What’s my level?
Firstly, the levels are only ever rough approximations. You may, for instance, have a high level of vocabulary but the words slip through your fingers when you try and put them into understandable sentences. Also, just because you’re at a more advanced level doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t benefit from practising lower-level activities, and vice versa—it’s always good to challenge yourself.
So, if, for instance, you see ‘level 1, level 2, level 3, level 4′ next to an activity, then it simply means that we think it will of benefit to pretty much everyone.
Learning a language isn’t just a linear thing and sometimes levels can get in the way. At learnfrenchwithalexa.com, we’d like you to use them to give you a rough idea of where you stand, but that’s all. Don’t get too stressed out by them. Just enjoy what you’re learning and every day you’ll get a bit better…
Level 1 (Beginners and Near Beginners)
If you don’t know your “bonjour” from your “au revoir”, then pull up a seat.
If, for example, “la poubelle” (pronounced: pooh-bell) makes you think of a sort of smelly ringing device, then take a pew.
If you last saw an “auxiliary” in the fruit section at the local supermarket, then you’re definitely in the right place.
You’re also at the right place if you can just about describe yourself, order a coffee, say what you like or don’t like, count to ten… that sort of thing. But not much more.
Level 2 (That murky space between the beginners and the intermediates)
You might want to call this a kind of post-elementary/pre-intermediate level. But, we prefer that ‘murky space’.
Maybe you did French at school and can remember a fair bit, but need to brush up.
You may have mastered some holiday survival French, you can describe things, give directions, maybe even say a few cohesive sentences, so long as they’re mainly in the present. But then, who cares what’s happening tomorrow, or what happened yesterday…. live for the moment, right? (You’re level 2, by the way…)
Level 3 (Intermediate)
Sometimes Intermediate is sub-categorised into the pre-, the int-, the post-, or upper-, but, well, why complicate things? It’s such a big place, there’s room for everyone and you all deserve a well-earned pat on the back; You’ve come a long way. You can deal with the tenses (that’s past, present and future to those people in level one that have carried on reading), you can have a conversation, you can read texts and follow discussions, you can express opinions, wishes, intentions and handle some quite complex sentence structure. You know a whole bunch of stuff… (but you also know that there’s a whole bunch more of stuff that you don’t really know yet…)
Level 4 (I speak the lingo, I just wanna practice it)
Well, this is your place. You laugh in the face of the subjunctive, you conjugate just for the sheer joy of it, you LOVE the smell of non-defining relative clauses in the morning. You’re part of an elite group. You probably only got here because you’ve been a dedicated subscriber to Alexa’s lessons for as long as you can remember…
Alexa’s Slangcast is right up there at level 4. It’s full of real French slang and idiomatic language. It’s the kind of stuff that will probably make you realise that you actually have a little more to learn than you first thought…
Confused? Well, if you’ve made it all the way to the end of this text, you’ve spent enough time worrying about your level. Go learn something already!
