I was finally able to get the one-on-one french training started last week (some long delays due to administrative inertia followed by a few weeks of figuring it out with the new approach to delivery followed by a mixup that delayed me two more weeks), and the first week went about as I expected. I’m pretty rusty, my pronunciation is off (too anglo-sounding for some of the words), and I’m not using enough “mots liens” (linking words) to give myself a good structure. I have confirmed however that my three strengths remain — large vocabulary (with good retention), good flow (“mon debit”) and willingness to speak / elaborate. Lots of people trying for their “C” levels in government have blocks to their progression — some speak in stutter-steps i.e. start and stop, start and stop, start and stop as they search for words and structure; some have limited vocabulary specific to a work area, for example, and have trouble going beyond to talk about stories from their past; or some have both of the first two and combine it with a general inability or unwillingness to elaborate to say anything other than short answers.

I have never had a problem to speak in English, nor to elaborate, and as a result, those aren’t my blockages. Nor is my vocabulary, although when I go too far afield, I do run into more places where a really good word would work if only I knew what the translation was. Earlier this week, I got talking about computers, my first introduction to them, a course I had helped teach back in the day, and suddenly I was trying to describe the work of one of the mature students in response to a simple question of how they were adjusting and adapting their work knowledge to learning wordprocessing. What was the word I was missing? Typewriter. Sure, I could say “appareil/machine pour taper les lettres” but not exactly what I was looking for…nor was there much chance of my coming up with dactylographie on the fly.

So I have my written exam in a couple of weeks and I’m not too worried about it. I know I’m closer to B than C, but I think I have enough structure to get my B again (the practice exams say yes). The downside however is that my french oral exam is set for May 10th. Which means almost 7 weeks from the time I finish my oral training until I take my test. I’ll have to figure out something a little closer to the test, but this will keep me going for awhile. And I have a good template for my daily review / tracking of progress, the A to Z of my prep process: