It’s Saturday here in Montpellier where I have been learning French for the last 5 months and I have just rounded off my first week of DALF C1 exam preparation in France. Since I started my intensive French immersion course for adults I have been toying with the idea of doing the DALF C1 preparation course, I have met and talked to many people who were doing it. We discussed the benefits of getting this official qualification and how it compared to just learning the less formal forms of French as well as the difficulty of the course and the time frame available to those who want to take it.
This last point is what made me think that it would be a shame if I didn’t take this opportunity to do it during my French language stay in Montpellier. I have a bit more of a flexible situation here than a lot of the other students as I have managed to find a job and I have a lot of free time now before I head home in September. April has just started here in the South of France and the Easter festivities have come to an end. I went on a charity Easter egg hunt with the charity Secours Populaire Français which was really good fun and great to see so many happy kids getting wrapped up in the fun. The chocolate of course was great too but now it’s back in the gym and back to the mission of learning French in France. Seeing as though I had roughly four or five months left in Montpellier I thought that I had the time to take on the big one; the DALF C1, yes of course there is the DALF C2 but from talking to the professors at the school this seemed a bit unnecessary for me. There are plenty of instances where you can use the DALF C2 qualifications but it is rarely a requirement unless you’re doing something like teaching French and even then, you will probably do some other qualifications such as university study that will supersede it. Still this didn’t stop my competitive nerves tingling, the more I was told how rare the DALF C2 qualification was the more I imagined how awesome it would be to have.
Managing Expectations For Learning French in France
I started picturing interviews for some big international company based in Paris where I walked in and the interviewer would scan down my CV and stopped shocked at seeing the DALF C2 and give me the job right then and there with a pay rise. Despite passing a few delightful hours drowning in a deluge of delusion I finally came back down to earth. The DALF C2 requires a lot of time, a lot of time indeed. Also, the likely hood of getting a good grade is lower and the prestige of the qualification could be undone by my performance. The choice is not so simple, having a 50% mark on a DALF C2 exam in a year’s time or having an 80% mark on a DALF C1 in a few months has a lot of pros and cons for both sides that you need to weigh up. Of course, for those of you who have the time and the discipline to go for the DALF C2 absolutely go for it. The doors this specialist knowledge will open up for you are not to be disregarded, even if it’s just knowing French better than the average French person.
For my personal situation, the DALF C1 was still a challenge with the time I have left and it is more than sufficient for what I want to use it for in the future. I’m also starting a tiny bit before I’m ready I feel, especially after looking at the syllabus and working through the exercises for the first week. They are understandable to me but with the DALF it’s not just understanding the information it is being able to play with and manipulate it to reshape and restructure it into a form useful to you for the question such as to put forth an argument for example.
Still though I am excited about this next part of my journey of learning French in Montpellier and my new class mates on the DALF C1 preparation course in France and myself are eager to dive in so it’s time to get back to work!
Ian, EasyFrench student