bilingualism » ginger beirut

My Spanish DELE exam review

I’m not quite sure why I set my mind on the DELE C1 with the amount of peace that small kids afford. Motherhood also rhymes with guilt, so even though I gave up my job for my kids, I often wish I could do more for and with them. Still, I’ve noticed that when parents slave away doing everything for their kids to have a better – easier – life, it often isn’t appreciated either in the short term or the long term. So I hope at least they will learn by example that if you want something enough, you have to work hard for it yourself. Carve out the time, be self-motivated and all that.

Ideally I would have written a review right after I took the DELE Spanish exam, as I would have remembered more details about the topics covered, but I walked out of the exam to face a mountain of other stuff I had put aside in order to swot up for Spanish. Here, then, are just a few thoughts on the exam itself that have managed to survive the post-deadline avalanche.

Brass band in Madrid preparing to film an advert

The Oral

I was fortunate with the time of the oral – 3.30pm on the day before the rest of the exam. I was happy not to be one of those with the Oral on the same day as the rest. They told me to come 15mn before but I turned up at 3pm to be safe. Immediately they had me fill in a form alongside a woman from Bangladesh and an English woman who had been in Spain 40 odd years and should have been doing the C1 in my place. Both were in fact doing the basic A2 level so they could apply for Spanish nationality.

Straight after, the staff took me into the preparation room where I was told I had about 15mn to prepare. I pointed out it was 20mn, as per the official exam web. The lady responded “quince a veinte minutos” which I thought odd. The website is pretty clear, and it really does make a difference. Turns out they only had two students for my level, so I can understand the mix up. All those doing the level below were supposed to have 15mn. Still I was a bit flustered, and had I arrived at 3.15 as instructed, it would have been even more rushed. As it was I raced through my prep in case. I was offered the choice of two texts, one on ecotourism and one on the selfie culture. I chose the latter.

The interviewer and examiner were kind and pleasant making it easier to deal with the nerves, though the interviewer spent a long time on the chit chat meaning that the other parts had to be shorter than I was used to. I felt like everything flowed pretty well which was a huge relief, but I may have made a lot of errors without realising it. I realise now I will need a lot more practice to get to the point that I can talk freely AND grammatically!

the kids’ favourite part of Madrid – scaffolding in Plaza Mayor

The Rest

The next day I had to be onsite at 8.15, which meant leaving soon after daybreak for the next town, as the examination centre in my town had no free places. I sped along the motorway as the sun rose hoping for a convenient parking spot and a coffee at the café attached to the language school. When I arrived the café wasn’t open, so I ate a Mars bar. Which reminded me that the last time I ate chocolate bars was a year ago doing the B2 DELE exam. The same taste of chocolate, nerves and adrenalin. Over the next hour we had our ID checked and were separated into groups according to the level of exam we had signed up for. Our group was taken to a very small classroom. That’s when I found out there were only two of us doing C1. The other guy was Chinese, about 20 and had obviously been schooled in Spain. I felt a bit more nervous.

The Reading was considerably harder than doing practice tests at home, even though it’s the part I feel most comfortable with. I remember finding the same with the B2 level exam. I think it just requires a level of concentration that is somehow hard to maintain in a strange room along with nerves, although you’d think it would be a lot easier than braving the chaos of small children to complete a timed test at home. It took me the full test time of 90 minutes, compared to about 50 at home. But I felt I couldn’t go too far wrong.

The Listening followed and I was grateful for all the practice exams because there is nothing quite like knowing the layout. I read ahead as much as possible, but it the pace was very fast. After the listening exam, we were accorded a break which the moderator suggested we shorten to 20 minutes. The other guy seemed raring to go and ready to almost do without, so I took what I could get. To my great disappointment, the café was still closed, and I didn’t have time to go and find some caffeine at a local bar, so I ate another Mars bar.

five-star scaffolding

By then there was just the Writing left. I had practised a great deal but it was always going to be hard work. Unfortunately the official writing test answer papers, which were labelled with our names and numbered, were not quite the same layout as those on the official website, so I couldn’t accurately estimate the word count the way I’d planned. Another surprise was that the audio for Tarea 1 was a young guy with a heavy Argentine accent – I was prepared for that in the listening when at most it might cost you one of the five tasks, but this was the basis for one of the two written pieces I had to produce. I understood most of what was said, but not some parts near the beginning which could have been vital.

Just as I got underway trying to make sense of the bits I had heard and trying to imply the bits I hadn’t but could imagine were in there, the other guy raised his hand. He had written on the wrong page. And he had written a whole dense paragraph already. The moderator didn’t know whether to give him new sheets or have him re-write it on the correct sheet. She got another staff member into the tiny room and there was quite some debate while they fixed it. Twenty minutes later the same thing happened. The moderator faffed around a lot and made a point of coming and checking up on me rather theatrically for each page to make sure I hadn’t made the same mistake. The other guy raced on undaunted and finished ahead of time. I, on the other hand, ended up working with my hands over my ears, struggling to retain the thread of thought, and rather disappointed with the result.

In August I’ll find out the actual results. In summary, I feel like I had the levels of grammar and reading comprehension and even listening comprehension that were required, but didn’t perform well in the Writing and didn’t have the accuracy required for the Oral. After all, the C1 is just one level below C2 which is native-like mastery. I know, it was extremely ambitious.

A group of uni students from Oman visit Toledo, aka Sword City

Although I think I failed because I really needed to be fully fluent, like someone who has worked in the language for a few years, I’m willing to sit it again another year. For now I’ll take the summer off - some travel and some learning Urdu, while entertaining the kids throughout their nearly 3-month summer holidays. Later on I’ll work out how to move forward. Whatever happens, I won’t forget the feeling of driving along the motorway into the rising sun, ready to put my preparation to the test – a victory over baby brain and the quagmire of domestication, and perhaps a small triumph for motherhood.

***UPDATE: Just got my results, a mere two months after the exam, and somehow I passed!***

Questions for a multilingual family

These are the questions I asked before having kids. I still ask some of them every year or so. The kids grow; we move country; they start school… language is such a fluid thing so everything is up for change. Looking back on the six years – nearly seven – since my daughter was born, I would say that some things were easier than we thought. But the biggest surprise was the difference that personality makes.

What is your current linguistic landscape?

Mum (main caregiver) – English; Dad – French; Community – Spanish

Is it really enough if there’s only one person speaking a given language to them?

Much of the time, the kids only get French from their dad. Because he is bilingual, it would be easy for us all to slip back into English, so we have to be on guard against that. I have nudged French into being a main language at mealtimes, though without directly talking French to the kids. We’ve had to make sure they get lots of time with their dad at weekends, but their French is perfectly fluent, probably as good as their English, and always has been. We’ve relied on books to broaden their vocabulary, but always choosing them for interest first and foremost. They probably make more grammar mistakes than monolingual kids their age. Things like “She sended the letter,” or “Tu as allé au parque?” or “Ça ressemble comme…” from the English “it looks like” or even in the reflexive, as in “Ça se ressemble à …” from the Spanish “Se parece a…“. Still, they are switching between three languages every day, so I figure some ongoing interference is inevitable.

What about the language delay?

What language delay?

What if they reject a language?

This hasn’t happened to us so far, although there is plenty of time left for teenage angst (or is it preteen angst these days?) and other life changes to throw the cat in the pigeons. I ward against it by speaking highly of French language and culture (in age appropriate-terms, so “French culture” = croissants, by the way). As for Spanish, I’m enthusiastic about learning it myself, and we both try hard to speak Spanish to locals even when we could get away with English. Although my 6-year old is not a big fan of school, it hasn’t been an excuse to reject Spanish, and so far we haven’t had any linguistic issues.

Do they mix?

As in do they randomly switch language mid sentence? No, not unless they are talking to bilinguals. Do they sometimes use a French word in an English sentence? Yes, and vice versa. Usually because they have forgotten the word or never learnt it. Sometimes they break off and turn to one of us to ask “How do you say XYZ in French?” Sometimes they adapt a word to make it fit. The other day my son was talking in French about “la lavadoire”, a new take on the Spanish lavadora / French la machine à laver (washing machine). You can’t blame him, I mean it does sound French.

Still, it’s a question of knowing what to use where. I think of how often I say “thingy” or “truc” when speaking, and how I would naturally eliminate that in a job interview.

It’s also a personality thing. My oldest would never use a French word on her English grandparents, for example. My son might. My daughter focuses on expressing information precisely and succinctly and can get blocked if she doesn’t feel she has the right word. She’d rather stay quiet. My son, in complete contrast, communicates more in terms of a general feeling, and he’ll just keep chattering on until you get the word from the context. As he grows we’ll do our best to provide enough vocab to keep up with the chatter.

Overall, though, they are very clear about addressing me in English, their father in French, and the outside world in Spanish.

What about the kids between themselves?

They used to opt for one or the other, depending on what game they were playing or what book they were reading, or who was in the room with them. Then they spent a year speaking almost only French to each other. Even if I said in English, “Go and tell your brother it’s time for dinner,” it would be relayed in French. I think this was triggered by a bit more time spent with cousins (a bit older, so quite impressive) and it could have been influenced by French being closer to Spanish which was becoming a more important language for us all.

But now they have swung back to switching. So far no Spanish between them, though I feel my younger, more talkative, less pedantic child would be perfectly happy if his older sister made a move that way. Not sure how we can keep that at bay, but for now pedantry is on our side.

How can you boost a language if you feel it lacks support?

My quickest and easiest tip is songs. If daddy spends all day at work and comes to the dinner table tired, shortly before bedtime, they’re not going to get much French input. But we make sure to learn lots of French songs and just humming one in the afternoon can get them singing in French together. It’s also great for car journeys, long or short, when the rush to get out the house without forgetting something vital has usually wiped our minds of any brighter, wittier conversation.

Books are a great crutch, and keeping the telly off so they can actually appreciate reading has been a big part of that, I believe. The Petites Poules series was a great hit when my daughter was five and just starting to enjoy reading alone in French. Secret Seven and Tintin followed at six. And they are now rereading Énigmes à tous les étages with great delight. At four and six they need an adult to read it with them first, but they get no end of pleasure out of rereading it alone or huddled together. Now I could really do with new ideas for chapter books or a short story series in French, so leave a comment if you can recommend something!

Although I never speak directly to the kids in French (save on a few very rare occasions for the sake of others), I’ll happily read to them in French. In fact their love of books has grown so that not only will my 6 year old happily read Tintin to herself, so will my 4 year old, even though for him it’s just looking at the pictures and repeating lines he remembers, in French. While daddy’s at work, that’s a big gain in terms of exposure to their minority language.

How does it feel to have trilingual children?

Go to India or Africa and ask mothers there, they’ve been doing it much longer.

Being British about being rubbish

I found in my letterbox this week an advert for a language institute, with upbeat promises of imminent proficiency and the slogan A hablar se aprende hablando! Granted, but there’s a very British obstacle to learning to speak by speaking which was particularly evident during my course.

This is my third year of the Casa de Cultura course. Although there are – officially – four levels, students of any level are free to join the class at any point over the year. Despite the lack of structure and the fact that it’s only three hours a week, it has actually been an invaluable course which got me through the DELE exams (B1 and B2), along with websites like studyspanish.com and my trusty exam guide El Cronómetro.

Apart from it being cheap and very close to my home, two major pull factors for me, the other big selling point is that all nationalities are mixed together so the course is entirely in Spanish. Spanish taught through Spanish, not through your native tongue.

Murderous identities, or, In the Name of Identity

I noticed, however, in the lower levels where there are many Brits, lots of them group together and chat through class in English or murmur the English translation to each other at the first hesitation. They are choosing to learn through English. They would rather a quick translation than a Spanish explanation of a word, learning through context.

They also spend a lot of time insisting on how rubbish they are, in fact each one is adamant that they are more rubbish than the other. It’s all very self-deprecating, which breeds good feeling. Speaking well, you fear, would have the opposite effect, generating suspicion, mistrust. Someone who can pull it off, instead of inspiring admiration, would have broken ranks. In fact, in the face of class participation, the atmosphere is very much what it was when I was 14 and sitting in French class with Mrs Prowse. When called upon to talk, surrounded by their compatriots, the British say a few words in Spanish and then tail off in English. The teacher repeats what they were trying to say in Spanish, and they answer, “Yep, that’s what I meant”. Needless to say, the Finns in the class don’t talk to the teacher in Finnish, nor the Russians in Russian.

The embarrassment of attempting to speak or even passively learn a foreign language while among one’s compatriots is fearfully strong. Students seem both intimidated and discouraged by their self-applied label of “Rubbish at Languages.” Yet something in us fights against openly trying to improve. Somehow our skin crawls at the mere idea of pretending to talk Spanish, because after all it does feel like a pretence. Pretending to be foreign. Putting on an accent. Putting ourselves out there. Like trying to do improv in a crowded metro. Except this is a language course, attended by people who have all paid to learn a language.

The ubiquitousness of English has become a shield for these British who get out of bed for a class twice a week but revert to their own language as soon as possible. Not because of laziness but because of embarrassment.

Why is that? Are we just afraid of getting it wrong? If so it would apply to all subjects. I don’t know any other topic where the students go to learn but seem bent on failing. Is it altogether too earnest for us Brits (cf “earnestness” in Katie Fox’s Watching the English)? Do we fear we look like we are trying to be clever, to be posh, to …heaven forbid… better ourselves?

Although I have always liked languages, I do know this fear. I can’t separate it clearly from other forms of self-consciousness that clutter the landscape. But I remember when I threw it off for French, when I was 15 and visited my sister in France. I spent a lot of time on my own visiting Paris and somehow the walls dropped. French wasn’t “foreign” in Paris, it was natural, necessary. I didn’t think I would suffer from it again, not in a serious ability-cramping way, but I did. When I lived in Beirut and had made local friends using English, I found it really hard to begin using my very limited but improving Arabic in conversations. I felt like it meant saying Look at me! I’m speaking Arabic! I also wanted to have proper conversations, not ones that were dumbed down to my language level – that is, small talk! But I could have mixed languages. I should have mixed. After all, the real Lebanese always do.

Lebanese pastries

I’m still angry at myself for living in Beirut for nearly four years and not coming away fluent. The upside is that this regret goads me on in Spanish. I refuse to leave Spain without learning the language. I refuse to be prevented from learning by the fact that I don’t know everything. And the words of Amin Maalouf ring true: ‘Linguistic diversity is the pivot of all diversity.’ If you can learn a man’s language, you can walk in his shoes.

The less sweet side of Beirut

To my relief, I found that in the class for the higher language levels, this gregarious linguistic suicide doesn’t happen. People are openly - dare I say earnestly – trying to learn. Even those with a sense of humour. I wonder why. Is it just chance that there are too few Brits in the higher classes to trigger any kind of herd behaviour? Is it because those who are too crippled by the embarrassment just can’t progress any further? Does their self-assigned failure become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Do socially “normal” Brits keep themselves back to be socially acceptable? Is moving forward uncomeradely, disloyal? The British are the biggest foreign community in this town, yet in my class they are decidedly underrepresented. There are three Finns, two Russians, two Ukrainians, a Persian, two Italians, a Dane, a Belgian, a Bulgarian, a Chinese and a Moroccan.

I’m the lone Brit. With no-one to whisper the answers to me. No one to murmur jokes to. No one to make me embarrassed about trying to talk “foreign”.

The voice in my head

The voice in my head has started speaking Spanish. I’m not talking about some personal revelation, my conscience, or an auditory hallucination. I’m talking about that internal monologue that tells and retells my life as I live it. I’ve always had an inner narrator. I don’t let it out that often. Still, that doesn’t stem the tide of narrative. In fact if anything it needs a release onto paper, onto the keyboard, or it gets a bit frenetic. My inner voice is what makes me write.

The monologue relates, but it also thinks ahead, prepares dialogues for upcoming situations, most of which never take place. Unbidden, my inner voice has switched to Spanish to script these hypothetical dialogues, in preparation for the day’s or week’s events. Pretty poor Spanish I might add. With a slim vocabulary. As if listening to oneself talk wasn’t bad enough. So that’s added motivation to steam ahead with my Spanish lessons since I am tired of communicating in such a limited fashion, both with the real world and with my inner chatterbox.

jacaranda in the evening sun

I finally got to the stage where my Spanish was at about the same level as my French was after 6 months in France. I can hold a conversation, read magazines and newspapers. On the other hand, normal conversation with two or more people is often too fast or idiomatic to understand, and films are the pits. I watched one the other night with a plot so obvious that I got the whole story, but despite that I hardly understood any of the dialogue. Kind of similar to a film I started watching in Gujarati. I can’t remember how many French films I saw before I started getting the dialogue. But I do remember a point a few months after moving to Paris when I stopped translating what I heard into English in my head. It was the point when I began to just hear and understand without thinking about it in English.

Now I feel the need to try and break through a barrier and understand normal-speed real-life Spanish, so I’ve begun watching the evening news. I’ve also put a Spanish news feed on my phone, that way I’ll see in print the names of felons, politicians and other headline personalities, to help me understand the news.

I am trying to keep the linguistic boundaries clear for the kids, so I don’t put on Spanish telly or radio when they are around, even though this limits how much exposure I can get. I do read them library books in Spanish. But in general I leave the Spanish to the Spaniards so we can maintain good levels of French and English in the home.

Until now I have learnt Spanish mostly via French, since they are so similar. I was constantly looking for the link with French. Now, though, I need to cut free and try to immerse myself in Spanish as much as possible, and shoo away thoughts in French and English that slow me down. The voice in my head needs consistency to make any sense. Real immersion. I’m unappreciative when teachers tell me the meaning of Spanish words in English. I prefer an incomplete understanding in the foreign language to an exact correspondence in my own, because it gets me thinking in Spanish, not converting to Spanish.

In the meantime I’m getting more interference when speaking French, with little Spanish words sneaking in here and there. It’s annoying, but I guess inevitable.

Even my mobile phone can hear the voice in my head. When I hit the space bar to change the language of the keyboard, it used to switch from English to French first, and then on a second tap, to Spanish, my third most used language. But clearly it has been eavesdropping; it now switches straight to Spanish, leaving French to drag behind in third place.

Teach your kid to read French

I last wrote about the DELE Spanish exams, which surprisingly I passed, and I’ll have more on that some other time. But today I want to talk about a lovely book for teaching your kid to read French. This has been just the thing for helping my five-year old learn to read in French, but I can imagine it being useful also for older kids who are not native speakers. I’ve included photos so you can judge the level for yourself.

Kids are sponges, but that works both ways. Easy in, easy out. Growing up with several languages may sound exotic, but the reality is you have to strike a balance. Sure kids CAN learn anything and everything, but there’s only so much time in the week. And like adults they will conveniently forget what they don’t use. I’m also not a fan of high-powered schedules for kids. I’m just not willing to sacrifice a lot of family time and farm them out to afterschool classes all week long just to make them trilingual.

Balthazar découvre la lecture

There’s never time for everything, so you need to decide what is important and what level you want to achieve in each. I like to think I’ll see my kids speaking, reading and writing in English, French and Spanish with a good level of proficiency, and having an affinity with Arabic (spoken and written) even if they don’t learn to speak or read it as kids. I think we have enough language resources (ie relatives, friends, circumstances, travel and access to books!) to manage this, but of course life does throw surprises at you.

I think we have English nailed since I’m their main caregiver, and incurably pedagogical at that. Plus English will always hold its appeal when they are in their teens and wanting to watch blockbusters and other weapons of globalisation. And my daughter is already picking up Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to read to herself. So that’s English taken care of. As for Spanish, my little Beiruti is already in her second year at the local school, and my Paris baby starts in September. They’ll get ample practice at reading, writing and, of course, chatting in Spanish. French on the other hand risks falling behind. We already make sure they get plenty of stories and some one-on-one with dad. We haven’t ruled out returning to France at some point such as during secondary school.

But how to crack reading in French? Dad is at work all day and French is as hard to decipher as Spanish is easy. The orthographic depth of French is, well, deep. I found this out when I taught her to read. We began with easy three letter words which are read just as they are written, with no silent letters. That meant tonnes of household objects and animals in English, but scarcely a handful in French.

Enter Balthazar.

pain, train, bain…

Each page takes a grouping of letters which produces a certain sound. The example words are beautifully illustrated.

bille, vanille, chenille…morille?

Most of the words are simple, others are less common. Some of the sentences are frankly hilarious.

sound/word activity

And at the end 30 little sound cards with the relevant word on the back to match with picture cards.

Result: my five and a half year old is suddenly reading pages of the P’tites Poules collection of stories, which Amazon has down as being from 6 years and up. To see her so engrossed in a book, actually reading silently to herself, is just a treat.

Balthazar reading activity

I see Balthazar also has a range of first readers for little ones. They are in cursive, which could be difficult if your kids are in an English or US school, which either doesn’t bother with cursive or teaches it much later. The Spanish feel as strongly about it as the French do and teach it from five years old, and kids are doing loopy b’s and z’s before they can write much more than their name. However, in these books apparently the silent letters are in grey so kids can read the words and get used to the spelling, which sounds like a smart approach to French for novice readers.