Would I be fit to do French B (SL)?

[Guest NapWar]

Hey guys, I've done one year of French at home with a tutor. My grammar is decent, though I'm only breaching an intermediate skill level at the moment, vocabulary pretty basic, though I'm good at memorising new words... etc. I'll be taking formal French classes at my country's Alliance Française soon as well. I'm quite self-motivated to learn, following several guidebooks, French learning communities on the Internet, Duolingo and all that jazz at the moment.

All this accounted for, would I be able to study French at a second language level at an IBDP school? I'm not great at conversational French at the moment, but I have 6 months till I begin the programme. I have plenty of time to work on it. So what do you guys think? Is there some kind of placement test to see what level I'm at? Is there anyway to check all this online? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Melissi]

Hey there!

While I'm not sure if there's a placement test, something that my French teacher is quite fond of using is the Common European Framework. Here's some info: http://www.deutsch-als-fremdsprache.org/en/faq/323-what-does-language-level-a1-a2-b1-b2-c1-and-c2-mean.html (It applies to all languages, not just German!) According to her, we HL students should be at B2 (and that's nearing the end of our second year!) so you probably wouldn't need to be that advanced according to these levels! If you're curious, there are some exercises categorised according to these difficulty levels here, so you might get a rough estimate of where you're at: http://apprendre.tv5monde.com/

Given that you're doing all of this work and have such motivation, I would say you'd be fine - one of my friends is taking German B HL with having done barely any formal qualifications in the subject beforehand, and she's doing fine. I'm sure you'll do well in French as well!

(Edit) Oh, but I just thought - I know some schools have rules about what sort of language proficiency you need to have before you can take a language. But I know people who have worked around that, so if you speak to one of the lecturers at the school you hope to attend, there'll most likely be possibilities to study anyway!

Edited March 2, 2014 by Melissi

[Guest NapWar]

Hey there!

While I'm not sure if there's a placement test, something that my French teacher is quite fond of using is the Common European Framework. Here's some info: http://www.deutsch-als-fremdsprache.org/en/faq/323-what-does-language-level-a1-a2-b1-b2-c1-and-c2-mean.html (It applies to all languages, not just German!) According to her, we HL students should be at B2 (and that's nearing the end of our second year!) so you probably wouldn't need to be that advanced according to these levels! If you're curious, there are some exercises categorised according to these difficulty levels here, so you might get a rough estimate of where you're at: http://apprendre.tv5monde.com/

Given that you're doing all of this work and have such motivation, I would say you'd be fine - one of my friends is taking German B HL with having done barely any formal qualifications in the subject beforehand, and she's doing fine. I'm sure you'll do well in French as well!

(Edit) Oh, but I just thought - I know some schools have rules about what sort of language proficiency you need to have before you can take a language. But I know people who have worked around that, so if you speak to one of the lecturers at the school you hope to attend, there'll most likely be possibilities to study anyway!

Very helpful, thank you!