Just sick over French

[ccdohl]

I am taking the French CLEP in about an hour and I'm just ill over it. It is only made worse by the fact that, if I pass, I will graduate on Friday of this week. If not, I will have to pick up the class somewhere, or take the test again in six months.

I took French in high school and a French 1001 college course. I need a 50 to get credit for French 1002, which I have figured at about 75 correct answers, if I understand the grading system correctly.

I have been studying constantly for about 3 weeks which gradually built up after studying for the past few months. The official book was little help, being difficult for me when I first began studying and becoming easier partially of me doing it multiple times.

I'm just not certain exactly on what I should have focused, or if there is any good way to study for the test. It is an entire language, after all. I think that I have the basics down, and can read the language pretty well, but I'm not so sure about the listening. Hopefully the folks on the computer enunciate well enough, or I am lucky with my guesses.

I did read the forum here and it has given me a lot of help, so thanks to all the people who have posted about it.

[ShotoJuku]

Welcome Aboard & Good Luck!!

[ccdohl]

Hey thanks! I ended up passing with a 52. Just barely, I know, but I'll be graduating anyway.

[NAP]

Congratulations on passing French and finishing your degree!!!

I'd appreciate it, if you left some feedback on the study materials you used. How was the sound quality on the exam? Thanks for your help!

[skyfall123]

Congrats...let the celebrating begin!!!

[frankiebleyes]

congrats on passing French and on your graduation.

[ShotoJuku]

Hey thanks! I ended up passing with a 52. Just barely, I know, but I'll be graduating anyway.

[SIZE="7"]OUI!!!!![/SIZE] cheersmate

[Ruddigore]

Hey thanks! I ended up passing with a 52. Just barely, I know, but I'll be graduating anyway.

Wow, great job. Wish I could pass the French CLEP. Just gotta learn French.

[Katterina]

Congrats!! :hurray:

[ccdohl]

Congratulations on passing French and finishing your degree!!!

I'd appreciate it, if you left some feedback on the study materials you used. How was the sound quality on the exam? Thanks for your help!

Sure. I took French in High School and then took a 1001 level class last Summer, so I have a decent grasp on the basics of grammar, but my vocabulary was sorely lacking and rusty.

I mainly studied my French book from the 1001 course that is also used in the 1002 course at my school. It's vis-a-vis 4th edition. If you were to purchase that, it would come with a subscription to an online service called quia which is fairly helpful, providing a number of listening and grammar exercises.

Unfortunately, my subscription to that service had expired so, to prepare for the listening part, I used a website called Learn French by Podcast. It was fairly good. The main female speaker there is sort of hard to understand and does not enunciate well enough to be useful for beginners, but there are a few more advanced lesson as well. The website offers a paid service where customers can buy pdf guides for each exercise. I did not use that and just listened to them to get my ear used to French.

Another great web resource is the Reverso translation site. It will search most terms for you and find its infinitive and conjugations.
French English dictionary, free online translation from French to English with Collins dictionaries

Finally, I used flashcardexchange.com

I needed a way to increase my vocabulary quickly and I discovered this neat little site that saves flashcards that people have posted and allows you to review them. This is a great way to learn new words and increase your vocabulary.

So basically, I studied my book and listened to the podcasts a few times a week for about 2 months then, for about 2 weeks before the exam, I studied a lot harder. The 4-5 days before, I studied obsessively and worked myself in to a bit of a mess. That is not really the method that I would suggest. Still, those resources were very helpful to me.

In addition, I picked up the $10 practice test. It was not much help other than stressing me out because it is fairly difficult and does not provide any audio practice.

As for the test itself, the audio was actually much more clear than what I had read from this site. I may have been lucky to have a good set of head phones, but I did not have as much trouble with it as I had anticipated. They do talk quickly and the clips will come as soon as the timer from the question before has run out. Luckily, most of them have a small introduction sentence like "Pierre is talking to Jean-Luc."

The most difficult part other than listening was probably reading the long passages. The questions can be fairly specific and the answers are typically rephrased so that you must understand some specific parts rather than simply following the gist of the passage.

Well, good luck. I hope that this info will be useful for you. I would highly suggest that, if you don't have a strong background in French, you take a traditional course if possible, or at least don't let this test be the one that decides whether or not you graduate on short notice