Which French words tend to cause difficulty for B1 learners based on recent research

For B1-level French learners, recent research highlights several areas of vocabulary difficulty, particularly around collocations and formulaic language. Learners tend to struggle with:

• Mastery of lexical collocations (common word pairs), especially nominal-adjectival collocations and verbal collocations. These require significant effort in production, as learners often use limited and atypical lexical combinations that differ from standard French usage. This results in insufficient collocational competence at the B1 level.

• Formulaic language such as fixed lexical bundles—common multi-word expressions—poses notable challenges, often underrepresented in textbooks compared to authentic oral usage. Increasing exposure to such formulaic language is advised to enhance learner competence.

• Difficulty with certain prosodic features like lexical stress placement also affects comprehensibility in speech production at B1. Learners frequently misplace stress, which can hinder understanding.

• Other studies indicate that learners face challenges with less transparent, lower-frequency, or unfamiliar words especially if they are not well encoded initially, though well-learned difficult words can be retained better over time.

In sum, B1 learners find difficulty not only with individual words but especially with typical word combinations (collocations), formulaic chunks, and prosodic aspects of vocabulary use. Tackling these areas is crucial for improving vocabulary use and comprehension at this intermediate proficiency stage. This is based on analyses comparing learner corpora and native French, as well as examination of textbooks and spontaneous speech among B1 learners. ^{1, 2, 3, 4}

References

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• J’ai l’impression que: Lexical Bundles in the Dialogues of Beginner French Textbooks

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• Language Difficulty and Prior Learning Influence Foreign Vocabulary Acquisition

• V2 is not difficult to all learners in all contexts: a cross-sectional study of L2 Danish

• What Makes Video Difficult for Language Learners?

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• Refusal Speech Acts in French Learners of Mandarin Chinese

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