Maintaining proficiency in French?

Don’t waste another minute looking for authentic materials at your level. Let alone figuring out how to best use them to build reading and listening skills you need most.

We’ve done all the legwork for you—CL-150 Cohort lessons are 60ish-minute lessons designed for sustaining your reading and listening skills.

And now CL-150 Cohort sustainment lessons are available in French for ILR 2, 2+ and 3!

What is a CL-150 Cohort lesson?

CL-150 Cohort lesson streams regularly provide new lessons right to your inbox—the perfect reminder to sustain consistently.

Each lesson is based on authentic sources from around the Francophone world, like newspaper articles, op eds, podcast clips, TV commercials, and so on. The sources cover domains that build your cultural and regional expertise, including politics, security, society, economy, etc.

In a typical lesson you can expect to build key vocab needed to understand the topic. Answer DLPT-style reading or listening comprehension questions. Practice transcribing the audio. And more.

How do lessons vary by ILR level?

Lessons vary from level to level based on several factors:

Authentic Sources

You’ll work with professionally rated texts and audio clips, such as:

• At ILR 2, lesson audio/texts are sourced from news briefs on straightforward topics like natural disaster reporting, election result reporting, and other sources that tend to be explicit, fact-based, and non-technical.
• At ILR 2+, sources fall somewhere in the middle, such as a detailed news report that includes opinions in the form of quotes.
• At ILR 3, audio/texts will be pulled from speeches, interviews, editorials, literature, and other sources that include the author’s opinion, contradictions, and other implicit information.

Key Vocabulary

You’ll learn 10-20 vocab items in each lesson, such as:

• At ILR 2, you’ll encounter primarily single-word items, collocations, grammar patterns, and short phrases necessary for understanding the text. Vocabulary will be topic specific and often includes secondary or extended meaning senses.
• At ILR 2+, you’ll learn proportionately more collocations, expressions, and idioms than at lower levels. Words will be slightly lower in frequency, more technical, and include domain-specific terms, words with extended meaning senses, and grammar patterns.
• At ILR 3, you’ll be challenged with a particular emphasis on longer phrases, expressions, idioms, and complex grammar patterns. At this level, vocab will have extended meaning and connotations and includes assumed insider cultural information. Words will be even lower in frequency and will help learners not only understand the text but also discuss it with peers.

Learning Activities

You’ll face different challenges in the lesson activities, such as:

• Reading and listening comprehension questions vary by level. In ILR 2 and 2+ Cohort lessons, learners will encounter 3-5 questions focused on straightforward comprehension such as determining cause and effect. In ILR 3 Cohort lessons, comprehension questions also require learners to identify implied information of the author’s opinions.
• Paragraph Fill in the Blank also becomes more challenging at higher levels. At ILR 2, the blanked-out tiles are likely to be simple one-word items and items taught in the vocab in particular. At ILR 2+ and 3, the tiles will be longer phrases, collocations, grammar patterns, or trickier words that must be understood in context to fill in the right blank.

Ready to start maintaining proficiency? Log in to the CL-150 and enroll in the French Cohort for your ILR level here.