hannes52

Sounds about right. That's grad school for ya! You'll constantly question your own decisions, and you'll perpetually have this vague feeling that you're doing something wrong. Heh! Fun times.
Don't worry, it'll all work out (probably), and you'll look back on your first year project later and realize nobody cared. Just kidding. Kind of.
On a more serious note...hey, look at it this way! When you've done everything you can, and you're just waiting on your advisor to follow up, the "ball is in his/her court." Nobody can blame you for taking too long because you've done your part, and you've made efforts to contact your advisor all you can. It's up to them! You're totally blameless at that point. That was the approach I took to allow myself to relax throughout grad school. Granted, I took 7 years to complete my PhD, but hey! ?

Are there any updates on this? I'm curious to know what happened. 

If the brief comment had been exceptionally favorable, would you have been as disappointed? 

Thank you both for your advice. I will keep you updated on the situation
 

Start looking for websites and published guides on academic writing for non-native English speakers. Pay extra attention to how the pieces you're reviewing are written--your lit review should have many similar elements. See if you can find journals in your fields that are published in French. Pie in the sky, you'll find articles in French and English on the same topic that will provide a "road map" of sorts. Start thinking about expanding and increasing your ability to step outside of your comfort zone. Don't deny or suppress your feelings. But don't let your feelings get in the way of embracing opportunities to grow.  

It's not the professor's job to correct your grammar. That's when you hire or work with a copyeditor. If you're that concerned about your English grammar/writing up front, why not start working with someone in the writing center to improve your skills? I'd also share your concerns with the professor.

My prelims were also a bit shaky. I had ~2.5 months to digest a 230 book reading list (with a 1-course TA load), which often meant grinding through 5-10 books in a day. Needless to say, while my exam committee found my synthetic work very interesting, they had severe concerns about my degree of precision with regard to the texts. 
It doesn't matter. I passed. I got what I needed out of the exam, which is a broad overview of the fields I need to work in, and when I need to talk about a specific subject, I know where to look. I have publications coming up. My prospectus is looking very strong. My summer research trips are planned and funded. 
They were traumatic, they're over, move on.

What is your field?  Do you have an advisor picked out?   Are there people at your institution with expertise in the topics you suggested?   What are some past topics?

I had to switch advisors, so I understand a bit of your anxiety--though my circumstances were very different from yours and the support I needed was in a very different area. I find that faculty get a  little (or a lot) frustrated when students come to them with open ended complaints and no specific request or plan of action. It's not that they are rude or don't care about you. They just don't know what to do for you if you can't identify what it is you want from them, so they make you wait until they have an opening in their schedule big enough to untangle your problems with you. If you can go to your advisor and say something like "I need  ten minutes of your time to talk about x, y and z ideas" or "I would like feedback on these specific areas of the proposal, but I am also considering switching to this other topic and I have prepared an abstract of that potentially new proposal right here for you" you are more likely to get the concrete feedback that you crave. Nebulous, unconstructed commentary like "I feel I am not getting supported" results in equally nebulous, unhelpful responses. 
To answer your other question, some faculty get touchy if you recruit a new advisor before you talk to them. Others don't care. This would be something to ask of the other grad students in your department.  You don't want to offend your current advisor (and chair of your department) by announcing that you found someone else before you've even had a chance to clear the air with her, but you also don't want to waste her time. It really depends on the faculty member and your relationship with her.
Good luck!

Is there anyone else you could meet with instead? Maybe you can add a second advisor instead of replacing your current one, so you don't have to have that conversation with her. A lot of the fit that goes into a supervising relationship is personal, not professional. If you need more attention than she can give you and that's affecting your well-being, you need to seek the support you're lacking. I'd try and view it as an incompatibility between work styles, which then means you don't need to blame her for anything. It's a simple reality that she's chair and is busy, and you would prefer to work with someone who's more available. This said, it'd be advisable to have someone in mind and to have at least some idea that they'd actually be a better fit and willing to take you on before you make any moves. So, what are your other options? Have you tried chatting with your advisor's other students about how they handle working with her? Try and talk to those who are a year ahead of you about how they went through the process. They might also have thoughts about who among the faculty gets along with your advisor and would be a good candidate for a second/replacement advisor and who might not be. The last thing you want is to hit some political hornets' nest. (As in, picking a second/replacement advisor who doesn't get along with your advisor, leading to either resentment or in-fights.)