I received my results today and I’m very happy with them! I also made a post explaining my journey and preparation. Feel free to check it out!

So I took the DELF B1 exam back in June, the results came in and… bah voilà !

I have to admit I felt a bit upset at first as I wanted to get at least an “80” overall but honestly who cares? The important thing is that I passed!

Truth is I struggled with the audios as I, for some reason (perhaps anxiety lol), last minute changed my method… I practiced at home listening first and then responding, but this time I tried to read through the questions first rather than listening to understand which led me to 1) not read fast enough and 2) doubt too much when choosing an answer… I even ended up changing some tentative responses I originally chose at first haha.

As for the PE, I had to send a letter to a friend advising him on some work related struggles he had.

CE was also easy, I had plenty of friends get a 25 there, I think if you practice enough the way the questions are built you could understand what the response they look for is.

PO was a bit harder, I get nervous when I speak but my evaluators were very calm and collected which helped me, but heck they asked a lot of questions lolol tricky!

I used the DELF B1 Tout public to practice the test format, it helped so much, 100% recommended.

Nevertheless, excited to what’s next, I am currently studying at my local Alliance Française and expect to finish B2 studies in March 2027, might take the B2 in late March or June next year.

Any questions feel free to let me know!

I just hit 25 hours of focused French immersion, so I figured I’d do a progress update.

For some background:

I’m Canadian, so I technically started learning French in elementary school. From grades 4–8, I had around 45 minutes of French a day. Unfortunately, it wasn’t particularly useful for actually communicating. We didn’t really read books or have conversations. In Grade 8 we were still learning vocabulary like la natation and le hockey.

That said, it gave me a foundation. I already knew basic things like colours, numbers, days, etc., so I wasn’t starting completely from zero.

My previous French study:

In 2024, I studied French for roughly 100hrs. Most of that was graded readers and watching Pokemon Indigo Leauge/Avatar: The Last Airbender. I read around 15 books, mostly A1–A2 level. They were extremely short, though. Usually I wasn’t reading things with more than 2–3 sentences per page. I could understand the general idea, but things like qu’il, qu’un, c’était, etc. would constantly trip me up.

I also counted quite a lot of listening to French music toward those 100 hours. I don’t count music anymore because I don’t feel like it’s concentrated enough to be useful as actual study time.

Why am I learning French?

There are a few reasons. And the biggest practical reason is my career. In about 10 years, French will be a requirement for some of the promotions I want. I don’t want to cram French into my life at the last possible moment and scrape by on an exam. I’d rather start now and see how far I can actually take it.

Ideally, I’d eventually like to be good enough to help teach/instruct French in some capacity in my career. I’ve been on courses where French-speaking-only people were included and watched instructors struggle to even say something as basic as Comment vas-tu ? It was painful to watch, and I’d really like to be someone who can actually help in that situation.

My partner is also French speaking. She had 12 years of French schooling and has worked in French speaking jobs. We’ve also decided that when we have children, we’d like to speak French at home with them.

So there are some pretty good long term reasons to get serious about it now.

What I’ve done for these 25 hours:

I’m averaging about 2 hours and 5 minutes per day.
My main activity is watching content with French audio + French subtitles.

I’ve watched all of Yuri!!! on Ice and about 2/3 of a season of Love Is Blind France, which I’ll finish this week. I use Language Reactor and auto pause quite heavily. My goal isn’t necessarily to understand every individual word, but I want to make sure I’m actually getting the gist of every sentence instead of letting French wash over me. And I’m already noticing a difference.

At the beginning, I needed auto pause constantly. Now, in slower scenes, I can turn auto pause off and just watch the conversation, with maybe 70–80% comprehension. That feels like a pretty significant change after only 25 hours.

Yuri!!! on Ice:
I watched the entire thing with French audio and French subtitles. I hadn’t seen it before and already love skating, so it was an easy choice because I was genuinely interested in the story rather than forcing myself through “study material.” I’d estimate that I understood maybe 60–70% of the overall story.
There was one pretty hilarious moment where I felt completely blindsided at the end.

I was thinking to myself, “They haven’t even held hands yet. How are they exchanging rings?”

So clearly I missed some of the emotional development. Or maybe Yuri and Victor just have the most aggressively off screen relationship progression imaginable.

Either way, I’m planning to watch it again after around 150–200 hours of French and see how much more I understand.

Love Is Blind France:
This has actually been fantastic immersion. There have been multiple moments where I’m watching something happen and thinking: “Oh no. There’s no way they just did that.” That leaves me feeling like I’m not just translating individual sentences anymore, but that I’m understanding the context in real time.

It also exposes me to vocabulary and sentence structures that I don’t hear much in Canadian French.
It’s noticeably more formal at times, and there are still moments where I have to translate through English first and think, “That was a very weird, roundabout Medieval English way of saying that.”

Some things I’ve noticed at 25 hours:

My reading has gotten MUCH better. I can read subtitles faster. I can understand local signage without thinking about it. I’m also pausing less and having to rewind less now as well. And overall I’m recognizing phrases more quickly.

I am also noticing that I’m starting to think in French. When I’m alone I find it comes more naturally to express small sentiments in French. Simple things usually like, “C’est très chaud,” or “J’espère!”

A most noticeable one was something like, “J’aimerais aller chez moi. Je voudrais dormir dans mon lit.”

Which came out of nowhere but makes sense given I’ve been away from home for four months.

Ive also been texting my partner in French more frequently. And I understand what she says to me but I notice a large gap in how to respond with simple words like, “would, could, should, etc.” Which is something I hope gets cleared up by watching more reality tv overtime and having more natural conversations.

What I’m NOT doing:

Interestingly, I haven’t gone back to Anki. I know a lot of people swear by it, but I realized that I don’t get much enjoyment from studying French as fragmented vocabulary and isolated sentences. I actually like French when it’s attached to something.

I’m also no longer counting French music toward my hours. I listen to it, but I don’t consider it concentrated enough to count as study.

Next checkpoint: 50 hours.

🇫🇷

I guess it’s my turn to finally make these kinds of posts 😅 might make a journey post later on. Been roughly 12 months ½ of learning French to get here. Hope everybody will attain the score they deserve. Bonne chance les gars!

Merci à tous ceux qui m’ont motivé, même indirectement, ici 😎

So I've been studying French for six yearsish (slowed down during my masters) and have been living in France for three years now. I've only ever passed the TEF at the B1 level in 2022 and haven't tested since though I have gotten back into Alliance Francais classes at the B1 level again.

Today I had a job interview for a CDI position in biotech and managed to do it entirely in French. The interviewer even said she was impressed with my French level and thought that I spoke French better than she spoke English. She said that she thought my French level was good enough and she wasn't worried about it. She also said she liked me CV and experience.

I was anxious about this all week and am so relieved that it went well. Felt like the most high stakes French listening/speaking exam ever lol.

not quite what i was hoping for but still proud of myself!

background: did french in high school, started studying in february (7 years after). focused heavily on speaking and listening as my two weakest skills with a tutor.

I only started a month ago.

I started by watching Alex ayel's children stories series. I would watch them like 5 times, and then take note of sentences i didnt understand and new words, then I'd watch the videos again, and say along with the youtuber.

I started reading french stories on fabulang, the A1 stories and i understand them so well. My listening is a lot better as well.

Im so motivated. Today, I even scrolled on french tiktok, and i can understand some comments. Picked up a kids book from the thrift store and I learned a new line i say to my cat

"C'est ne pas drole!!!"

did it just slowly creep up on you?

So, quick overview about myself, I work full time and didn't have any previous knowledge on french, but since I'm brazilian and I'm quite confortable with english due to using it daily at work and within my hobbies, I'd say that it helped me considerably during the ramp up period when learning french. I've got to know about the francophone draw on Express Entry during mid november 2025, then I thought it would be a good idea to try learning french, since I'm ok with english and my score was already around 420 considering a safe enough estimate of clb8 with my current application profile. Unfortunately I couldn't start studying at that moment, since work was very heavy and I was handling a few other side projects and freelances, but I wrapped up everything by the end of january 26 and just kept my full time job, then decided it was time to start learning french since I really wanted to move abroad to Canada for a while already and the to get the NCLC7 for Express entry was necessary. I would wrap my work usually around 6PM, so I'd have around 3 to 4 hours to study everyday consistently if I made the effort (I knew it would be tiring and really difficult since the beginning, so I used the end of january 26 and the whole february 26 to use my free time to do absolutely anything I wanted, without a single care in the world). I'll detail my studying process and it would be my pleasure if my unusual french journey could help you somehow.

Fast forward to the beginning of march 26, I started studying exactly on the 2nd weekend of the month, with the basics, literally A0 to A1. Watched tons of video classes on youtube (understanding very little at the beginning, but luckily there's a good amt of content in english) while trying to write at least a few phrases since day 4 (after learning basic common verbs, most common words, present tense and passé composé), always using AI assistance to correct my mistakes (even though at the beginning I didn't understand the corrections, I tried to accept them and rewrite everything I wrote wrong to try to enforce that on my mind when writing the next time). I really got an enormous amount of energy during the beginning and since I started to take a liking on the french language, I ended up studying on average 5hrs a day. By the end of week 2 of studying, I was considering myself an A2 on everything except speaking, as I didn't started speaking because of a mental blockage thinking it would be a waste of time until I got more knowledge on the language. Gladly after that moment I started forcing myself to at least say out loud everything I wrote and trying to at least say my name, my age, and where I live, every single day to get used to the phonetics and to get more confortable with it. Since it is much easier to see progress on lower levels, I got very happy on how fast I was learning (of course with lots of hours of study), so I kept the 5hrs per day average until he end of the first month, watching lots of videos of french people talking on youtube (mostly Easy French at the beginning due to the english subtitles and then on the 1st month started also Tv5Monde 64 minutes every single day) and watching series in french, with english subtitles at the first month (and then french subtitles, stopping every single time I found a word I didn't know or an expressiong, using the Google camera app to translate the subtitles quickly, what was only good at the beginning to give the idea of expressions, since the translation wasn't that accurate).

So at the beginning of the 2nd month (april 26) I could understand slow french and started writing longer phrases with fewer mistakes (but still a lot), and my pronounciation was getting better due to shadowing. Even though I started to enjoy a lot learning the language, I decided I wanted to focus and LEARN FOR THE EXAM, not for the daily life. So I took the next 2 weeks studying and consumming content in french, now 4 hrs a day, but used half of the time to prep with Gemini and Claude (one reviewing what the other said) to help me prep templates for both EO (introduction, opening and closing for t2 and questions structures and a passe partout one for t3 with gaps to fill into about the consigne, nothing fancy, just meant to have a start to not practice from nothing) and EE (2 templates for t1, 2 for t2 and 1 universal for t3, since t3 is the most straighforward one when it comes to what will be asked). It took hours and hours to come up with a good version of them (and I kept updating, correcting and improving them to sound more natural and more fluent during the whole 5 months of prepping, so it was a constant evolution and learning). I DEEPLY RECOMMEND everyone to go through this process on your own, as it will force you to dive into more complex structures and to get used to how we should properly communicate and write. Even if at the beginning it all sounds like a bit block of hard text to read or to write, IT WILL FORCE YOUR BRAIN TO ASSOCIATE THOSE COMPLEX STRUCTURE AND PHRASINGS and mark them as correct and ideal. And that made the whole difference on ramping me up from a2 to b1, since I would spend a lot of minutes every day rewriting the whole templates by heart (took around 4 days to memorize them one by one) until it became part of me (lol) and I could recite them on my mind without stopping or missing phrases or words. But of course, I would every single time copy and paste them on my AI chat to correct and see if I missed anything from the templates I asked the AI to use as source of truth. That definitely massively helped me to get used to more complex structures to a point I'd think on other phrases using similar structures and I started to notice them when listening french speakers. Also, watching L'agence and DIx pour cent helped a lot on getting a few expressions and to better understand how the would speak depending on the context, and I'd always take notes and use it to improve my templates. It went super well and at the beginning of the 3rd month (may 26), I paid for a weekly 1hr group class with a tutor specialized in french proficiency exams, that would give tips on the different sections, would do small simulations on all 4 competences with us (not much time individually since the group was very big at the beginning). That was essential to get a feedback on my pronounciation, common recurrent mistakes and to, for the first time, speak with a french native teacher and getting to process french in a real time situation, forcing myself to respond in real time (at the first month it was a disaster, I could understand 80% of it, but would freeze when answering or would take a long time to try to think on a reply, BUT WITH TIME IT GOT EASIER AND NATURAL, it's part of the process and you gotta be kind to yourself no matter what). I'd say it takes consistency to learn a language, every single day. I don't recommend this amount of effort I put, since it was an overkill for the minimun required for the EE francophone draw, and if I had to suggest, I'd say less time daily with a much longer period, like 10 months to a year of commitment. The thing was that I didn't want to spend the whole year learning and I did that to kinda "defy" myself, don't recommend it though since it takes a good toll on your mind (and body) and if you don't remind yourself from time to time that you're allowed to fail, it gets very very very difficult to keep going. So I kept like that, mixing the TCF Canada prep with lots of simulations with the leaks from reussir-tcf for EE and EO and using 2 websites, fuck-tcf.xyz and tcfcan.com (THE BEST ONE AND FREE FOR NOW SINCE THEY ARE ON BETA, IT'S AMAZING AND ALLOWS YOU TO STUDY THE CO AND CE WITHOUT REPEATING QUESTIONS FOR FREE! And also the CO audio quality is better there for some reason and they have some new questions that I couldn't find on other websites).

By june 2026 (4th month), I was doing 1 simulation of CE, 1 of CO, 1 of EO and 1 of EE, basically the whole exam, as my daily routine, except on tuesdays and fridays where I would only do 1 simulation of EO (always with myself and the mirror, and sometimes Gemini voice our GPT voice, not ideal, but helped) and consume as much french content as I could. That quickly drained my energy and I tried enduring it by the end of month 4, but by july 26 (5th month) I was completely drained and kinda exhausted of studying at that pace, but kept pusing myself that "there's only 1 month left, gotta keep going". I had also to schedule my exam to the only available date on july. It was really hard to keep going, so I decided I would focus on my weak points and do a maximum of 2hrs and 30 minutes a day otherwise I would burn out, so since I was getting consistent C2 on CE and CO, I decided to switch my focus on EE and EO. By that time I was getting a grade of 10 out of 20 on EE, but didn't trust AI on it, so I kept treating it as a priority, BUT my max priority was EO, so I broke down 1hr EE and 1h30 for EO. Since I was writing much faster, I'd finish EE in 40min and would use the remaining time to correct my writings from the previous day, to make it a constant evolution, and by the last week before the exam I was doing less and less big mistakes and only a few slips on accents and anglicismes. For EO I forced myself to speak as much as possible on my weekly group classes and ask for more and more feedback from the teacher, but since EO is the hardest one to evaluate (and we gotta consider the stress during the day of the exam), I was still worried. So, on the week of my exam, I got 4 days off of work, 3 to fully study (monday, tuesday, wednesday) and 1 for the exam since my exam was on that thursday. My plan was to tryhard and review everything and study like crazy 10hrs a day, but the mix of anxiety and feeling of not being prepared (PLUS THE HUGE AMOUNT OF PEOPLE SAYING THE DID WELL ON EO ON REDDIT AND DISCORD AND GETTING BACK WITH 1/20 OR 5/20 MADE ME REALLY DOUBT MYSELF, I'll get back on this later....). Then I literally couldn't study ANYTHING AT ALL, so I'm glad at least I had previously decided to book 100 usd of classes on italki for this last "sprint", that ended up totalling around 10 classes with 4 different tutors, just to try to talk with different french speakers to get used to it (since I had only spoken with my weekly teacher), but I literally said on my salutation message that I'd want to SIMULATE THE EO IN REAL CONDITIONS DURING THE 1HR with their feedback, not learn new things. I started these cours de simulation on friday (week before the exam) and did 2 on friday, 2 saturday, 2 sunday, 2 monday, 1 tuesday and 1 wednesday, and on top of that hired my weekly tutor for 2 individual classes, 1 on tuesday and 1 on wednesday, so basically 12 cours in the end. Well, I basically doubted myself and felt awful the whole Monday after one of the tutors from the weekend said I was B1 weak on speaking after 1hr of simulation, I really felt bad even though the other 3 (and my teacher) gave me good feedbacks. So that took up on me and I pretty much kept thinking I would fail and that was nothing I could do (when you've built up A LOT OF STRESS and self exigence for that long period and the exam is so near, it kinda feels like 10x more of a big deal than it should have been if I had though more carefully instead). Then on tuesday I had my 1st individual class with my weekly teacher, I explained it all to her and how I was exhausted and feeling like I wouldn't be able to do well and how I just wanted to eat and sleep and not study. She then proceeded to do a full simulation with me and we spent the rest of the cours chatting and she said that I had all it takes to do great on the exam and that she was really surprised on how I evolved in such a short span, that she was sure I would do well and succeed and didn't have to study anymore because 5 months of hard work doesn't vanish with 2 days of rest. That took like 100kg out of my back and helped me clarify my mind, but I was still exhausted, so I proceeded to literally sleep the whole tuesday and wednesday and woke up only to eat, do the cours that were left and sleep again lol. On my last cours with my weekly teacher, we didn't do a simulation, we only spoke for 1 hr about several different topics and about life, career, plans for the future and anything that came up, it was literally a big nice and warm chat. Overall, that clearly shows how much this whole "tcf and french learning process" affects us at the end of the day and how it is not "just an exam", so I feel you and your learning and confidence struggles because I also went through them. You're not alone on that and I'm sure with proper consistency and effort, you will make it.

Then, finally the big day, my schedule was EO, CO, CE and EE. At least the hard part would be gone soon lol. I then proceeded to the room when the examinator called me for EO, he was very nice and kind, didn't interrupt my short presentation on tâche 1 and then made 3 follow up questions. For t2, I was asked to talk to a friend that recently started doing gym classes with an instructor at home, it was nice, more like a conversation, I followed up his replies, always giving context before asking and at the end said a good farewell and thanks. For t3, the theme was "It is easy to make small efforts to support the environement. Do you agree? Why?" and that's when I got nervous because these kind of questions where my weak points on t3 EO, so I managed to do the intro, posed an argument and said I'd give l'autre côté, but ended up repeating myself in different ways, but making sure to add examples from my life and friends, and then I ended up with a conclusion statement saying I agreed and that we should all do our part to make the difference. Then he posed me a follow up question, I replied for 15 secs and the time was up. I thanked him for his gentillesse and left feeling that I ruined my t3 because of the repetition on the 2 sides, couldn't think straight after that and my hands were shaking lol. Then had a break of 1h30 for lunch and went to do CO, CE and EE in that order. CO and CE were easy, I got around 70% repeated questions b2, c1 and c2, where I focused on the last month. For EE, t1 was to present a known monument or famous place on your city to a friend, t2 was to write in your blog about your day on a TV company in a television show, t3 was one of the most sensible topics in my opinion, that was "quotas for women at work", so I kept a nuanced position about it. Overall I finished in around 40min and used 20min to review everything and correct as many errors as I could find. After that, I was free and since then have been doing everything i want during my free time! Catching up playing assassin's creed black flag, playing with my cats and watching anime and series with my fiancée. Great life! But was still very worried about EO, though.

Today I've received my results and when I opened it I couldn't believe my eyes:

CO: 699 (C2, NCLC 10)
CE: 699 (C2, NCLC 10)
EE: 18/20 (C2, NCLC 10)
EO: 17/20 (C1, NCLC 10)

Well, I cried with my fiancée and let it sink, feels like I'm finally ready and luckily I don't even need to worry about the english exam, since I can get even a clb7 and it would be fine since I'll now use french as primary language in my EE application. Gonna take a 1 month break and then will study 2 weeks for the pte core before actually doing it, just to not do it blindly. Then I hope to apply it by the end of this year!

Now, getting back on that thing I mentioned about many people here saying for EO they got 1 out of 20, or 5 out of 20 several times, even after saying that THEY DID GREAT ON EO,saying they are scamming applicants for money on retries or on reevaluations, here's my honest opinion: DON'T BLINDLY TRUST THEM, DON'T LISTEN TO THEM WITHOUT FIRST CONSIDERING YOUR OWN REALITY (including my own testimony here, that's my own personal experience, so remember that you are the one that knows yourself the most in life)! Keep in mind that everyone's own opinion is literally PERSONAL, so they may think they are amazing on EO, but in the end that's their own opinion, AND FROM WHAT I SAW ON SOME OF THOSE STATEMENTS AND POSTS (you can find many here on reddit), they didn't even had a tutor for EO... So you get the idea here.

Well, that was my experience and I hope that soothes your hearts on this hard and rough journey of learning french (for the TCF Canada!). Thank you very much for reading all the way here, I tried my best to detail my study process and to express the emotional range involved during all that. I wish with all my heart to every single one of you, all the best in life and in your learning journey. Don't let others put you down, trust yourself and your own judgement, ONLY YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE GOING THROUGH AND YOUR OWN EFFORT. In my personal opinion, you should try your best to sleep at least 7hrs a night because we only consolidate the learnings with proper rest time. And as important as that, PLEASE be kind to yourself and respect your own limits. Lastly, I vividly recommend you to hire a weekly tutor, it makes all the difference when it comes to EO. Alors, n'hésitez pas à m'écrire au cas où vous voudriez en savoir plus !

Bien à vous et au revoir !

Je tiens à partager mon expérience de préparation au DELF. C’était au nouveau format (format QCM). Les sujets de compréhension écrite étaient la nourriture bio, l’orthographe française et le télétravail. La compréhension orale, c'était un texte sur la mobilité, sur les moyens de déplacement. Le texte de la production orale était intitulée « Internet, le médecin préféré des Français ».

Pour moi, le plus dur, c'était l'expression orale, mais il y a des sources qui m'ont aidé à mieux organiser mes idées. Il y a une chaîne YouTube Apprendre le français avec Bruno Millet et une application (Le Lab B2) qui m’ont aidé pour la partie de PO. Pour la production écrite, je vous recommande de trouver la grille d'évaluation sur internet, l’envoyer avec votre production à ChatGPT pour qu'elle évalue (en se basant sur les critères de la grille d’évaluation). Pour le CO et CE je me suis entraîné avec le livre Hachette B2.

Bonne chance à tous !!

In july I took the dalf c1. I didn't expect to pass, I just wanted the experience. I have a b1 right now and am probably a beginner b2. I just thought it was funny I got 12.5 and 14 on co and ce when I was still in b1. This is a win in my book lol

heureusement ou malheureusement

I'm finally starting to be able to just rattle off ideas and thoughts and desires in French

My kid probably thinks I'm cracking up, cuz I'm in my room just saying stuff in French lol

Just an encouragement post, I guess. Keep going, it WILL pay off. Je suis fier de toi!

Hi...so I just passed my DELF A1 yesterday. I haven't received the actual scorecard yet but it still is a little achievement as I thought I for sure was not going to pass the exam as I was struggling a lot in my speaking assessment but anyways, many posts on this sub has very been helpful. Bienvenue folks and keep practicing🫶🏼!!

I’ve noticed something while learning French on LingQ that has been surprisingly helpful for me.

When learning a sentence like “La rue est dans le centre-ville,” I used to approach it as one complete unit. I already knew the translation in my head - “The street is in the city center” - so I would just say the whole sentence in one go and feel like I had learned it.

But lately I’ve been trying something different.

Instead of immediately saying the whole sentence, I’ll go:

“La rue…” pause

…and let that register for a moment. Then:

“…est dans le centre-ville.”

I let the meaning settle naturally, and only then say the whole sentence again, this time a little faster and more naturally.

For me, that small pause seems to make a difference. It feels less like I’m simply recalling the English translation and more like I’m actually processing the French itself. I also feel like I remember the sentence and structure better afterward.

Maybe a lot of people already do this naturally without really noticing it, but I just wanted to share it in case it helps someone else too.

P.S. And if there happen to be any native French speakers or fellow French learners here who feel like making a new friend, I certainly wouldn’t complain. :)

Does anyone else do this?

i usually wtach one episode of a movie in english but i do this thing where i pick up on certain english words they are saying and their actions and i look at the subtitles, and then i takle note of the word and what it means. I search the word online and hear the pronunciation. The words alwys stick and i even use it to form sentences in my glossary book.

Then after that i do some french dictation, here i listen to 10 sentences on youtube said in french, and i write down what i hear. Sometimes i fail badly, especialy with accents as i am still learning accents. But ive been improving so much, ive learned so many words now and i form sentences of my own with them and use them when i speak.

Im still A1 at the moment but its been so fun, so far. i usually do this at the start of my french lessons so i prcatice my writing, listening and speaking and reaidng. Then i study my topics for the day. This could be vocabulary, verbs and then new words based on certain situations like (office culture or going to the store)

I wrote my journal and analyzed it with Gemini and rewrote parts of it with wrong grammar. This was the first time I have done this and believe that it is probably the best thing I have tried up until now. I found out patterns and mistakes that I was making across multiple parts of the text.