"Passing" the DELF B1

My big goal for coming to France to study was, of course, to "learn French" but my measurable, tangible goal was to pass the B1 level of the DELF, which is the 3rd of the 6 levels. The test is offered all over the world but is only offered about 4 times per year in each location, so you have to plan well in advance and find a time and place. The test is composed of 4 parts - Oral Comprehension, Written Comprehension, Writing Ability, and Speaking Ability - worth 25 pts each, for a possible total of 100 pts. The French system (in most testing situations) purposely makes tests very hard to really judge how much a student has learned, and no student should get every question right. Therefore, the grading system is very different than the American system, and for my test a "passing" grade was 50pts/100 while a "good" score was 75pts/100. The only restriction was that you had to score at least 5 points in every section.

Luckily, the test was offered during my stay in Tours. Unfortunately, it was only available during my 5th week (preferably I would have taken it after all 8 weeks) and it was in a different town. Luckily, that town was Amboise, which was only a 20 minute train ride away and was a town I'd been to twice before. Unfortunately, the test started at 9am and the trains ran infrequently so on my test day, Friday, September 18, I had to get up at 6am to get ready, collect the things I needed and move them into my "professional-looking" purse, and walk to the train station to catch a 7:07am commuter. On my way out the door I ran through a mental checklist to see if I had my wallet, passport, keys, and phone. At the last moment I remembered to grab the train tickets I had purchased the day before. I pulled them out of the envelope to double check that they said Amboise, then ran out the door.

As usual, I was running late, so I walked/trotted/jogged to the train station as quickly as possible, but in the end I arrived a full nine minutes before the train left so I had plenty of time. As I pulled out my train ticket to stamp it before getting on the train I realized with a wave of disbelief that the ticket to Amboise in my hand was an old ticket, from 2 weeks earlier, and that I had grabbed the wrong train tickets to Amboise. There certainly was not time to go home, and there wasn't even enough time to buy a new one because the lines were too long, so with dread I jumped on the train and in my head began composing my apology to the conductor - "Bonjour Monsieur, je suis vraiment desolé, mais j'ai les billets incorrectes. J'ai acheté mes billets hier, mais j'ètais en ritard ce matin et j'ai pris les billets incorrectes. Je voulais acheter un nouveau billet maintenant, et voilà mon argent. Je suis très desolé."

In the end the ticket collector never made it to my car during the 20 minute trip, so I got off at Amboise without incident.

I searched out the testing center, and then with more than an hour to spare hunted down a cafe to get coffee and a croissant, a surprisingly difficult task at 8am in a tourist town. On the entire main road in front of the castle, full of shops, there was only one open at that hour. Luckily, they had wonderful big booths where I could spread out my materials to do some last minute studying. The waiter was pleasant and the atmosphere comfortable (so I gave them my business for the rest of the day).

At 8:45 am I walked back to the testing center, checked in, and sat in a room with the 6 other students (all Asian). The first part of the test was the Oral Comprehension, which consisted of 3 separate conversations, news reports, or advertisements played from a CD that we had to listen to and answer questions on. The second part was Reading Comprehension, which had two articles that we had to read and answer questions on. The third part was writing, and we were given a 5 or 6 sentence statement on a social issue and asked to write a short essay (160-180 words) giving our opinion for or against the topic. On my test day the topic was on whether we agreed or disagreed with a proposition that it should be obligatory for every person between the ages of 18-30 to do 6 months of "social work" at a wage of 350 euros per month. (I said no.)

The three sections finished at 11am, so I then had four hours to kill before my last section, the speaking ability, at 3pm. I went back to my cafe, sat in my booth, had lunch, and studied again. A little after 2pm I walked back to the test center and hung around watching other people get called in for their speaking tests. Finally it was my turn. There were three parts to the speaking section - 1 minute to introduce yourself, where you came from, why you were studying French, then a 5 minute "role play" between you and the instructor, and then a 3 minute monologue on a short article. I was given 10 minutes to read and prepare some notes (my article was on the inequality between men and women), and then we were off. My introduction of myself went stellar, the role play not so well (I had to pretend to be an angry customer who hadn't received the pizza she had ordered), and the monologue pretty well. After a whirlwind 15 minutes the test was over, and I had an hour and a half to kill before the results were posted. So, I went back to my cafe, for the third time that day.

In the end, I passed with a score of 64/100, not unbelievable but not too shabby either! My scores highlighted my strengths and my weakness - 19/25 on Reading Comprehension, 17/25 on Writing Ability, 19/25 on Speaking Ability (which was very generous of the instructor considering that at one point I had said "I am not the pizza!!" instead of "I don't have the pizza!") but only 9/25 on Oral Comprehension. I knew going in that it would be my weakest section, and that I would be relying on the other sections to make up for it, but at least I know now that it's really what I need to focus on the most.

Friday night called for a little bit of celebration. : )