I started studying French (TL) on January 29th and took the DELF B2 exam on June 10th. I just found out today that I passed with 82.5/100!
First off, woo!
I’m going to add a lot of disclaimers to this, but I’d be lying if I didn’t disclose that part of this post is wanting to share this success with other people that actually understand just what a big thing it is to go from A1 to B2 in that span of time.
Now for the disclaimers: I almost definitely couldn’t have done this without the foundation of knowledge that I already had in linguistics, adult learning, sports psychology (surprisingly relevant to language learning), and fluency in a related language (Spanish). I also was in a low period at work and had more free time on my hands than the average working adult. Learning a foreign language for the first time was a slow and at times painful process for me. Doing it a second time was just straight up fun.
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As a brief backstory, I found out that I could have a shot at a dream job if I spoke French.
I’ve been studying languages for a long time, and I always suspected that if I threw all of my knowledge and discipline into it that I could become proficient in a new language pretty quickly. I had wanted to try it forever just to see what I was capable of, but lacked the motivation to try hard at any one specific language. Enter potential dream job, and I knew I was ready to prove myself.
I started studying at the end of January from almost zero (other than one middle school French class over 20 years ago) with a plan to build myself the language boot-camp of my dreams and take the DELF after at least 6 months. The only DELF exams available in my area were in either early June or December, so I decided to try for June knowing that it was an absolute longshot but excited to give it everything I had. I am still pretty dumbfounded that I pulled it off.
The methods were things I've cultivated over several years that I know work very well for me personally and help me stay consistent and engaged in the process. I won’t get into all of it here as I would start rambling and it would be an extremely long post, but I did have one takeaway from the experience that I wanted to share.
I would say that while I think I earned that B2 and feel it accurately reflects my abilities when I’m at my best, I currently only speak fair-weather French. To provide a little more context: I am certified C1 in Spanish, and my Spanish is absolutely bomb-proof. I can speak (and have spoken) Spanish when I am utterly exhausted and starving and stressed and my brain is barely functional and the other person has a weird accent. My Spanish has been tried and tested through hell and high water and has come out absolutely rock solid for all of the effort. That’s not to say it’s perfect, but I know I can hold my own.
Conversely, my French is only good when I’m speaking to a familiar person in a familiar setting without any curveballs thrown in. My speaking abilities are one unexpected inconvenience away from collapsing significantly. No matter how quickly you learn a language, I’m not really sure that you can rush this part of the process. It seems like building an all-terrain language ability is dependent on layers upon layers of novel experiences that can only be accumulated with time, patience, and perseverance. So even though I have the B2 certificate, I still feel like a complete novice in terms of language resiliency, and am not feeling quite ready to apply for that dream job yet.
Thanks for sticking around if you read the whole thing, and let me know your thoughts or if you have had any similar experiences!
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