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Reaching C2 level | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| guiguixx1 Octoglot Senior Member Belgium guillaumelp.wordpres Joined 4082 days ago 163 posts - 207 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Dutch, Portuguese, Esperanto, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 1 of 9 23 August 2014 at 12:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi all,
Sorry if this has already been asked, but I couldn't find the answer using the engine... Since I have been at C1 level in English for quite a long time, I was wondering how to reach out level C2. Does it "just" require learning massive amount of vocab and improving my comprehension skill? Are there specific books or websites? Thanks in advance. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4626 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 2 of 9 23 August 2014 at 2:14am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think C2 could be reached unless you actually spend a large amount of time in the country where the language is spoken. There are so many words, references, and phrases, especially in English, that just don't appear very frequently in books or in movies that may actually be used commonly amongst the population that speak it everyday.
Maybe someone here has proved otherwise, but I'm just going off of my experiences researching the forum regarding the topic and speaking with people overseas who were trying to get to the C level in other languages. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 5006 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 3 of 9 23 August 2014 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | ||
I think it's possible to go from C1 to C2 (and beyond) without setting foot in the country where the language is spoken. It's just that it's extremely difficult and it takes a lot of time and work. Benny Lewis has an interesting article on the 80/20 rule. This rule is a boon for beginners, but the further you get in a language, the more difficult it becomes. Why? Well, because by then you're learning the 80% of the language that is used just 20% of the time. And as sillygoose1 says, that takes a lot of time. Years. If you live in-country, you'll make faster progress, of course. At this level, you've got to read a truckload of books and watch another truckload of films. I don't think there's one book or website that could take you from C1 to C2. Something that helped me, other than books and films, of course, were books that discussed the differences between Indian English and Standard English. These books helped me notice the errors that I as a speaker of "Indian" English was likely to make. You might want to look for books that talk about common mistakes made by native French learners of English. So, to answer your question, yes, it's possible, but you've got to work very very hard and you've got to be patient. Bonne chance! :) Edited: typos fixed. Edited by napoleon on 23 August 2014 at 10:05pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5049 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 4 of 9 24 August 2014 at 3:46am | IP Logged | ||
The description of C2 level leaves some room for interpretation. If you take it literally, you could argue that even most educated native speakers don't meet it. For instance, "Can understand with ease virtually everything heard or read." Now, there are a lot of difficult books out there. There's poetry and there's regional slang. Most native speakers have some difficulty with at least some of those things. You could have a vocabulary and reading comprehension far superior to that of a native college student, and still not be at that level. Even if you lived in the country for many years and got to the point where you prefer to read in the language, and speak it every day without difficulties of communication, you still wouldn't unambiguously fulfill the requirements. However, it seems that people who apply the CEFR levels in practice tend to be a bit more lenient than the letter of the law. It's probably enough to be able to comprehend about 99% of the linguistic content (sometimes missing a deeper comprehension) in books and speech intended for a general audience, plus those in one's areas of expertise. You absolutely do not have to live in the country to do this. No one is saying you have all the subtle knowledge required to use the language in a way that is functionally indistinguishable from a native speaker. All you need to do is be able to pick up a book/turn on the radio and understand it, plus be able to express yourself fluently and accurately. It's no reason for shame if you personally need to live in the place to achieve that, but many talented learners have done it from home through extensive reading, listening, and talking. However, there is no single book or thing you can do to achieve this: it's going to take a loooot of reading, listening, and speaking practice. Which is OK, because at C1 you can read, listen, and speak effectively for work and pleasure. Edited by robarb on 24 August 2014 at 3:48am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4818 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 5 of 9 24 August 2014 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I know nothing about the specific requirements for C2, but if it's a question of
greatly expanding your knowledge of vocabulary at a higher level, and also delving further into cultural references, then you will need to be doing a lot of reading of more demanding books, and there are probably worse places to start than Professor Arguelles "great books" lists: Great Books For listening, BBC Radio is a great free resource (I'd concentrate on Radio 4 and the World Service). BBC TV can also be ok, but you have to wade through a lot of dross before finding anything intellectually worthwhile. BBC2 and BBC4 would be the best bets. That should help with vocabulary and British cultural references. There are masses of sources of American cultural references which you can no doubt easily find. There are also of course serious newspapers. The Guardian and Observer (same family) currently still have all their content online, including book and film reviews, which might help you keep in touch with current literature and the better serious films. Some of the other serious papers have gone behind paywalls, and I'm not sure which are still freely available. The London Review of Books might possibly be useful. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4999 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 6 of 9 25 August 2014 at 11:49am | IP Logged | ||
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Depends on how you interpret the "reaching C2 level statement". There are differences, as some htlalers have already described.
If you take C2 as nativelike, then the chances to acquire such speaking skill are very low unless you spend years in the country. However, the rest of the skills are different. When I used to have a little bit more practice and wasn't too lazy to read longer texts after myself, I was often confused for native based on writing. And my CAE paper stated that my writing skill was C2. It is possible because the most tricky part, sounding like a native with perfect accent, isn't present in writing. Nativelike comprehension is actually not that hard to achieve. You just need to practice a lot and to leave your comfort zone often. I belive most people putting the time into it can achieve C2 comprehension. However, there will still be things hard to understand, just as there are such things in our native languages (some works on philosophy, technical fields far from our reality, a local dialect you don't usually meet out of its small region) If you take "reaching C2" as passing a C2 exam, it is a different situation. The people I know, who have passed such an exam, are really good but they weren't expected to be 100% nativelike. To pass a C2 exam, you basically need to: -have nativelike comprehension -not to make mistakes you might be forgiven at any lower level. C1 is already quite unforgiving, C2 even more. You'd better not make any mistakes. -show wide vocabulary. in some exams, it means as well not to use the simple words even though a native would surely apply them to the situation at hand (the red flag words like "good", "interesting" etc. Get the educated vocabulary even about fields you are unlikely to ever talk about in reality. -prepare precisely for the exam format. some exams require you to write formally correct essays and such things. It doesn't matter whether you can write poetry in the language or whatever. Practice what you'll be required to do by the examinators. -and so on, I have surely missed something. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4612 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 7 of 9 25 August 2014 at 1:35pm | IP Logged | ||
I would say my wife (from Germany) is now C2 in English. She has spent the last ten years in the UK and sounds incredibly native-like in both social and professional situations. She was already a strong speaker when she came over (a veteran of many business trips and she had lived in Dublin for a year, albeit in a German-speaking job) but initially there were lots of fairly-common words and phrases used among natives that left her stumped. Of course, you soak all this up as time goes by. Moreover, she now reads mainly in English. Her language flows effortlessly. Yet she has no formal training or qualifications in the language (she studied only Russian at school). As for my German, I think I have attained C1 status (just) but there is still much to learn. C2 still seems miles away for me. Someone said recently the gap between expressing yourself well and expressing yourself very well is massive. I totally agree. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5049 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 8 of 9 28 August 2014 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | ||
The definition of C2 level doesn't require native-like pronunciation. In fact, the standards for Phonological Competence are the same for C1 and C2: "Can vary intonation and place sentence stress correctly in order to express finer shades of meaning" (Source: http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/Framework_EN.pdf, page 117). The general idea seems to be that, to the extent C2 means native-like, it means comparable to native speakers in functional competence. I think most of us have met non-native speakers who have a vocabulary, expressiveness and articulateness in speech and writing that are comparable to the average native speaker, even though their accent may be identifiably foreign and they may say something non-idiomatic once in a blue moon. For instance, Cavesa's post on this thread is native level English. If he/she can match that on topics other than language learning without using reference books, that's C2 writing. If he/she can speak that way too, even with an accent, that's C2 speaking. Edited by robarb on 28 August 2014 at 8:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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