Meet your goals / Atteindre vos objectifs
Having a personal learning plan is an important step in helping anyone achieve their goals. In this TeachableSkills.com article, we give you the impetus to start preparing a personal learning plan to improve your French communication skills and increase your chances of passing the DALF C1 French exam.
Avoir un plan d’apprentissage personnel est une étape importante pour aider toute personne à atteindre ses objectifs. Dans cet article de TeachableSkills.com, nous vous donnons l’élan nécessaire pour commencer à préparer un plan d’apprentissage personnel afin d’améliorer vos compétences en communication en français et d’augmenter vos chances de réussite à l’examen de français DALF C1.
What is a DALF C1 Personal Learning Plan / Qu’est-ce que c’est ?
In previous posts, we have communicated the importance of defining a personal learning plan to help you state your your goals, identify what you need to do improve your skills, and the most important step — track your progress. In a nutshell, the learning plan is your blueprint to success. A personal learning plan is personal to you as the individual learner, and it reflects your strengths and weaknesses as they are today, however the personal learning plan also outlines how you intend on putting effort into reducing or eliminating your weaknesses and putting them into the strength column.
Let’s take a non French example as an analogy to help illustrate the concept so that the idea may be universally understood. Imagine that you are living on your own for the very first time and you are renting a flat / apartment / room where you are the only person accountable for cooking. After you have exhausted your finances on take-away / take-out / ordering-out at the local restaurants, then you may realize that if you cook your own food it can give you several benefits, such as: you may save money, it may be healthier, it may be more fun, it may offer a chance to invite friends to visit, etc.. Therefore, your first goal is – Learn How To Cook. How would you go about learning how to cook? For my part, I would think about what specific meals do I want to learn how to cook. I would then consult several experts in order to define what I need to learn in order to cook the meals that I have identified.
Just a minute, do I even have the pots, the pans, the utensils, salt, pepper, garlic, olive oil, or any of the foundational items that I need in my pantry / kitchen / cooking space? If not, then let’s invest time and energy in having the common foundational elements that are required to make plain spaghetti.
After eating several basic meals and mastering the foundational skills of cooking / boiling water / using an oven / we decide to advance our skills and learn how to make Aloo gobi. We understand that it needs cauliflower, potatoes, and spices, which sounds simple but how exactly do we put these ingredients together to make this wonderful meal? Correct, if you thought about the need to consult with the sources of information that will inform us about what we need to do, such as cookbooks, online recipes, cooking classes, or friends. Now that we understand the ingredients, the pots, the measuring cups, the utensils, and the steps that are required to make the dish we can feel more comfortable in knowing that we have outlined a plan to take us from wanting the goal of eating the delicious dish yet not knowing how to proceed to being informed on the tools and steps that are required to reach our goal.
Each person reading this post will start their cooking journey with a different set of strengths and weaknesses and for some people knowing that effort is required is too much and they simply refuse to start at all. Of course, there will be some people that will not take the time to understand what is required to make the meal and simply throw all of the ingredients in a pan and make several assumptions and estimations regarding what they need to do. There will be some people that will simply give up after having an issue with getting started or when they fail to see a lack of progress. However, there will also be some aspiring chefs that will do an inventory check of what they already have in order to make the meal, identify what they need to add, practice making the meal, make notes and identify what needs to be changed, and then continue to improve their cooking skills in making Aloo gobi before they move on to more advanced goals, such as making French macarons.
Which approach sounds like more effort, yet sounds like a path to success?
If taking the time to understand the requirements of the DALF C1, doing an honest self-assessment of your current French communication strengths and weaknesses, identifying what you need to improve upon, identifying how you will improve, and then tracking your progress sounds like an obvious path to success, then you are right.
But I am not taking the DALF C1 Exam / Mais je ne passe pas l’examen
The personal learning plan approach does not require you to be setting the DALF C1 exam as your goal. The personal learning plan approach is relevant for anyone wanting to improve their French communication skills in general, or even improve any skill in their personal life.
How Do I Get Started / Comment faire pour commencer
In a previous post, we outline how to think about maturing your French communication skills in five stages. Each stage is intended to help you to re-evaluate what aspect of your French communication skills you need to improve upon and we share the basic approach to get started. We recommend that you review this blog post in order to help define your personal learning goals and consider adding our simple approach to improve your French communication skills.
- Stage 1 – MA FONDATION, builds your base with verbs, nouns, and adjectives
- Stage 2 – MON EXPANSION – builds upon your foundation and introduces more vocabulary
- Stage 3 – MA TRANSITION – continues to build upon your foundation and introduces multiple verb tenses so that you can discuss the past, present and future
- Stage 4 – MON LIEN – helps you to make complex responses, logical arguments, and ability to debate
- Stage 5 – MA COMPLEXITÉ – further expands your ability to speak in the hypothetical and abstract with more complex sentence structures
Setting goals is the first step in learning a new language, however, how do you define your French learning goals so that they are smart, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely? In a previous blog post, we outline how to start your personal learning plan by thinking in terms of setting S.M.A.R.T. goals. We also share numerous free resources that you can use today in helping you to improve.
In another previous blog post, we share with you the concept of focusing upon the common categories or types of French oral exam interview questions.
- Getting up close and personal (present)
- One or many (singular vs plural)
- Let me tell you what I think (opinion)
- Yes, but on one condition (conditions)
- For better or worse (comparison)
- Tomorrow is another day (future)
- Give me one more chance (retrospective)
Therefore, the simple answer is that in order for you to get started you must first know what you want to achieve – DALF C1 requirements. You then have to measure your current French communication skills and follow the 5 Stages to continually build upon your strengths. This will take effort and practice, but you can do it.
Our three part French oral exam study guides series takes you from setting your goals and developing your learning plan to the ability to discuss over thirty themes / subjects and then improve your oral communication skills by mastering the common types of French oral exam interview questions with responses that concise, yet complex.
More French Study Aids / Plus d’infos
Final Word / Dernier Mot
Creating a personal learning plan does not have to be a lot of work or complicated. Plan your learning in increments and celebrate each time that you progress in moving closer and closer to your the personal learning goal that you set for yourself.