Natasha here, reporting in on the aftermath of the infamous DELF B2.

I was worried.  Let’s find some better descriptors, now that I’m functioning in my mother tongue.  Words like chagrined, nausea-ridden, paralyzed.  I dreaded that exam.  My entire body was stiff with tension for eight solid weeks, from the moment I walked into my first class to the day after the inquisition.  My long-awaited summer in France turned out to be, in many ways, a summer of travail and trepidation.

And then, just like that, I passed.  Not just by the skin of my teeth.  Not just with a satisfactory margin of breathing room. Not quite with the flying colours I secretly dreamed of.  But almost.  Almost.

At one point, I re-coined the DELF acronym (“Diplome d’Etudes en Langue Française”) as “Dumb, Enigmatic Lists of Faults.”  I still kind of think that.  The test-makers are simply méchants, in my well-studied opinion.  They rub their hands in delight as they formulate one trick question after another, in a sinister attempt to separate the dumb from the dumber.  I know.  I met one of them.  And she was mean.

But do you know what it was that bumped my score down two points from the 80% I’d hoped for?  Continue reading