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At what level do you say you speak (2) ? | ||
Tags: CEFR Language Levels | Speaking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| casamata Senior Member Joined 4263 days ago 237 posts - 377 votes  Studies: Portuguese | Message 73 of 118 01 April 2013 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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[/QUOTE] It's not about that. It's about the fact that when people do it's a great achievement no matter how they get there. If you run a marathon, are you offended by the fact that a long distance runner runs a marathon in 2 hrs 15 minutes because you can't? Are you offended if someone aims to set a world record and run a marathon under 2 hours? And if he fails, but still runs it in 4 hours as a first-timer? no. 7 is pretty achievable within a few years.[/QUOTE] No, I'm not saying that it is impossible to reach very high levels in a language nor other things. But I am saying that you can't do it in 3 days or X time like a lot of people say. Luca and Simcott are the two that I am actually amazed by; they speak really well. Are you a runner? Do you study physiology and the human body as well as the sport of running? Even if you do, you would/will get destroyed in an objective argument with me about running. The world marathon record is currently 2 hours, 3 minutes, 38 seconds. However, it improves a few seconds each year and the rate of improvement has drastically slowed down, even after EPO and other drug use. A lot of scientists say that 2 hours is humanly possible, although to be fair they did say that a 4 minute mile was impossible. (It currently is 3:43) Do you know that almost all elite marathoners are Kenyan, Moroccan, or Ethiopian? And most of them are from a tiny village in Kenya; why can't anybody else beat them? Could it be...their genes, the fact that they were raised in a high-altitude environment? According to research I've read, the average 25 year old in shape person runs 5 kilometers in 25 minutes. An ok High School runner does it in 18:40 or so, which only 1/49 can do. A good college runner does it in 15:45 (1 in 3,000). Then you see, one of the top handful of runners in the WORLD did it in less than 13 minutes. The world record is 12:43, which has not budged in like 10 years, even with heavy drug use. So if I told you that I, as a non-East African and without any information about my current best times and training history, wanted to break the world record in the mile, 5K, or marathon, would you believe it to be an unlikely goal? Not everybody is the same. Some people are more talented than others, whether it be at languages, athletics, or school subjects. FYI, I don't care about the marathoners. In general, people that run a marathon for their first race was sucky runners. Competitive runners, in the vast majority of cases, start with the 800 or 1500/1600 and then progress to the 5K, 10K, then half marathon and full marathon. Also, 4 hours for a marathon DOES suck for time if you are competing. There is a BIG difference between 2:15 (qualifies for olympics) and 4 hours. (a LOT of random average joes can beat that easily) To give you an idea of how slow that is, a 4 hour marathon equates to a 1:53 half marathon. I was only a fairly good High School runner (too slow to run in college) and my long runs are 14 miles run at 7 minute/mile pace. I.E, a half marathon in 1:31 while just doing a long run, relaxed and listening to music. You don't know what you don't know. 5K Percentile Rarity (1 in ?? Men 25:00 50 2 Average male in prime 21:37 84 6 20:10 90.9 11 19:30 97.22 36 19:00 97.72 44 18:40 97.959 49 Will often win age-group for 50 yr 16:50 99.865 741 16:25 99.9407 1689 Will win most local races 15:45 99.9666 3,000 15:08 99.9966 30,000 14:25 99.9998 500,000 Top college runners 13:50 99.999966 3,000,000 Top 50 in US Sub 13 Top 15 in world 2009 Number 7 is NOT achievable in a "few years." I've spoken English natively for many years--if I moved to, say, France for 4 years, will I know everything that I know in English? Will I know about cartoons, slang that we used to say when we were kids, the best toys that we had when we were children? Will I know about all the national events that took place in the country when I was a teenager? Will I know all the words I know in French as in English? Will my accent and word choice be as perfect as in English? If you truly believe this...wow. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| casamata Senior Member Joined 4263 days ago 237 posts - 377 votes Studies: Portuguese | Message 74 of 118 01 April 2013 at 6:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Oh, you are right. I meant to say that if two people with "normal" language aptitude spend x and 5x number of hours speaking, using the language, the person that has spent five times the number of hours should have a much higher level. Althoug he may only have a C1 versus the B2 of the other person because progress really slows down at the high end. But if I hypothetically had a college major in France and moved to France and lived 100% in French for 3 years and then objectively said that I had a C1, pushing C2 level, how would I feel if somebody said that they had the same level in 2 months? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6904 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 75 of 118 01 April 2013 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think there is a huge difference between what you're writing about and "being able to do everything they can do in target language as in their native tongue", which you mentioned before. There are very few people that aim at the kind of proficiency you're writing about, and it's obviously not achievable in a few years. Speaking a language fluently enough to do pretty much anything you would do in the native language and to get regularly mistaken for a native speaker is achievable in a few years, though. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 76 of 118 01 April 2013 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
So what? My point is people can aim for under 2 hours all they want. All the knowledge in the world won't change that. I don't need to be a runner to tell you that 42 km in under two hours is an achievement. If I run it in 4 hours then that is a good score if I don't do a lot of running. Why is it not an achievement for me if I do that? Aim for the moon and you might end up among the stars. You still don't get it do you? Achievements are achievements no matter how talented people are. Just stop envying them and if you want to do better, do better. I don't feel any problem at all when people tell me they learn quickly or slowly. People just do. And what exact level that is doesn't matter. Learning to speak good French in four years (which I did by the way, more or less) is very achievable. I learned to speak quite decent Swedish in less than a year. Am I a native speaker? No, but C1 doesn't imply that you are (I don't think I am C1, more like B1-B2). But that's still an achievement because there are many things that I can do, including reading crime novels without trouble, have conversations, converse, and so on in Swedish. I don't understand why you feel the need to criticise something like that. If it's outrageous like learning Chinese in 3 days, it'd be something else, but a couple months is enough time to get grounded in any language, even if you don't reach perfectionism. Are there things I cannot do? Very likely, and I am the first to admit that I can't do everything in Swedish like in Dutch or English (my two best languages). Speaking of perfectionism. Do you demand perfectionism of me in English? Let me tell you, English is actually a second language for me. I can tell you right here, right now, that I do not speak perfect English. I probably do not even speak perfect Dutch. It's unreasonable to hold people to a standard where they are 100% perfect in any language, and neither C1 nor C2 at the CEFR level evaluate this as such. The question is how smooth you backtrack around any possible mistakes you do make and how eloquent and well-structured your responses are (and that's a skill many native speakers lack, and one I have developed better in English than in Dutch due to necessity). 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6904 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 77 of 118 01 April 2013 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Sceptical. Interested in how s/he managed to achieve this level, and whether s/he already knew another Romance language. Kinda jealous, s/he really got that far in such a short period of time. Still proud of my own language achievements. :) I meet better/faster learners all the time. Like a friend of mine who is able to repeat pretty much anything with perfect pronunciation. Or a guy I met during a Spanish summer course, who made an amazing progress, achieving a better level of Spanish than half of the course participants despite being one of just a few total beginners, and who could speak several languages (more than 6, if I remember correctly) fluently, although he was in his early twenties. Add to this numerous HTLAL users, many of them speaking more languages than me, speaking them better, writing better, being more systematic than me (that would probably be most :)), more patient, more talented etc. Well, I'm not all these things, but this doesn't prevent me from being proud of my achievements and from going on with my plans. :) Plus, if I see someone who makes an amazing progress, I prefer to look at them as an inspiration and 'steal' some of the learning methods they use ;). 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| casamata Senior Member Joined 4263 days ago 237 posts - 377 votes Studies: Portuguese | Message 78 of 118 01 April 2013 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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So what? My point is people can aim for under 2 hours all they want. All the knowledge
in the world won't change that. I don't need to be a runner to tell you that 42 km in under two hours is an achievement. If I run it in 4 hours then that is a good score if I don't do a lot of running. Why is it not an achievement for me if I do that? Aim for the moon and you might end up among the stars. You still don't get it do you? Achievements are achievements no matter how talented people are. Just stop envying them and if you want to do better, do better. I don't feel any problem at all when people tell me they learn quickly or slowly. People just do. And what exact level that is doesn't matter. Learning to speak good French in four years (which I did by the way, more or less) is very achievable. I learned to speak quite decent Swedish in less than a year. Am I a native speaker? No, but C1 doesn't imply that you are (I don't think I am C1, more like B1-B2). But that's still an achievement because there are many things that I can do, including reading crime novels without trouble, have conversations, converse, and so on in Swedish. I don't understand why you feel the need to criticise something like that. If it's outrageous like learning Chinese in 3 days, it'd be something else, but a couple months is enough time to get grounded in any language, even if you don't reach perfectionism. Are there things I cannot do? Very likely, and I am the first to admit that I can't do everything in Swedish like in Dutch or English (my two best languages). Speaking of perfectionism. Do you demand perfectionism of me in English? Let me tell you, English is actually a second language for me. I can tell you right here, right now, that I do not speak perfect English. I probably do not even speak perfect Dutch. It's unreasonable to hold people to a standard where they are 100% perfect in any language, and neither C1 nor C2 at the CEFR level evaluate this as such. The question is how smooth you backtrack around any possible mistakes you do make and how eloquent and well-structured your responses are (and that's a skill many native speakers lack, and one I have developed better in English than in Dutch due to necessity).[/QUOTE] Dude, that is MUCH FASTER than the world record. Dude. World record. Non-runners don't understand that there is a vast difference between a 4:10 miler, for example, and a 4 minute miler. The distribution on the talent curve is heavily weighted toward the middle. How about this: the world record mile for women is 4:12. It hasn't moved in...25 years, I think. Is it likely that a woman will break 4 minutes in the next 20 years? A sub 2 hour marathon is NOT an achievement because it has NEVER been done. Never. Not even with runners doped to the gills with drugs. 4 hours is not good, sorry. No, not all achievements are the same. If I can make the middle school basketball team, is that as amazing as making a professional team? No. Is it good for me? Sure. Props to me for doing what I want but the performance level is many orders of magnitude worse. I don’t envy these people that reach C1 level in impossibly short time because they didn’t do it. Luca seems to be very good in at least English and Spanish, the only languages I can judge. But he has spent years speaking them, many hours of dedication. It wasn’t a short path to his achievements. I’m not talking about speaking good, B2 or C1 level French. I’m saying that it is impossible for somebody that has spoken English for 20 years natively to reach the same level in French in 4 years. It is not going to happen. Will the person speak pretty damn good French. Yes, probably. But will they speak as well as they do in their native tongue. Of course not! I don’t demand perfectionism but you won’t speak at a level of a native that has spoken X language for dozens of years. That is ALL that I am saying. I will repeat for the thirtieth time, I don’t expect perfection. I’m just saying that it is stupid to say that you will have as high of a level in a language that a native has spoken for 30 years, for example. Maybe if you lived in the same country for 30 years, but not in 2, not 5, not 10. You will reach a level that is very close, but not the same. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| casamata Senior Member Joined 4263 days ago 237 posts - 377 votes Studies: Portuguese | Message 79 of 118 01 April 2013 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Sorry, I accidentally said "like" to your comment.
The thing is, I myself was one of the best Spanish students at my university, one of the largest and top colleges in the US. I always had among the best grammar scores and advanced much faster than my cohorts partly due to my hard work or for whatever reason. Abroad, I was the only foreign student in two of my classes at the University of X in Spain. I took 3 classes (the maximum allowed) with native Spaniards while my cohorts took 2 classes. However, even though I was much better than my peers, I realized that I didn't know as much as I thought. As I advanced from B2, to C1, I realized that I really wasn't as good as I thought I was. When I was at B1, I seriously thought that I knew everything about Spanish but really wasn't that good. You see this with Luca, he is very good but is humble and says that he is always learning and that languages, as well as any endeavor, is a life-long pursuit. I'm not an optimist nor a pessimist; I'm a realist. Pretty much anybody can reach a C2 level in a language, barring some mental or physical handicap that keeps them from speaking. But there are probably only a handful of people that can do something in X hours that others have spent 10 X hours doing. Look at Benny's arguments with Mezzo Guild and Benny's arguments wih the Chinese language forums. He insults them and says that he will reach an equivalent level in 3 months while many of them lived abroad for years and haven't do it. What if I told you that I could study what you did at University in half the time? Would that be kind of jerkish? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5263 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 80 of 118 01 April 2013 at 7:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Whatever someone does, or doesn't do in the field of language learning doesn't concern me at all. What does concern me is what I do in trying to learn a language. If someone makes a monumental effort to reach an intermediate level in a short amount of time, I am happy for that person. That person's accomplishment takes nothing away from me or my accomplishments. It doesn't, somehow, cheapen what I have done. If someone reaches a very high level in a language in a shorter matter of time than I did, great, that's wonderful! I am still proud of what I have achieved given my own unique circumstances and motivation.
I have no problem with that person extolling their accomplishment on youtube, a blog, twitter or anywhere else. The only time I have a problem with it is if that person then proceeds to promote his/her way as the only way to learn a language and then tries to hard-sell me the method. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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