese sentences. Needless to say, I’m not a big fan of Glossika, but I did give it the old college try.

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The very first things I tried were…

a website called Language Transfer and the U. S. Foreign Service course for French Phonology. Both are available for free online. Language Transfer is a series of podcasts where a person explains the French language to a learner who then answers questions based on the information the speaker has given him or her. In total there are 40 tracks, but I never got past #28.

Likewise, the Foreign Service class or course is designed to be using the classroom with an instructor, so it’s not really designed to be done on your own. Once again I did not finish the entire course. Out of the 10 audio files, I listened to six.

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Transcribing

As I wrote about preparing for the Italian C2 test, I am a big fan of transcribing. You kill two birds with one stone: you practice your writing and your listening skills at the same time. The French DELF test has a writing section, so there was no reason not to start learning to write from the beginning. I tried several different sources, but eventually settled on a graded reader with audio for level A1.

I listen to a few seconds of audio, then write down what I think I heard, then listen to a few more seconds, write down what I think I heard, and so on. When I have filled up a page (written in double space), I compare what I have written to the official text. As you might imagine, in the beginning my guesses were far from the actual French text. Every once in a while I will make flashcards from sentences that I find particularly noteworthy or useful.

Here’s what my notebook looks like:

(click to enlarge)

Here’s an example of an audio clip from this graded reader that I turned into a flashcard.

I really like graded readers. I have used them for Italian and Japanese as well. For those who don’t know, they are books written in simplified language (with no English), but they’re usually not children’s stories. Many times they are mysteries, or classics, rewritten for different levels. For example, I have read "Pinocchio" twice, with different levels of graded readers.

Sometimes graded readers are grouped by the CEFR levels (A1, A2, etc.); other times they are grouped by vocabulary size (500 words, 1,000 words, etc.).

I particularly like graded readers with audio, which is why I use them for transcribing. Fortunately, there’s a wide variety of material available as graded readers. For me, they are one of the top learning resources a person could use to learn a new language.

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Lessons on italki

From the beginning I knew I wanted to have weekly online lessons with a teacher, so I went about trying various teachers on italki. It’s actually more difficult than it would appear, because you need to find a teacher who is available at the time you want to learn. That eliminates a lot of possibilities.

I tried out about eight or nine different teachers on italki before I finally found a match.

I have a lesson once a week. I would say 95% of the lesson is in French. Occasionally when I get stuck, he will say something in English, but usually he explains everything in French for me. The other good thing he does is type what he’s saying, which allows me to make flashcards afterwards. It saves me a lot of time.

Another request I made, which he honors, is that we use the formal "vous." My logic is that’s the form I will most likely use when traveling in France, and the form I will have to use when taking the French test. For those reasons, it’s important for me to have a lot of practice using that form.

We go through various texts and exercises, as well as textbooks:

He gives me homework every week, which we correct during the lesson. Many times, we spend a good part of the lesson answering my many questions.

He also gave me this sentence to practice pronunciation:



"j'ai un âne d'un an,"

which means, "I have a one-year-old donkey." This is not a typical sentence I would use in a normal conversation, but it gives me fits trying to pronounce it correctly. I tried it several times "in the wild" in France, and I am sorry to report no one understood me. My excuse for why not is because the sentence came out of the clear blue sky with no context, and since it’s such an unusual sentence, I caught people off guard. Anyway, that’s my story.

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Pronunciation training with Speechling

From my experiences using Glossika, I knew that one of the biggest challenges in learning French would be pronunciation, along with writing. Right from the beginning, I started using a website called Speechling. On this website you hear words and sentences spoken by native speaker, which you then imitate and record. A native speaker then listens to your recordings and gives you feedback on how you did. You hear the coach pronounce a word you had mispronounced, which you then re-record for evaluation. This process continues over and over again until you have pronounced the word or sentence correctly. By the time I’d taken the A1 test, I think I had made over 3,000 recordings of sentences and words just in French.

I had to chuckle when my coach corrected my French pronunciation of "sandwich." Guess it wasn’t French sounding enough.

A few months later, Speechling added Japanese and Italian to the list of languages they offer, all for the same price. Since then, I spend about 15 minutes a day practicing pronunciation of the three languages, about five minutes each, but with the focus on French. At the moment, I am at over 11,000 recordings and counting. That may sound like a lot, but according to one study, a typical American speaks about 16,000 words a day. So really, it’s just a drop in the bucket.

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Assimil

This series of language learning texts is highly regarded by many language learners. I had never used them before. I got the French with Ease book and CDs at the end of December 2018.

The lessons in Assimil are very short, and somewhat entertaining. I will say they have some of the clearest and best recorded audio you’ll ever hear. I really like the fact that there is no music or English on the audio recordings.

Here’s how I typically use Assimil: I listen to the audio for the lesson, and attempt to write down what I think I hear. I’ll repeat a section numerous times until I think I understand it, then move onto the next section, which may be another three seconds of audio. At the end of the lesson, I check my transcription against the book and make corrections. I’ll read the grammar points and the lesson notes. That night, I’ll loop the audio and listen to it five or six times while stretching. A day or so later, I will make flashcards from the dialogue or lesson notes, based on what I think might be useful for me.

I made as far as lesson 48 before I took the DELF A1 test.

I have started using the audio from Assimil when I make flashcards from the lessons. In the past, I used TTS (text-to-speech, which is a computer voice), to save time. However, the superior quality of the Assimil audio makes it worth my time to edit the audio tracks into flashcards. Here’s an example of a clip I used to make a flashcard:

I agree with some of the common criticisms of the Assimil method, number one of which is, in my view, that you don’t start off with sentences you would typically learn, such as "My name is," "Where is the bathroom?", "I would like some coffee," etc. You learn a lot of uncommon things from the beginning, but not the things you would probably need to use on a trip.

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Le Robert & Collins

is the dictionary I use. Overall, it’s pretty good, but I wish they had audio for every entry. With my Zanichelli Italian dictionary, one search box works for both languages. With this dictionary, you have to choose the language before you use the search box, which I find slightly annoying. On the plus side, the dictionary will find related words if you misspell something in the search box. I have made a number of flashcards from entries from this electronic dictionary.

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Forvo

is another website I use extensively. Forvo has downloadable recordings of words and sentences spoken by native speakers. The quality of the recordings and voices varies considerably. Since French pronunciation presents such a difficulty for me, I decided at the outset to put audio on each flashcard. When possible, I take a recording from Forvo, because it’s faster than editing audio tracks from my graded reader or Assimil. My least favorite option is using TTS, which is text-to-speech, or computer-generated audio.

Of course, Forvo doesn’t have every word or sentence I am looking for, so oftentimes I take the sentences that are available, even if it’s something I generally would not turn into a flashcard. As an example, here’s a screenshot of the options available for "blueberries."

My two favorite and most used voices are Pat91 and gwen_bzh. Here are samples of their recordings I’ve used to make flashcards:

Useless, but interesting, fact #1

When we went to Malta earlier this year, as we were checking into our hotel, I found out that the clerk was Tunisian. I asked her if she spoke French, and she said yes. I decided to try out the three French sentences I knew at the time. After a few seconds, she started giggling and said, "You sound like you’re from Chad." No, I have never been to Chad. Actually, most of the time people tell me I have a German accent, whether I’m speaking Italian, Japanese, or French.

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Reading Grammar

I bought this French grammar book, written in German. I’m a big fan of this series, because it gives you a quick overview of the main points in brief descriptions. I generally will read a section a day. Like everything else, I have to read about a particular grammar point 10 or 15 times before it really sinks in.

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The more languages you learn, the easier it gets

I have read this statement many times, but learning French is the first time I can say I have noticed the effect myself. I can’t say that knowing German or Italian helps me with Japanese, other than to help manage my expectations, i.e. I know it’s going to take a long time and will be frustrating. However, with French, there are so many cognates with English and Italian, as well as grammatical similarities with Italian, that it’s a different ballgame. I often say learning Japanese I feel like Sisyphus, pushing that rock up the hill every day, while French feels like starting a marathon at the 10K mark – on a bicycle. It’s still a marathon, however.

I remember being in France (before I started learning French) and seeing a newspaper article about a debate in Brussels on some EU topic. In the article, they talked about a "nuit blanche," which I immediately recognized as the Italian "notte bianca." Other examples include seeing "bras de fer," (braccio di ferro), "canicule," (canicola), "preavis" (preavviso), "travail au noir" (lavoro nero), chardon (cardo) and more.

I also knew, before starting to learn French, that the imperfect tense would be used to describe continuous actions in the past or descriptions of people or things in the past, and that after verbs of desire such as I wish or I want, you must use the subjunctive mood. The reason I know these things is because that’s the way it is in Italian.

Still, there is no free lunch. While it’s true that it’s much easier to read French than Japanese, there’s still the problem of pronunciation and orthography. More about that in another section. I am reminded of a quote by the famous polyglot Kato Lomb, who said, "There is no easy language." I guess what she meant was every language has its difficult aspects, and to reach a high level in any language takes a great deal of work, as I wrote about here.

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Extensive versus intensive reading

When learning a new language, many people tend towards the extensive reading method. This involves reading a great deal of material without looking up unknown words. The idea is you will understand words from context, and if you see them repeatedly, they will lodge themselves in your brain and you will understand them.

The second system is intensive reading, which involves looking up every unknown word and repeatedly reading a section of text until you understand every single word.

You can also do this with listening: you can listen to many hours of audio, or you can listen to less audio, but repeatedly.

In the past, while learning Italian, I tended towards the extensive audio method. I am doing the same now with Japanese (I listen to podcasts while working out in the gym). But for French, I switched to the intensive method.

That means that I listen to short audio pieces (usually two minutes or less) at least five or six times while I am doing my stretching. I like the efficiency of doing two things at the same time. After I listen to the audio five or six times, I usually listen to it one more time while reading along with the text. Typically, the audio I am listening to is material that I have just transcribed earlier that day, so I am already familiar with the text when I start my listening exercise.

Because I don’t transcribe every day, I don’t have new material every day, so I listen to audio from my graded reader over and over again. For example, I have probably heard every sentence in chapter 1 at least 20 times. Strangely enough, I don’t find it boring. As it turns out, I typically discover new words or meetings that I had missed in previous sessions. However, like listening to podcasts in the gym, you have to guard against mentally drifting away, or intrusive thoughts. It’s tough to maintain your concentration.



Here’s an audio clip from the prologue of my graded reader:

Both extensive and intensive reading/listening can be effective, but I have to say that after this experiment with intensive listening, I prefer this method. It seems to me that the extensive method requires vastly more time and input for similar results.

Think about small children: we have all seen or heard of young children who watch their favorite movie dozens of times until they can recite the whole thing verbatim. I think those kids are on to something. There is probably some research out there that explains why children do this, but I have not searched for it. In my case, I think I make more progress by repeating section of text audio many times until it’s solid in my memory.

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Useless, but interesting, fact #2

I do all my studying standing up in front of a PC. I have an adjustable desk, but it’s been in the standing position for over a year. I stand on a balance board while I am at my computer. I stand up all day, except for eating dinner, and watching some TV in the evening. Here’s what that looks like:

Here's a 40 second video from the manufacturer that shows the board in action. Here's the next 30 second video from the same series.

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Travel Routine

When I take a trip, I have to reduce my workload, or I would spend all my time studying. I use a tablet, never a phone. About a week or 10 days before I leave, I stop adding most new material to the queue. I also reduce the number of tasks I complete every day. Basically, it boils down to Wanikani, Kaniwani, a bit of Speechling, and my four flashcards decks (two French, one Japanese, and one Italian). I want to continue progressing with Japanese and French, so I still add one new item per day in each language while on the road.

Typically, I add 10 new items daily in French, two in Italian, and seven new items in Japanese, but I reduce that for trips. I skip all the other reading, listening, transcribing, and writing tasks. The goal is to keep the total time commitment under two hours a day. Typically, I’ll do a bit in the morning when I get up, and the vast majority of studying at night before I go to bed. Except for one day when I messed up, I have been studying Italian for close to seven years straight, so you can see how determined I am.

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Learning more than one language at a time is not a good idea

That seems to be the consensus when you search online for advice about learning two languages at the same time. I’d agree. Besides the obvious issue of dividing your time between two languages, there is also the mental aspect. By that I mean your mental energy is divided as well, and that leads to a reduction in your efficiency. So instead of 50% for language A and 50% for language B, you wind up with 40% for each, or something to that effect, at least in my experience.

Imagine you are trying to learn to play the trumpet and the violin at the same time. Every hour you spend with the trumpet, is an hour you’re not spending with the violin. Sure, there is some overlap in learning how to read music, or perhaps training your ear, but you need different motor skills for the two instruments.

It’s the same with languages: I need to spend most of my time learning how to read Japanese, while for French, it’s more about pronunciation and writing. As I wrote, French is my side project, and I’m sure it’s taking away time and mental energy from Japanese, so my progress is surely slower in both languages. On the other hand, I do enjoy the break from Japanese, and it’s good not to feel like a complete idiot again.

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Interference has also increased

As I wrote about here, the more languages I study, the more interference I have among those languages. For example, I’ll be speaking Japanese with my teacher, and trying to remember the word for "chicken," and all I can remember is the French version. Or I’ll be speaking German to my wife, and I can only remember the Italian word for "eggplant." If you want to read more about interference theory, here’s the Wikipedia page. You might also find this Wikipedia page about language transfer interesting.

Since starting to learn French, I noticed my Italian slipping. My German has been declining for several years at least, even though I live in Germany. So far, it does not appear to have affected my English, but since English is the language I speak the least these days, maybe I just haven’t had the opportunity to notice the decline.

Overall, I would say all languages except English require increased concentration when speaking. Reading seems to work just fine, and I have no trouble understanding spoken language. That just means my passive knowledge is still strong, while my active skills are suffering. I don’t have a solution. I guess my wife will just have to get used to me speaking a mashup of several languages.

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Here’s a typical week’s schedule

I say that French is a side project and my main focus is Japanese, but I never actually counted up the hours until recently. Lo and behold, I am spending almost as many hours on French as on Japanese. I think this is what the military calls "mission creep." I don’t think I started out spending that many hours on French, but over the months, it has increased.

You see at the bottom of the chart how many new items I add a day. I can’t say I "learn" these items in one day, because it may take 10, 20, or 150 repetitions before I actually memorize something. In Wanikani there is a Wall of Shame, showing the characters you have the most trouble with. Currently, I have seen the top one 125 times, with an accuracy rate of 49%. It just goes to show how many repetitions can be necessary to memorize something.

For the 19 new items, the breakout is as follows: I generally learn five new Japanese kanji or vocabulary, plus a new vocab word from the Core 10k deck, and one new grammar point flashcard. I add in two new Italian cards per day, and 10 French cards, which are divided between seven cards from the deck I created, and three from the frequency deck I downloaded.

As you can see from the chart, in a typical week, I spend about 13 hours on Japanese, and over 12 hours on French, and over five hours with Italian, for a grand total close to 31 hours. This does not count the time I spend on German nor English, so the actual total is higher. Some weeks are higher; some are lower, but this chart shows a fairly typical week when I’m not traveling.

Strangely enough, I speak English the least. In a typical week, I only speak English with my language exchange partners for half an hour or so at a time. Because I live in Germany, that’s the language I speak most of the day.

As you look to the bottom of the French section you see times for creating flashcards. During the first session of 30 minutes, I made 31 cards. It takes me a long time because typically I am searching for audio on Forvo, or editing audio tracks from Assimil or my graded reader. I know a lot of people want to make flashcards as quickly as possible, but I consider all those minutes as additional learning time, because I am involved with the language and I’m trying to make cards that make sense to me.

If you think that’s slow, it gets worse: during the second session of 36 minutes, I made just 22 new flashcards, the third session of 24 minutes netted 18 cards, and the final session of 22 minutes produced 10 new cards. As I wrote below, I think many people obsessed with speed, and not with the intensity of the interaction.

My study hours have decreased somewhat since I made this chart. Life can get in the way of your plans sometimes.

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Useless, but interesting, fact #3

Every week I fast from 8 PM Monday night until about 2 PM Wednesday afternoon, around 42 hours. That means my studying all day Tuesday, and Wednesday morning, is done on an empty stomach.

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Counting, counting, counting

This is something I started many years ago for practice. I used to count my stretching exercises alternating between Japanese cardinal and Italian ordinal numbers from 1 to 45, and again a second time from 1 to 10 (1-It, 2-Ja, 3-It, 4-Ja, 5-It, etc.). Since starting to learn French, I dropped Italian and Japanese, and now count my exercises from 1 to 45 in French cardinal numbers, and a second time from 1 to 10 in ordinal numbers. I do this every day, but I did not include it in my totals for my study time, since it’s only about two minutes a day.



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More Numbers

Many people, myself included, often struggle with understanding spoken numbers. Some generous soul created a website called langpractice.com where you can hear numbers spoken by computer voice in 24 languages, and you have to type the correct number with your keyboard. The site breaks the numbers into groups from 1 to 10, 1 to 100, 1 to 1,000, 1 to 10,000, as well as years, and very large numbers (10k – 1b). I use this site to practice every day for about 5 to 6 minutes.

Before the DELF test, I would spend about two half minutes on the 1 to 10 group and about 2 ½ minutes on the 1 to 100 group. Currently, I am spending most of my time on the 1 to 10,000 group, although I still work on the other two groups every day. I have not yet moved on to the dates or very large numbers, but that will come some day in the future.

The one nit I have to pick with this system is, unlike real life, with this site you hear dozens of numbers in a row, with no text or words in between, so you can get into a numbers groove. You know you’re going to hear a three digit number, then another, and so on. In real life, you’ll hear a bunch of words, then a sentence like this will pop up: "Truc Chouette was born in 1888." Out of the clear blue sky a number comes up, which you might not have anticipated, and you can’t go back to ask the person to repeat the number for you, so you’ll miss it, or at least part of it. It can be more of a surprise, whereas this web site is going to provide you with a non-stop stream of numbers. Still, I don’t know of anything better with which to practice numbers and dates, so I recommend it. Lately, I’ve been using it less than before, but I will increase my time before the next test.

(BTW, "Truc Chouette" is one of my flashcards. I put that in here as a joke for all you French speakers.)

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Flashcards

No doubt about it, flashcards form the cornerstone of my efforts to learn French. As I wrote about here, they were central to my efforts to pass the Italian C2 test. I have reviewed many flashcards: at the time of this writing, I am approaching 1.9 million reviews across all languages and platforms.

If you want a little background on how this all works, here are the Wikipedia pages for spaced repetition, the forgetting curve, the testing effect, Anki, and Hermann Ebbinghaus.

Here's a video demo I made a few years ago showing how I study Italian with flashcards.

From the very start, I knew I would need to create my own flashcards, and I also thought I would try to download a pre-made deck of French vocabulary by frequency. That means a set of flashcards starting from the most common words up to less common words based on how often they show up in written texts. That deck has 13,000 sentences in it. Generally, I’m not a big fan of using other people’s flashcards. Still, I thought it might be worth a try to take advantage of someone else’s efforts, and save myself some time (isn't that what everyone thinks?).

The downloaded deck has numerous small errors in it, so I have to verify each card before I learn it. For example, one card is translated as, "He has a point," whereas DeepL says it’s really, "He's not completely wrong." The French version is, "Il n'a pas complètement tort."

It does have a fair number of idioms in the cards I have seen so far, and that is helpful. The audio is computer-generated, so it is a little unnatural. I have created additional cards from the downloaded deck, mostly cloze deletion cards for prepositions. Here’s an example:

Q: Attention ? chien !

A: au

One of the things I don’t like about the downloaded deck is, at least in the beginning, the sentences are all quite short and simple, which leads to a low information density, which in turn makes it harder for me to remember. Here’s an example from the deck:

This is my bag.

In this sentence we only have one noun, one possessive, and one verb in the present tense. Here’s my example of a high density card that provides a lot more information and learning points:

My sister’s large, brown bag had a small hole.

In my example, you have three nouns, three adjectives, two possessives, and a verb in the past tense. For me, it’s not much more work to remember my sentence, compared to the previous one, and it provides a lot more bang for the buck. That’s why I prefer to make my own cards, despite the far greater amount of work required.



Like Italian, I try to make all my French cards complete sentences, or at least phrases. I avoid single words when possible, because it’s harder to remember things without context.

In contrast to Italian, I notice I need far more cards in French, particularly for verb conjugations. In Italian, I would have all six conjugations on one card. In French, I have six different cards, each with audio (no audio on my Italian cards). Here’s what a verb flashcard looks like

in Italian:

Q: I, you, he, we, you, they: to live (passato remoto)

A: vissi, vivesti, visse, vivemmo, viveste, vissero

And in French:



Q: I believe

A: je crois [sound:pronunciation_fr_je_crois.mp3]



I use Reverso Conjugation and Forvo for those cards.

Since I usually have 300+ flashcards in the queue, it can take 40 or more days for new card to show up for the first time. That doesn’t help me when I’m trying to stay current with my Skype lessons, so I usually learn new cards in random order.

The problem with that system is it can happen that a new card will never show up, because I keep adding new ones. So to work around that problem, I alternate days: on odd-numbered days, I learn new cards in the order added. On even-numbered days, I learn new cards in random order. This is what it looks like:





One of the hardest things in French for me, besides pronunciation, is orthography. Don’t forget, one quarter of the test is writing, so I knew I would have to learn how to write correctly. While learning Italian, I relied on transcribing for writing practice.

However, after a few months of doing flashcards, I noticed my retention was pretty low. So, after 129 days of just answering the cards aloud, I switched to writing my answers down. My retention rate did go up, and so did the time it took me to finish every day. As you can see from the images below, it takes me about six seconds to answer a card in Italian, and ten seconds in Japanese, but in French, it’s about 15 seconds.

French:

Italian:

Japanese:

In the past I have enjoyed handwriting a lot, but I haven’t written much in the last few years. One issue is, what to write? Well, I have that issue solved. The funny thing about writing is, I just like to write: I don’t actually want to read what I’ve written. While doing flashcards, I correct the mistakes I make, but I don’t go back and look at what I wrote two or three days ago. Another issue is because I have maybe 110 cards to answer, I am trying to write as fast as possible. In the past, I would write more for pleasure and would often endeavor to write smoothly and with a certain amount of style. Now that’s out the window. It’s all about how fast can I write. Here’s what my flashcard answers look like:

(click to enlarge)

On the negative side, when I write my answers, I also say the words aloud. The consequence is I say these French sentences at my writing speed, which is much slower than normal conversation. So I’m not getting the same speaking benefit as when I try to answer aloud at normal speed. It’s a trade-off, but I think the increased retention from writing answers makes it worthwhile.

If I know the answer, I hit "Easy," which is number four in the statistics. (A quick overview: 1 = "Again," 2 = "Hard," 3 = "Good," and 4 = "Easy.") (For new cards, 1= "Again," 2 = "Good," and 3 = "Easy.") I’m trying to reduce my workload, something I started with my Italian deck a few years ago. By clicking "Easy" you will increase the interval before the card reappears, thus reducing your daily workload. In contrast, if I know the answer on my Japanese deck, I click "Hard," even if it was easy. I’m trying to repeat those cards as often as possible to increase retention, but I also only add 2 new items per day.





My accuracy has actually dropped on my Italian cards compared to a few years ago. Here are my Italian stats from the last 30 days:

I have an explanation for the lower accuracy: for one thing, the deck is very large (more than 25,000 cards), the cards are generally longer and more complicated, and the average interval is 3.8 years, meaning I haven’t seen the card for almost 4 years on average, and some I haven’t seen for maybe five or more years. Overall, I’m not too worried about it. I still get enough Italian practice.

In contrast, here are the last 30 days from my French deck:

And here are the last 30 days' statistiscs from the downloaded deck:

And for good measure, here are the last 30 days from the Japanese Core10k deck, showing how I usually click "2," or "Hard":

Looking at the mature (3 weeks or more since the last review) cards from these four decks, you'll notice I reviewed 2,015 Italian cards, 670 from my French deck, 217 from the downloaded French deck, and 349 from the Japanese Core10k deck in the last 30 days. This goes back to what I wrote above about the Italian stats dropping; there are just far more cards to review, and they are much older.

Here's a life-of-deck screen shot from my French deck from July, 2019 that shows the time difference when I switched to writing answers, as well as the increase in cards before the test in May:





Here are the same data from the downloaded French deck from July 2019:

Normally, I add seven new cards a day from my self-made French deck. Seven weeks before the exam, I increased that to 20 new cards per day. From the downloaded deck, I currently add three new items a day, but for the seven weeks before the test, I added just two new items per day. So in summation, I typically add 10 new items a day, but for seven weeks before the exam, I increased that to 22 items per day, and then four days before the exam, I dropped it down to just two items per day from my self-made deck.

While I didn’t take a screenshot of my statistics the day before the exam, I did jot down some information: I had 2,015 active cards (mostly sentences, not single words), and I had been studying my deck for 167 days, and the downloaded deck for 171 days. My maximum time doing flashcards in one day was one hour and 15 minutes.

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It’s best if you make your own flashcards (usually)

I understand the desire to download a pre-made deck and save yourself a ton of time. And, to be honest, there are a number of really excellent decks on the Anki website. Still, particularly for languages, I think it’s important to make your own decks. For that reason, I don't share my decks with other people.

The reason is the act of creating cards requires you to spend time with the language and to think about what you’re doing. I see it as a continuation of the learning process. I think all these systems you see about being able to make hundreds or thousands of cards automatically really don’t help that much in the final analysis.

Of course, for almost every rule, there are exceptions. I am thinking now about the legendary Core 10k Japanese deck. This deck has sentences using the 10,000 most common words from newspapers, if I’m not mistaken. It also has images and native speakers reciting the sentences. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to create this on your own. However, even with this deck, it doesn’t have all the things I want to learn in Japanese, so it’s a compromise.

I’ve made over 32,000 flashcards (so far), one at a time. Most of those (25k+) are for Italian, and most are complete sentences or phrases.

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People on the Internet seem to be obsessed with time/speed

When you read about people who learned a new language to a high level, the very first question people seem to pose is, "How long did it take you?" If your answer is six months, no one believes you. If your answer is 10 years, no one cares. If you say two years or so, people want to know how you did it. I presume the reason is they want to follow your method and reach the same goal in the same amount of time. Plus, people like to brag about how fast they reached a certain level. It seems to be some sort of unspoken competition.

I think this obsession with speed comes from modern life, and the fact that you can download an app for this or that and start using it immediately, or order something online and have it delivered the same or next day.

Unfortunately, learning a new language is not in the same category. It takes a great deal of time to reach a high level, even in an "easy" language. In my case, with regards to French, I am allotting six years to the process. I am not going to win any awards for speed, but I don’t care. I have other things to do, such as work on four other languages at the same time. My current plan is to take the second level French proficiency test next year, the third level the year after that, and so on. That plan could change, as life might get in the way.

For anyone reading this in the hope of finding "the secret" to instant fluency, you’re at the wrong address. This is more about how much I can learn with a limited amount of time.

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Sidebar for fountain pen, paper, and ink geeks

For those of you who like these things, my main pen is a Pelikan 800 series special edition called Blue O’ Blue, with an extra fine nib. I had this nib optimized by Classic Fountain Pens in Los Angeles. This is the same pen I used for the DELF exam. I use Pelikan Edelstein ink (Sapphire). For paper, I use a Rhodia Bloc number 18 with 80g paper when answering my flashcards.

For transcribing Assimil lessons, I use a Clairefontaine refill pad that’s 90g paper.

When I travel, I leave my fountain pen at home and use a blue Pilot G-207 gel pen, and I write in a Clairefontaine 8165C 90g notebook.

True geeks will have noticed that all my paper comes from France. Just a coincidence; I’ve been using this paper for years.

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Useless, but interesting, fact #4

French is the first language I tried learning where I actually visited the country a number of times before I started to learn the language. It’s kind of the opposite of what I’ve done in the past, which is study first, then visit. In the case of German, it was eight years of study before I first went to Germany. My last trip to France was the first time I attempted to speak French. Obviously, on my previous trips, I only used English, and a few words like "merci" and "bonjour."

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Test prep books

I bought two test prep books a few months before the exam. I found the one from CLE the better of the two, although I did many of the exercises in each. I did not do all the exercises, but I did find that both books were useful because they show the types of material you’re going to see on the exam. I did do all the listening exercises in both books, because they come with CDs. The writing exercises are the most difficult, because you need someone to correct your writing, and I did not do that for most exercises. Yes, I did do some writing exercises with my teacher before the exam, but most of that was me asking him how to say certain things, and he writing those sentences down, which I then turned into flashcards.

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Three weeks before the DELF A1 exam

Since the test center was at a university I had never visited, and I knew it was in a part of town with little or no street parking, I went down to check for parking and to find the rooms where the test would take place so I wouldn’t have to stress looking for them on test day.

Strangely enough for Germany, the instructions for the test made no mention about parking at university, so I sent an email to the organizer to ask where a nonstudent could park. He told me I could use the parking structure, and to just use the intercom to ask them to open the gate when I arrived on Friday. He said the gate is usually open on Saturday, because no one is in the office to answer the intercom. More about this later on.

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Here’s something I just don’t get





My oral exam was scheduled for Friday. I was supposed to have 10 minutes to prepare and the exam itself was to take 5 minutes. I had to come back again on Saturday to do the listening, reading, and writing tests, which were supposed to take about an hour and 20 minutes.



In contrast, the people who were taking the C level exams had 90 minutes of preparation time, plus 30 minutes of examination time, for total of two hours, followed by a break (the length depending upon when your oral exam was), and then in the afternoon, they had 3 ½ hours for the written exam. For the person who had the first oral exam, their day started at 8 AM and finished at 4:30 PM, for total of 8 ½ hours.

So here’s my question: why didn’t I have my short exam just on Saturday, and the people with the long exams have the orals on Friday and the written test on Saturday? I mean, wouldn’t it make more sense to break up an 8 ½ hour exam into two days, and to have my two hour exam only on one day? The result for me was I had to drive half an hour to the test center two days in a row, instead of just going once. I know that if I were taking a C level exam, I’d prefer to do it over two days. Instead, the shortest of all the exams is broken up into two days, while the longest exams are held on one day. It seems backwards to me.

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The test participants

For some reason, the registrar sent the participant list to each of us, so I was able to see how many people were taking each level. As it turned out, I was the only person taking an A-level exam. Three people took the B1 exam, and four people took the B2 exam. No one took the C2 exam, but there were 13 people signed up for the C1 exam, for a total of 21 test takers. As far as I can tell, seven of the participants were male, meaning two thirds of the test takers were female. I assume the reason there were so many at the C1 level is because that certificate is needed to study at some French universities, if I’m not mistaken.

The A1 exam cost me €60, while the C1 exam costs €120 for students, versus €155 for the general public.

Here's the schedule for the oral exams. The C1 exams were on Saturday; the others were on Friday:

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Arriving for the oral exam on Friday

I left the house early enough to give myself extra time to arrive at university in case there was a traffic jam or I had problems with parking. I found the parking structure, and just like the organizer had told me, I spoke to someone over the intercom and they opened the gate for me. So far so good. I was just a few minutes’ walk from the test room. I got there with time to spare, so I just waited in the hallway until it was my turn to go into the test prep room.

Even though I was the only person taking an A level exam, I was not the first for prepping for the oral exam; I was second. My prep time was supposed to be from 10:10 until 10:20. There was some confusion in the test prep room, and a lot of shuffling of papers and checking the list of attendees and IDs, and sorting the group according to the schedule. It was actually quite difficult to concentrate on preparing for the oral exam, as there were people coming and going in the front of the room and lots of talking going on.



The test documents are color coded by level. Mine were canary yellow.

The registrar fanned out a bunch of paper slips upside down so I couldn’t read them, then I had to randomly select six, on which were written the six words I would have to use in questions with the examiner. (Sample words: profession, university, work, restaurant, animal, cinema). I was then given a sheet with several scenarios for the role-playing exercise. I had perhaps a minute to glance through it and decide which scenario I wanted to use. This is actually quite stressful, because you’re standing in the middle of the registration area, with people talking & walking all around you, and the registration person just giving you seconds to glance through scenarios, then you have to make a decision.

They gave me a bunch of play money (bills, coins, and a credit card) which I would use during the role-play session to pay for my trip.

I then took a seat in the middle of the room and had 10 minutes to prepare my questions and review the scenario I’d chosen.

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Taking the oral exam

Finally, it was my time to take the oral exam. When I entered the room, I saw a woman about 50 years old who was smiling at me. I can’t explain why, but I just had an instant feeling this woman was there to make sure the test takers were successful and to make the experience a pleasant one. I also correctly guessed she wanted to have some fun. The first thing she said to me was, "Who are you?"

Now I’m not going to recommend that you do this, but what I said was, "I am the king." The woman laughed and asked if I were Louis XIV. That was my opening, and I was just about to let loose with the famous quote, "l’état, c’est moi," but all I got to say was "Yes," before she interrupted me with a question about whether or not it was okay to use first names during the test. Shucks! Foiled again!



She started off the exam with the typical small talk questions such as, "Where are you from?", "What do you do?", "Where do you live?", or "What do you do in your free time?" ("Study French, of course!" That made her laugh.) In retrospect, I think that after a minute or two of this small talk, she had already decided on my grade for the test. This is similar to my report about watching children take a swim test, which I wrote about here.

The French have a reputation for being rather talkative, and I would say that was the case here as well. I was surprised at how much talking she did compared to me. I had my six cards with words that I was supposed use in questions for her. I didn’t get through all of them, because apparently, she decided she had heard enough, and we could move onto the next section.

My examiner asked me a question that caused me to make a typical test-taker mistake: I tried to answer in a way that explained my actual view on the issue, instead of just giving a grammatically correct answer. The consequence was me staring out the window for what seem like an hour, racking my brain, trying to think of the vocabulary I needed to explain my thoughts. In reality, it was probably only six seconds until I realized I didn’t know the words I wanted to use, so instead, I just gave some kind of answer.

My advice? If you are asked, "Do you like chocolate?", you should just say, "Yes, I like chocolate very much. I eat it every day." What you don’t want to say is, "I used to eat a lot of chocolate, but then I started getting acne, and putting on a lot of weight, which exacerbated my diabetes, requiring me to increase my insulin injections." While the second answer may be more factual, it’s highly unlikely you’ll know all those words at my level of French. Note to self: next time, just answer the question in a way that shows you understood it, and forget about trying to be accurate. And don’t try to be funny or clever.

From the possibilities given to me during registration, I had chosen the trip to the travel agency to find out what activities were available in the area for myself and my family for the second part of the oral exam. I’d already picked the boat trip on the river as my preferred activity. The examiner played the role of the travel agent and we discussed the options for trips around the area.

During my prep time I noticed that the cost of the trip I was going to book would be €72. During the role-play, as we were finishing up, the woman asked me, "How much would that be?" Obviously she wanted to hear me say the number "72," which is a little complicated in French.

When it was time to pay, I thought I’d be clever again, and asked, "Can I pay with a credit card?" She said, "No, cash only." So I had to count out my toy money and give her exactly €72. I assume the purpose of this part of the exercise was to see if I recognized Euro bills and coins.

The woman conducting the test used my first name during the role-playing exercise, but soon corrected her mistake. I guess she forgot that she was supposed to be an employee at a travel agency.



I thought it be funny a second time (not a good idea during a test), so when she asked me what my child’s name was, I answered with her first name. She didn’t understand that I was trying to be funny, and thought I had misunderstood the question. Therefore, she asked me again "What’s your child’s name," so I told her I was only joking, then said, "Pierre," or something.

Even though the test was scheduled to last only 5 minutes, I was in there for about 10 minutes, maybe more. Just as I wrote about here after taking the Italian exam, while driving home, I thought of 10 or 15 great sentences I could’ve used during the oral exam. I just wish I would get those great ideas during the exam. However, in this case it didn’t matter, because I got a perfect score on this section. I know I made mistakes, so I can only attribute that score to surpassing extremely low expectations.

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Arriving for the written exam

First, here's the schedule for the written exam:

I went to the room where the written exam was to take place, and found a French student waiting there. He turned out to be the proctor. We spoke a little in German, and I noticed his German was not that good, especially for a university student. He said to me, "I understand there’s only one person taking the exam today." To which I replied, "Yes, that’s me." I guess he assumed I was some kind of university employee because of my age. He then wanted to speak to me in French (contrary to their reputation of speaking English to people who are poor in French). Under normal circumstances, I would have tried to speak to him in French for a bit, but I didn’t do that this time. I was trying to focus my attention on the upcoming test, and I didn’t want to be sidetracked by trying to remember different words in French in a conversation.

Unfortunately, there was only one administrator who had to give the instructions for all the test sessions, and since I was the only person in my level, I had to wait for him to arrive so he could tell me, in German, what to do on the test. That took all of about three minutes, including taking my telephone away. The best piece of information he gave me was, since I was the only person, I didn’t have to wait for anyone else to continue on from one section to the other. What this meant was, I could finish the test early and go home, which is what happened.

This is in stark contrast to the Japanese JLPT test, where everything is strictly regulated and you have to sit there and wait until the time is up, even if you finish 20 minutes ahead of everyone else. Every break and every section starts at the exact time indicated on the schedule.

The administrator handed me the canary yellow exam sheets, and the test began.

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The listening test

This section takes 20 minutes. There are four recordings. The first three are typical everyday situations, such as being invited to dinner by a friend, or a weather forecast. For the final section, you have to match images to the audio track.

When this section starts you have 30 seconds to read the questions before you hear the audio for the first time. The audio plays (30-50 seconds or so), and then you have 30 seconds to respond to the questions. You hear the audio a second time, and then you have another 30 seconds to reply.

Like the Italian tests, it appears there is always a voicemail, as well as a radio broadcast. The first three recordings have four questions each. Questions are a combination of multiple-choice (an image, a number, or words) or fill-in the blank.

Let’s say the first audio track is a voicemail of a friend inviting you to dinner. The first question might show three different images of restaurants (such as a bistro, an outdoor café, or formal dining), and you have to pick the one that corresponds to the voicemail. The second might be a question about what time we are going to meet (three choices), and the third a question about how much dinner will cost (fill-in the blank), and the fourth a question about who else will be there (fill-in the blank).



The fourth section has six images showing everyday situations, and you hear five short dialogues, about two minutes in total. You have to pick the picture that applies to each dialogue. For example, it might show two people standing at a bus stop, two people in an office, or two people in a supermarket. Obviously, there is one image too many, but it’s typically not too difficult to figure out which one doesn’t belong.

The listening test is where I made my single mistake. I still remember the question: "Where’s the sports department in the store?" Even though I heard the audio two times, I couldn’t figure out the answer. I had to write something in the blank (no multiple-choice on this one), so I just wrote "on the second floor," which was obviously wrong.

The CD player was loud, almost to the point of distortion. It’s funny how when you’re concentrated on trying to understand every single nuance of the audio track, you can get in your own way. I presume in a relaxed situation there would be no problem understanding what was said. When you’re in a test situation, you want to get the correct answer, and you know you can’t go back and ask, "What did you say?" So I think the natural tendency is to tense up, because you’re concentrating so hard.

My score on this section was 22/25.

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The reading comprehension test

This section has four parts, scheduled to last 30 minutes. Each exercise has five questions. There is usually some kind of email with an invitation and you have to answer questions such as when and where the party is, what to bring, etc.

There is usually some kind of map problem, where they tell you how to get to the party and you have to trace the route on the map. It will say something like, "When you come out of the Metro, take a left and go down this street, take the second street on the left and go down one street and turn right and the house is on the left," so you have to draw the route from the station to the house on the map on your answer sheet.



The other reading exercises are similar, where you read something like a flyer, ad, announcement, note, etc., then answer five questions like who sent the mail, where & when will we meet, etc. The questions are a combination of multiple choice (numbers, words, or images) and blank spaces in which you have to write the correct answer.

My score here was 25/25.

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The writing test





The last section is writing, and is also scheduled to last 30 minutes. There are two parts, and the first is very simple. The first part is filling out a form with your name, address, date of birth, etc. On this day, they asked for your nationality, which is a semi-trick question, because nationality is always feminine in French, and telephone numbers are written in a specific way. I had practiced all of this in advance, so it was a snap.

For the second section you have to write at least 40 words. In my case I had to write an email to a friend to invite him or her to go with me on vacation. I used scratch paper to write down my ideas and make corrections, which actually took the longest time of the whole test. I was trying to think of grammatically correct sentences and counting the words to make sure I reached the minimum of 40. In addition, there are certain points you have to include in your writing. For me, they were when you were leaving, where you were going, and what you would be doing on vacation. I counted my words three times and I believe the total was 54. I had to write my word count on the answer sheet.

My score here was also 25/25.

Obviously, the listening test is fixed in length, but I could go at my own pace for the other two sections. Even though they were scheduled for an hour, I finished in 20 minutes. I guess that shows how easy it was.

With that, I was done and out the door.

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Six weeks after the test, the results arrived by e-mail



I was feeling pretty good after the test, so I wasn’t worried about passing, but was curious about my score. As it turns out, it appears I made just one mistake on the listening test. My score was 97/100. Boy, it felt good to crush a test instead of being crushed by a test, as happened to me the last three times with Japanese. Sure, A1 is a test of basic knowledge, but a win’s a win. I’ll take it.

(Click to enlarge)

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And then we went to France

We’ve been to France a number of times in the past, but this was the first trip where I actually attempted to speak some French. Going in, I knew my major issue would be pronunciation, since that seems to be the area that gives me the most trouble with French. And so it was.

Here’s an (exaggerated) example of what I mean:

French person: (garbled language) drink?



Me: I’d like some water, please.



FP: What?



Me: Some water



FP: (confused look)



Me: (making a drinking motion with my hand)



FP: Oh, you want some water.



Me: Yes, that’s it. What did I say?



FP: You said water, but it’s pronounced water.



Me: Water.



FP: No, it’s water, not water.



Me: (confused look)



Many people who have learned a new language have come across this phenomenon: you think you are pronouncing exactly what you heard, but that’s not what the native speakers hear. In turn, when they pronounce the word, you are unable to hear the difference between what they say and what you say. It all sounds the same, but of course it’s not the same to native speakers.

The French have a reputation for not tolerating people who speak French poorly, but that was not my experience on this trip. Granted, we were far off the beaten track in southern France, so we were not in areas frequently visited by many tourists. Of the dozens of interactions we had, only three times did a French person switch to English when we didn’t understand. The first two times were at a hotel and a restaurant in Millau, and the third time was at a hotel near Dijon. Surprisingly for me, even when I struggled with French, in most cases, the French person didn’t switch to English, which leads me to believe they actually didn’t know much English, or they preferred to speak French.

We did spend time with people who spoke excellent English, and had some great conversations with them (in English). In those cases, I think people were genuinely curious about where we were from, what we thought about France, etc.

I also notice that my restaurant vocabulary was lacking. Those of you who have been to France know that you will see things on the menu that you cannot decipher. You’d have to be a serious foodie to know what these mean, for example:



Rôti de porc Montmorency



Pommes de terre Alphonse



Médaillon de veau Villeroy



Entrecôte double Henri IV

Sure, you might recognize that it’s pork or veal, but how is it prepared?

Fortunately we have the Internet, and we were able to look at the menus before we went to the restaurant and look up the words we didn’t know, so when we got the restaurant we could order with confidence. We still have this book from the year 1982 which we could use to look up unknown items:



As a result of this trip, I decided to get a tourist phrasebook and memorize all the sentences I didn’t know on the last trip. This is the book I got:

Every few weeks I’ll make a few flashcards from this book.

Another issue that happens when you’re on trip is your interactions with most people, such as servers in a restaurant or hotel personnel, are very brief. That means you have no warm-up before you speak, so you have to be ready with set phrases because the other person is working, and they don’t have time to wait for you to remember what you want to say. I noticed that I was not very confident with those set phrases because I had little practice with them before this trip.

It became clear to me that I had learned a lot of sentences with the word "I," but I was not as fluent with verbs using the conjugation "we." It took me longer to remember the correct forms for different verbs.

On this trip I heard the dreaded compliment (in English), "Your French is quite good." To which I replied (in French), "I wish it were true." This is a sentence I learned right away, as it is more than a polite refusal: since it contains both the conditional and the subjunctive, which are aspects of the language one learns at a higher level, it shows some advanced knowledge.

As some of you may know, when you are complimented on your language abilities at my level, it often means you stink. It’s really just a pleasantry people say, like to little kids, to be polite. When you’re really good, people pay little attention to your language because they are concentrated on your message and wanting to respond to what you say. When you are very, very good, people will make fun of you when you make a mistake. So typically, receiving compliments on your A1 language abilities means you’re really still a "débutant."

I did not use the subjunctive mood or the imperfect tense on this trip. As I wrote, it would have been better to have expanded my vocabulary in the food department, a shortcoming I am working on daily. Hopefully things will be much easier the next trip.

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Useless, but interesting, fact #5

This is the first time I’ve started to learn a language without any formal classes in a traditional setting, with the teacher standing up in front of the classroom and the students sitting at tables or desks.

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There are advantages & disadvantages to having a spouse who studied French for six years in school at a young age



P. had French classes in school starting at the age of about nine. Consequently, her pronunciation is much better than mine, a fact that is frequently brought to my attention. Some of you may know that Germans are famous for correcting other people. Apparently, it’s genetic.

However, sometimes her memory fails her. We had a recent "interaction" about the correct way to pronounce "eggs" and "oxen" in French. My teacher had told me the correct way, but my live-in expert disagreed with me. Fortunately for me, Google Translate saved the day.

She also profited from the phenomenon of not being the one who has to answer while we were in France. It’s like in school: when the teacher calls on another student in class, you always know the answer. When the teacher calls on you, you suddenly have brain freeze, and you can’t remember anything. The same is true with us: P. is not on the hook to answer, so she has an easier time understanding what people are saying. I am the one trying to process what I’ve heard, and come up with a cogent answer.

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About three weeks shy of six months after the test, my certificate arrived at the university

Once again, disregarding all privacy rules, the email announcing the certificates were ready to be picked up at the university went out to all who passed. I could therefore see that only eight out of the 21 participants were going to get a certificate, which works out to a 38% pass rate for this group.

As you might imagine, the pass rate on the C1 exam was the worst: only three out of the 13 participants passed. On the B2 exam, three out of four passed, and for B1 two out of three passed.

While the French are certainly faster than the Italians (one year) in sending the certificates, they are far slower than the Germans (one month). I also find it interesting that they told us to come and pick up the certificates, as opposed to mailing them directly to us. To have my certificate mailed to me, I had to send the university postage stamps with the value of €1.55. It appears postage is not included in the test fee. That’s a new one for me. I still had to wait two more weeks to receive the cert, as the admin person was on vacation. This being Europe, her work just piles up until she returns.

(Click to enlarge)

I have registered to take the DELF A2 test in February 2020.

You can read about my experiences with the Italian C2 test here, and the German C2 test here. Here’s a page where I compare the two exams, and why I consider the Italian test more rigorous.

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