It’s been a year since mymy one year studying French post that I made so it’s time to see how much progress I made. I usually made an update post every 2 months or so on my how I’d been doing. Over the course of the year I posted random posts every #FrenchFriday with random things I had encountered in my journey, mostly things I used to practice whether it was songs, apps or random cultural things I was doing or immersing myself in, an archive can be found here.
I got some criticism with my original post since I wasn’t starting from 0 and even though I mention on that post that I was an intermediate level I guess what I meant to say is that I was not a beginner, more of an “advanced beginner” or very early intermediate level and I had hit a wall for a long time now. The purpose of my challenge was to see how much better I could get by really focusing and prioritizing my learning in one year. You can read the improvements i made over the year in the other progress reports I made as well as the walls that I hit which happened a few times.
Overall I think I had an overoptimistic idea of how much I could improve, thinking I could get to B2 level easily but I just couldn’t focus as much on French as I needed to achieve that goal. This really made me less focused as I saw that I couldn’t achieve it early on but I kept going and that was the best thing I could have done. Because of that perseverance I was able to improve a lot in this year even if I didn’t reach that B2 level goal. I’d argue that I’m very close to a B1 level or at that. I took a 4 different classes over the year and practiced most of my days with apps. I tried doing as many French activities as I could in my free time even if sometimes I couldn’t dedicate as much time as I wanted. I did earn a certificate for a “speaking” course I took and another for a reading course which I’m happy for as I improved a lot on both skills.
I learned a lot of vocabulary and realize I still need to learn a lot more which is a priority. I also know that I need to practice grammar more as it’s something I didn’t put as much emphasis as I would’ve liked. My listening improved a lot but I still can’t understand a movie without subtitles. I’m already happy with the level I’ve acquired but I realize I still have a lot of work to do to achieve a B2 level and I’ll continue until I achieve it. As to what’s next for me I’ll be taking more courses in real life and online and see where I am a year from now. I loved that blogging every Friday about French forced me to study a little bit so I’ll continue that as well.
My original idea to continue this next year is to only write in French from now on but since then I’ve decided against it. I still have lots of stuff I’d like to share with other French learners who might want to read articles in English such as reviews but also because I don’t think my French is good enough to be able to write good content every Friday in French but I’ll try to aim a biweekly post in French alternating with a French related post in English. I know my posts will include mistakes but that will help me seek out mistakes and learn from them. I’d like to thank those few of you who stuck with me and given me motivation, I realize completely I have so much more to do but I can say I’m happy with my learning over the past year, overall I’d say I was somewhat successful in my mission because of it even if I didn’t learn it to the level that I wanted. Let’s see where the next year will take me.
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