In our first blog post we introduced the idea that preparing for a DELF, DALF, or TCF oral comprehension and speaking exam can be approached in a common way. Your time is valuable and in reality; you will never stop learning French as a second language. Many students struggle with passing their oral exam because they fail to spend their time wisely and they focus on the wrong tasks or they go too deep into only one topic.
Your goal should be to not try and memorize a specific list of questions that were handed down to you from a friend or some download that you found in a Reddit group. Instead, you need to realize that there are a common set of French oral evaluation question types that can be classified into at least seven categories.
- Getting up close and personal (present)Â
- One or many (singular vs plural)Â
- Let me tell you what I think (opinion)Â
- Yes, but on one condition (conditions)Â
- For better or worse (comparison)Â
- Tomorrow is another day (future)Â
- Give me one more chance (retrospective)Â
In this blog post, we will emphasis the first category out of the list of seven – “Une Question Personnelle”. This line of questioning is typically used by the French exam evaluator in the early stages of an oral exam and can be used as a warm-up or échauffement. For instance, a common question could be – <<Comment vous portez-vous ? >>. This line of questioning is direct and asking you to provide your opinion regarding a selected subject, describe your own experience related to an event, or simply speak about yourself.
Often a French exam evaluator will pose a question which will include vous or votre as the keyword to indicate that the question asking you for a direct response. The evaluator may also invert the pronoun and the verb into a question format, which will indicate them if you have advanced beyond a level A.
Within this blog post series we will also help you to not only identify direct questions, but also to provide the evaluator a response that demonstrates your comprehension of the question. The preceding cheat sheet is a summary from Phase 3: Le Conseil in our DELF, DALF, TCF, TEF French Oral Exam Study Series. The cheat sheet shows that the direct style of question can use a response that includes the following options: Je suis, Je crois que, Selon moi, Dans ce cas, and Je voudrais. This list is just a sample to help you identify how to develop a logical response for a direct question. A key point to remember is that your response should match the phrase used in the question, such that a question including Selon vous should see you use Selon moi in the response.
Review the list of questions listed in the cheat sheet and try to create a list of ten more questions to help you reinforce the tips that we shared.
“If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail!”
— Benjamin Franklin
Don’t forget to track your progress and update your Personal Learning Plan. You can pre-order your copy of our French Oral Exam Learning Plan to help you reuse our template and recommended approach to incrementally build upon your foundational knowledge.
Take control of your learning strategy and be ready for your DELF, DALF, or TCF French oral evaluation.
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- Getting up close and personal (present)Â
- One or many (singular vs plural)Â
- Let me tell you what I think (opinion)Â
- Yes, but on one condition (conditions)Â
- For better or worse (comparison)Â
- Tomorrow is another day (future)Â
- Give me one more chance (retrospective)Â
REVIEW THE INTRODUCTORY POST / READ NEXT POST IN THE SERIES