Beginners – Intermediate – Advanced

How do you go from the B level to the C level ?

You have been learning the French language for a certain period of time, you are able to speak it quite well, to read it and to write it : you can communicate pretty easily, you can go to a French speaking country or in France, you can have a talk with the French native speakers. But something is like a fence when you want to use the French language at work or when you are reading a book. Your skills in the French language are not 100% good. The question is how can you get the C2 level ? How do you go from the B level, so how do you go from B2 to C1 ? What does that mean ? Let us start at the beginning.

  • The A level = you are a basic user of the language
  • The B level = you are independent in the use of the French language, B1 = your have an intermediate level
  • The B2 level = you have a bit more than an intermediate level

So, if I talk about it more precisely what does mean « You have a bit more than an intermediate level ? » A B2 level person can understand the main ideas, realistic and abstract topics, abstract topics includes technical discussions in a specific field, he (or she) can make interactions on a regular basis with French native speakers. He (or she) is able to write a text with details about different subjects and he (or she) is able as well to say his (or her) point of view on specific topics, to talk about the pros and cons. He (or she) does not need to ask to native people to have a feed-back.

Do you want to reach the C level ? The C1 level means that you can say your ideas in a spontaneous and fluent way without thinking too much about what you want to say. You are able to use the language in a flexible way and in an effective way for social, profesional and academic reasons. When you reach this level you are able to speak the French language  fluently, you can easily being active in a talk with French native speakers and you can as well start using the French language for your work, you feel comfortable while you are talking with the others.

From the beginner level to the intermediate one, maybe it can takes around 6 months to do it, maybe between 6 months and 1 year. And then to go from the B level to the C level, it is more difficult and it takes more time, it requires to work more. To make it progressing at this moment of your learning journey (between the B level and the C level) is very slow, a lot of language learners experienced it and say the same thing. It seems that it is hard to progress,  they have difficulties to improve their target language.

How can you reach the C level ?

But you can also ask to yourself this important question : do you really need a to have a C level ? If I want to learn a foreign language, I want to be able to hold a conversation, I do not really need to be fluent.

I think that with if you have the B2 level you can do 80% of everything which you need to do in speaking the French language. It depends on what you are your goals : Do you live in a country where you cannot talk the French language ? So you just want to speak it for travelling ? Are you learning this language for the pleasure to talk it with native people or to meet new persons ? Do you need to know this language (the French language for you) for your career ? Do you need to know this language to pass an exam ?... There is surely some reasons to want to be able to speak the French language at the C level. Here are others examples, if you live in the country where this language is spoken you want to be independent, you want to be able to do whatever you want whenever you want, you do not want to ask to your friends to help you every time, to read administrative forms that you have received,...

How to do that ? How do you go from the B level to the C level ? 

If you want to have the C level you need to worka lot, more tzan usual, ot requires more work that you did so far, you need to have an interest on topics that you are not very familiar with. If you like to talk about yourself, about your daily life and you want to improve your speaking skills, that is ok, but you can as well take courses with a teacher and talking about more important and complicated subjects,... talking about something else, and you are going to see that you are going to need more vocabulary. You need to read a lot of books, magazines, newspapers,... but pay attention to choose the level which is suitable for you, and step by step you will read more complicated, so you can get more French words. You should be able to understand between 70% and 90% of the text that you are reading, so the text can be interesting for you, you can enjoy reading it and you can learn new things.

Listening to podcasts

You can also listen to podcast and searching for the words that you do not know.

Patience

The final thing that you need is patience, because it takes pretty much a long time to go from the B level to the C level.

If you want to reach the C level you need to be surrounded by the French language almost every time.