Some people love to quantify everything. There is an app for measuring almost anything you can think of. It is not different with languages, but how do you distinguish a person knowing 72% of the French from a person on 74th percentile? Here, the CEFR comes to help with their guidelines of six different thresholds with each their own competences and characteristics. We have two beginner levels (A1 and A2), two intermediate ones (B1, B2) and finally two advanced ones — C1 and C2. The last ones requires you to wield a language quite well and to have reached a native level in different aspects of the language. In order to tell for sure which category you fall into, you may want to go through an official examination that will certify your language level. Each language has its own certification, but I will focus on the French one and how to pass it at the DALF C1 level.

But why would you want to do that? This certificate is just a piece of paper saying something you already (hopefully) know — that you are an advanced user of French. You may believe that they are just a waste of effort and money and what really matters are the real skills and knowledge. You will have a point, though your future employer or the French university you would love to get into, may have a different opinion. In addition, it is a valuable litmus test to pinpoint your level. It provides an excellent, measurable goal for language learning and it nicely goes into the all-popular trend of achievement gamification. I have chosen to embark on the journey to attain this goal to improve my French and go out of the learning stall I experienced in the past years. Whether you have decided to aim for the same goal or just want to get to know more about productive learning — I will share my plans with you.

Attaining the elusive advanced level

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Language learning is a difficult and long process. There are many aspects to it — learning new vocabulary, new grammar, new accents and pronouncing weird sounds that are nowhere to be found in your own language. Each of them requires different preparation and activities. Getting to B2 in any language is quite an achievement already, as that means you know the language well enough to understand a lot of everyday media content — TV, newspapers and maybe some podcasts. You may require a bit more practice and knowledge to be able to have a more meaningful conversation on the topic of your expertise without much difficulty, though. For anyone who also wants to push through to the C1 level, I hope the strategy that I am applying will serve as an inspiration to take and adjust it to your needs and complete the challenge you have posed to yourself.

Before I dive into the methods I use, though, I would like to divulge my background a little bit. I finished my middle school and high school in a bilingual program, meaning I had 6 hours of French a week for 6 years of my life. Some of the normal subjects, such as maths or chemistry were partially taught in French, too. The only thing my school’s approach to teaching did was to make me hate it – I refused to learn a word more than necessary. It took me a year and a half to recover from ineffectitve school lessons filled with grammar exercises and endless word lists and to begin learning again, this time with a different approach and a goal of my own. I’ve reached a plateau at B2, learning on and off, forgetting and then learning again. In spite of years spent in formal and informal French classes, I never actually felt ‘comfortable’ with the language — there was a fear of speaking, words elapsing and sentences uttered just a bit too quickly to graps their meaning. I still think it is a very useful language to know, especially considering all the hours I’ve already put into it, meaning I am not starting from a scratch. This certification should give me both the confidence and practice necessary for that.

The first part of the article will cover the passive skills — listening and reading -as going over all the competences would take too much. Stay tuned for the second part, but until then, let us begin with my strategy a.k.a fight plan to tackle and conquer the first two parts of the exam.

What does the DALF C1 look like?

Now, to the point — what you will have to go through before you get that shiny piece of paper? A four-part examination consisting of listening, speaking, reading and writing tasks. Each part is worth 25 points, totalling at a 100, of which you will need to score at least 50 overall and not less than 5 per part to pass. In both writing and speaking, you can choose between two fields — humanities and social studies or science — to base your examination on. The total duration of the test is 4 hours, although the speaking part is on a different day than the rest, so keep in mind that DALF will occupy you for two separate days. Before you can take it, you have to enrolland pay a fee (In 2019, the fee is 150 GBP in UK). You can check prices and download the syllabus on the official UK site or search for one of your appropriate country of residence.

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After you’ve enrolled and written down the date in a calendar, you should plan your preparation. The process will probably not differ from progressing your language skills as though you didn’t have an exam coming. Surely, you can just join an exam-oriented group class or buy books that are designed to get you through the necessary knowledge. With the blessing of internet, we do have a lot of resources that are free or very cheap and, as a person who believes in the democratization of education by the means of the internet, I am assembling this guide using mostly free resources, focusing on materials intended for a native audience. This is not to discourage you from attending classes or buying specialistic books — you can as welltreat it as a guide of how to improve the techniques of studying in between the lessons. The key to getting a hold of a language is sheer consistence and perserveance. We all have different commitment in our lives, and the time spent learning should be give us the most possible results. If we focus only on some parts of the language, we may miss out on some of its aspects and our skillset won’t be so well-rounded or we will take twice as much time learning as we could have if we did it in a more efficient way.

Listening — learning to understand

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Let’s start with understanding the spoken word. During DALF you are going to be faced with two tasks — one longer audio, which is heard twice with many multi-choice and open questions on its content and then one shorter one heard once to gauge the reaction to spoken word without larger context. To hone this skill, I decided to make use of podcasts, choosing longer ones in order to get accustomed to native language spoken freely without structure, usually exploring the topics that are of particular interest to me, but also finding ones that will treat subjects unfamiliar to me. Anything that is is intended for a native audience will be really beneficial. Additionally, I make sure I listen to materials coming from different French-speaking parts of the world.

Other media that is very helpful to elevate your French audio processing power is YouTube. As one of the sites with the most traffic in the world, it is full of different kind of content. All you have to do is to search for interesting topics and you’ll find a plethora of good resources that will allow you to listen to French that is spoken fast and in a natural way. If you’re brave enough, you can try to look for some academic topic that you are mildly familiar with and kill two birds with one stone — broaden your knowledge of the world and prepare for understanding of the audio proposed by the exam.

Then, a very good exercise to do is to take audio in French and then do the ‘reverse-exam’ — think of listening comprehension questions pertaining to the audio that you could ask a person. This way, you learn to look for key facts and Get into the mindset of the examiner making the questions, which may become handy especially during the exam itself.

As last thing, is worth to practice by going through the listening part in the past runs of the exam. There is nothing worse than being surprised on the day of the exam. It’s important not only to understand spoken French at this level, but also to know what information to look for, how to take notes and how to manage time when responding to questions on the sheet. You need to familiarise yourself with the format of the test and get plenty of practice with the mock exams before throwing yourself into the real one.

Monthly to-do:

Listen to a podcast 3 times a week, at least one of which is an hour-long one (this can done primarily as a background activity while doing some low-effort jobs) The ones I listen to are those Belgian ones and a French tech one.

Every other week do at least one graded exercice either from past exams or found online by the C1 tag

Watch youtube or any other content in French for your pleasure (I am watching my favorite childhood cartoon, Code Lyoko)

Reading — getting the gist of the sea of words

Reading has always been the easiest skill for me to acquire for any language and many people with whom I attended language classes felt the same. At the level when you’re aspiring for C1, you can easily understand most of the articles in major French newspapers and on the internet. To further improve it is beneficial to read those articles that are longer and are on a specific topic, presenting a phenomenon in detail and then also providing the author’s opinion on that. Such articles can be found in the majority of popular-science magazines. For the purpose of gaining access to many newspaper issues, I can wholeheartedly endrose leKiosk, which for 10 EUR a month will give you unlimited digital access to their whole library of magazines in French, English and Italian. I aim to read at least 3 articles a week, which should be reasonable for anyone with some spare time during their work commute as you can download the articles to your phone or tablet and read them regardless of internet connction. It is an excellent way to get used to regular contact with the language, and you get exposed to words in natural constructions at the same time. Just write down the words with their meanings for including them in your flashcard set later and you will quickly find yourself building your vocabulary over time.

Another good resource for improving your understanding of long texts are books. Once I finished slowly reading through my first book in English, I felt I really had improved atthe language and it was a great milestone for me. I am convinced that it can prove to be the case with the French language as well. I recommend following it only if you find pleasure in reading — when you find it is fun and you are engaged in the story, your focus will be greater and you will remember more afterwards.