DILF, DELF being stongly promoted

WildRover234

Just arrived in France and found brochures (in English, Turkish, Arabic, etc) being pushed to foreigners for the DILF and DELF

DILF - Diplôme initial de langue française - un nouveau diplôme de langue française pour les premiers apprentissages

DELF - Diplôme d'étude de langue française
more advanced French

There's a freephone number 0800 970 669

Like everything else in France, the idea is great but the execution is complicated (sigh...)

http://www.ciep.fr/dilf/presentation.php

Just thought I'd mention it in case there's anyone looking at the French forum because they are thinking of moving to France.

gaf1983

Has anybody taken either of these exams? I studied French as a minor module in college, am quite tempted to sit one of them, do you think it would be worthwhile?

WildRover234

gaf1983 wrote: »

Has anybody taken either of these exams? I studied French as a minor module in college, am quite tempted to sit one of them, do you think it would be worthwhile?

DILF is the very easiest level - you should have not problem passing the exam straight away.

There no less that 5 levels of DELF. You'll need to revise your oral French before progressing to these levels. If you studied French in college, you're probably good enough for DELF as well.

I'd guess you'd need to completely fluent for the two highests level - the DALF.

One interesting point - you can start anywhere on the scale.

Started DELF years ago and did the first two.

The oral examiner complimented me on having good French for an Anglo-Saxon.

I think I got a few extra marks for making her feel bad by pointing out I am not Anglo-Saxon.

Edit: as to the question - I suppose it would be useful to be able to put on a CV.
Having a minor in it would be an equal sign though for most purposes.

Having the exams would be useful if you wanted to go for jobs that specify fluency in a second language.

WildRover234

Deleted User wrote: »

I think I got a few extra marks for making her feel bad by pointing out I am not Anglo-Saxon.

I've already been called an Anglo-Saxon a few times. The French seem to ues it for "someone from he English-speaking world". I have told them in no uncertain terms that it's offensive to call an Irish person "anglo" anything unless the person is actually Anglo-Irish.

I have found that the French know very little about Ireland - they certainly learn almost nothing about Ireland in school.

Ginkgo

Je vais bientôt passer l'examen DELF B1. Est ce que quelqu'un l'a déjà passé? Avez vous des conseils du dernière minute? Quant à la compréhension orale, est-qu'on entend les extraits deux fois et y a-t-il des pauses? Merci.

Ginkgo

Ginkgo wrote: »

Je vais bientôt passer l'examen DELF B1. Est ce que quelqu'un l'a déjà passé? Avez vous des conseils du dernière minute? Quant à la compréhension orale, est-qu'on entend les extraits deux fois et y a-t-il des pauses? Merci.

Je ne souviens pas - ca fait -mon dieu - 9 ans que je l'ai fait.

I really need to practice my French.

Ginkgo

Ginkgo wrote: »

Je vais bientôt passer l'examen DELF B1. Est ce que quelqu'un l'a déjà passé? Avez vous des conseils du dernière minute? Quant à la compréhension orale, est-qu'on entend les extraits deux fois et y a-t-il des pauses? Merci.

Je réponds à mes propres questions. Voir http://www.ciep.fr/delfdalf/documents/DELF_B1.pdf. D'après ce que j'ai lu, il y a deux écoutes et il y aura des pauses après mais pas pendant les extraits. Espérons que ça va me suffire.

WildRover234

Ginkgo wrote: »

Je réponds à mes propres questions. Voir http://www.ciep.fr/delfdalf/documents/DELF_B1.pdf. D'après ce que j'ai lu, il y a deux écoutes et il y aura des pauses après mais pas pendant les extraits. Espérons que ça va me suffire.

Let us know how you got on ... and what the test was really like!

Ginkgo

It definitely wasn’t a walk in the park. There are four parts to the exam: listening comprehension, reading comprehension, writing and speaking. I found the listening and speaking parts the most difficult but a lot of my difficulty was due to poor exam strategy. There are three unrelated extracts in the listening part. In hindsight, I wish I’d written the answers faster. I wound up being short of time between the clips. It’s really important to read all the questions before the clip starts. I didn’t get to do that so I was reading and listening at the same time. The language in the extracts wasn’t that difficult but I made things difficult for myself by multitasking. The topic in the writing test was fine so it wasn’t hard to think of things to write. I found the oral difficult. Again there are 3 parts: talk about yourself, unprepared role play between you and the examiner and you get ten minutes to prepare for the last part where you have to argue a point of view.

I hadn’t been doing classes in the run up to this exam so maybe I was at a disadvantage. Doing the exam is motivating. It made me practise writing in French which is something I tended to avoid as I found it difficult. Now that the exam is done, I can get back to enjoying French.

unreggd

Zombie thread

Does anyone know if you can do these exams in Dublin?

keepkeyyellow

unreggd wrote: »

Zombie thread

Does anyone know if you can do these exams in Dublin?

Yes with Alliance Francaise.

unreggd

Cheers!