This forum has been very helpful to me and I'd like to give back. I already have my CoPR and I'm just figuring out the next steps for the move to Canada.
A little bit about me: I submitted my EE profile when I was 30 yrs old. I have a PhD from the US, 3 yrs work exp in the academe, top IELTS but no connection to Canada at all. My CRS was at 491 but because of slow pace of draws from July 2022 onwards, I never got an invite. Come September, I lost 6 points after my birthday, putting me at 485. With the tech glitches during December, there was no chance for me to get an invitation. Even now, the scores only dipped to 483/485 once. Last August 2022, I started learning French. I took the TEF-Canada in January 2023 and I got an invitation after receiving 50+ bonus points in the first week of February 2023. My journey might be more relevant to someone who speaks another Latin language.
My background: I speak Spanish but it's not my native language. I consider myself fluent in the language, after having been in contact with it for 5+ years. Knowing another Latin language helps a lot. As soon as I started learning French, I was watching TV programs and reading news in French. I understand some phrases here and there without having studied the language at all but it was very difficult at first.
Here's my learning journey. Note that from August-October, I also took a break from work and had a lot of time. In December, I had extra 2 weeks off from work because of the holidays.
1) I started with an English-based French book so that I could understand the grammar explanations. It's hard to self study using the EDITO books without prior knowledge of French. I chose the book "Contacts" by Valette because I was able to find the audio online. Here it is: https://college.cengage.com/languages/french/valette/contacts/8e/chapters/chapter1.html for free.
2) Afterwards, I took the following classes on FUN (it's like France's version of Coursera) : https://www.fun-mooc.fr/fr/cours/?limit=21&offset=0&query=travailler%20en%20france . There are 4 of them (A1, A2, B1, and A2-B1 (Travailler en France)). These are all free, offered by Alliance française Paris. They're all in French, no English translation at all. I was able to follow this sequence after the Contacts book.
3) Then I read the A1, A2, B1 Edito books and a little bit of B2. Concurrently, I did the free Coursera course on B1/B2 French offered by École polytechnique.
4) At this point, I only had 1 month before the exam. In my country, only TEF-Canada is offered, at one location, once every 2 weeks, with 3 candidates max. I decided to hire a tutor on Preply to practice speaking. I booked my tutor for 30 hours. This is the first time that I paid to learn French and to practice speaking with someone. Before, I only spoke to myself. For every 1 hour session, 20 minutes was warmup while the remaining time, I asked to do a simulation of the speaking part for TEF-Canada. Someone told me that it's really about taking the test instead of learning French. This was the approach I took with speaking. My tutor charged $10/hour only. Now, he has increased the rate to $20.
5) I also subscribed to prep my future for around $40. It was useful in my opinion. However, as a warning, on the listening section of TEF-Canada, the answers are in a drop down option and you can't see all answers right away, making it hard to read them as you listen concurrently to the audio. This was not the format presented in prep my future and so I was a bit unprepared. For my essays, I asked my Preply tutor to correct my mistakes. This was the only time someone corrected my writing. I think he corrected around 10 of my essays.
In my case, I only spent $300 + $40 + cost of TEF-Canada to learn French. But that's because I'm a Spanish speaker. In addition, I learned Spanish in an academic setting (i.e. to prepare you to take Spanish classes on Hispanic studies in university) and I'm used to writing academic essays in Spanish. In general, I'm also just fond of writing. My technical background is on Engineering. I'm not a linguist nor do I have a humanities background.
I got C2 in reading, C1 in listening and writing, and B2+ in speaking. Once again, I want to emphasize that knowing another Latin-based language expedited my language learning journey so please adjust your expectations depending on your background.
Hope this helps someone on this forum. I've received a lot of help before and now I'm getting advise on settlement. I want to give back!
A little bit about me: I submitted my EE profile when I was 30 yrs old. I have a PhD from the US, 3 yrs work exp in the academe, top IELTS but no connection to Canada at all. My CRS was at 491 but because of slow pace of draws from July 2022 onwards, I never got an invite. Come September, I lost 6 points after my birthday, putting me at 485. With the tech glitches during December, there was no chance for me to get an invitation. Even now, the scores only dipped to 483/485 once. Last August 2022, I started learning French. I took the TEF-Canada in January 2023 and I got an invitation after receiving 50+ bonus points in the first week of February 2023. My journey might be more relevant to someone who speaks another Latin language.
My background: I speak Spanish but it's not my native language. I consider myself fluent in the language, after having been in contact with it for 5+ years. Knowing another Latin language helps a lot. As soon as I started learning French, I was watching TV programs and reading news in French. I understand some phrases here and there without having studied the language at all but it was very difficult at first.
Here's my learning journey. Note that from August-October, I also took a break from work and had a lot of time. In December, I had extra 2 weeks off from work because of the holidays.
1) I started with an English-based French book so that I could understand the grammar explanations. It's hard to self study using the EDITO books without prior knowledge of French. I chose the book "Contacts" by Valette because I was able to find the audio online. Here it is: https://college.cengage.com/languages/french/valette/contacts/8e/chapters/chapter1.html for free.
2) Afterwards, I took the following classes on FUN (it's like France's version of Coursera) : https://www.fun-mooc.fr/fr/cours/?limit=21&offset=0&query=travailler%20en%20france . There are 4 of them (A1, A2, B1, and A2-B1 (Travailler en France)). These are all free, offered by Alliance française Paris. They're all in French, no English translation at all. I was able to follow this sequence after the Contacts book.
3) Then I read the A1, A2, B1 Edito books and a little bit of B2. Concurrently, I did the free Coursera course on B1/B2 French offered by École polytechnique.
4) At this point, I only had 1 month before the exam. In my country, only TEF-Canada is offered, at one location, once every 2 weeks, with 3 candidates max. I decided to hire a tutor on Preply to practice speaking. I booked my tutor for 30 hours. This is the first time that I paid to learn French and to practice speaking with someone. Before, I only spoke to myself. For every 1 hour session, 20 minutes was warmup while the remaining time, I asked to do a simulation of the speaking part for TEF-Canada. Someone told me that it's really about taking the test instead of learning French. This was the approach I took with speaking. My tutor charged $10/hour only. Now, he has increased the rate to $20.
5) I also subscribed to prep my future for around $40. It was useful in my opinion. However, as a warning, on the listening section of TEF-Canada, the answers are in a drop down option and you can't see all answers right away, making it hard to read them as you listen concurrently to the audio. This was not the format presented in prep my future and so I was a bit unprepared. For my essays, I asked my Preply tutor to correct my mistakes. This was the only time someone corrected my writing. I think he corrected around 10 of my essays.
In my case, I only spent $300 + $40 + cost of TEF-Canada to learn French. But that's because I'm a Spanish speaker. In addition, I learned Spanish in an academic setting (i.e. to prepare you to take Spanish classes on Hispanic studies in university) and I'm used to writing academic essays in Spanish. In general, I'm also just fond of writing. My technical background is on Engineering. I'm not a linguist nor do I have a humanities background.
I got C2 in reading, C1 in listening and writing, and B2+ in speaking. Once again, I want to emphasize that knowing another Latin-based language expedited my language learning journey so please adjust your expectations depending on your background.
Hope this helps someone on this forum. I've received a lot of help before and now I'm getting advise on settlement. I want to give back!
