12 hours down, 238 to go...

Today I attended my 2nd French class. I mentioned before that taking French is mandatory as part of the immigration process for me and that after being assessed I was given 250 hours of French (read more about that here), today I completed hour 12. That's right 2 classes attended and 12 hours complete. In case you were wondering, that's a whole lot a French in 2 days, at least for this girl.

The first class last week consisted of 10 students. The difficult thing for me was that the levels vary greatly all within this one class. For example, there was a woman in class that has been in France for 7 years, yup S-E-V-E-N! Needless to say she speaks French pretty well and when I inquired further about this she reports that she is taking an exam this month to hopefully be finished with classes. In contrast, there are others in class, like myself, who have been in France for less than 6 months and are not communicating fluently in French at all.

My assessment of the teacher on the first day was that she was nice and friendly but not all that organized or sure how to accommodate and modify for the varying levels of the students. I was surprised to see that I was comprehending a lot of what she said but there were other times that I had no freaking clue!

Let's fast forward to class today. Again there was about 10 students present but not all the same students that were there last week. The new students seem to be of a lower level which was reassuring for me as I felt like we were all a bit more on the same page in our abilities.

During the break for lunch one of the students was asking about the exams we take to assess our progress. From what I gathered in this conversation there are different exams for this. The DILF is the exam for the A1.1 (total beginner). The DELF is for A1/A2 and B1/B2 and the DALF is for the C1/C2. Now all of this doesn't mean much to me but I think that we are suppose to attain a minimum of a B2 for immigration. Yikes!

I was also informed today that even though I was awarded 250 hours, they need to be completed within 1 year. The exam can be taken prior to the year mark but has to be taken at the year mark regardless.  So at 6 hours a week (since I am only doing Mondays due to working), that means 41.666 weeks of French class to make this happen. Now being a scholarly individual I asked the teacher what I am suppose to do since I cannot attend class on Thursdays and Fridays (but everyone who isn't working does 6 hours on each of those days as well). She then proceeded to hand me a whole bunch of worksheets that the class completed last week AND some worksheets that they will be doing later this week. So this girl has some serious French homework to do in the next 6 days.

I know that I asked for the work but most of it is above my level and it takes me FOREVER to complete just 1 worksheet. James can verify this as I sat doing homework yesterday for a few hours. Of course I stop every time I don't know a word and have to look it up (and that happens a whole bunch)! It was recommended to me by a colleague who is multilingual that I use some French children's books, the Petit Nicolas series,  as a way to increase my skills, vocab, and fluency. Feeling super ambitious over the weekend I found 3 of these books at a secondhand store and was super excited to get 3 of them for the price of 1 new.

So let's recap here, I have 1 year to become fluent enough by the standards given by immigration. I have 1 formal class a week and need to supplement my learning in every other way possible on my own. It seems very overwhelming to me but I am determined to make it happen. I just need to figure out a way to be disciplined and work on it multiple times a week in the midst of working and all the other daily happenings.

I can already feel a love/hate relationship developing with learning this language. I have tiny moments of comprehension and feel proud but at this point there are a whole lot more moments of hate as it seems so difficult, I don't understand much and speak even less. I fantasize about a day when I can speak an entire conversation in French, even if the topic is basic.  Until then, anybody have suggestions of how to not feel so defeated, dumb, or exhausted in trying to do this?