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Average Joe/Jose takes a level test | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4288 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 41 of 80 24 June 2013 at 1:28am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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That is interesting, since Québec was one place to which I was considering future
immigration. I do not mind preparing, but nervousness ensues during presentations in front of others. In secondary school during a debate (in English), I stopped speaking completely due to nervousness in front of many people. I "forfeited" the debate due to being unable to respond. I suppose that is a different problem however, because I have problems with this in my native English, and perhaps is not related to actual language skills. Edited by 1e4e6 on 24 June 2013 at 1:33am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 42 of 80 24 June 2013 at 1:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
It is true that one can question the accuracy of a test. How well is the test able to measure the target skill? Could one cheat by just memorizing some preparatory textbooks and not knowing the material? I would say it depends of the design of the test and most times not. Let's take our well-know summarize, present and duscuss C2 level example. How can one "cheat" for this? Unless you were able to steal or buy the text in question, I don't see how you can cheat. .How can you cheat fake your presentation? You can't. You can't cheat your way around a discussion. The only way to cheat is to have a more proficient person take the exam in your place. Don't laugh, people try this all the time. How can you cheat by preparing for any test unless you have the test beforehand? What test preparation courses or workshops do is show you what the test look likes, how the test is scored, key things to study and strategies for getting the most points. Is this cheating or is this being smart? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5128 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 43 of 80 24 June 2013 at 1:56am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I know it's sometimes difficult to find the right "fit", but you might consider looking at advanced conversation classes. If the class is good, you'll get ample practice in speaking not just one-on-one, but in front of groups of people, albeit small groups. You could also try language meetups. They'll provide a similar, yet more relaxed experience. More generally speaking, there's Toastmasters International, which will provide a peer- review sort of system for speaking in public. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 44 of 80 24 June 2013 at 1:58am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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And did those people fail because:
a)their French wasn't that good and the test was just one of the many things they were incapable of in the language or b)they hadn't become test monkeys even though their French was on the required level and wouldn't be any obstacle in doing their job? I think you don't understand the point. Noone here said preparation is harmful or that looking at a few tests and incorporating specific preparation into your learning is wrong. It's just that people who do not have the level and skills and just memorize common answers and repeat the common assignments ad nauseam do get scores that are unrelated to their real life skills. To answer your question: learning those things by heart as main part of your learning, that is not smart. The people who usually do that tend to be actually quite dumb and much worse at the language than people who had less points in the test but do read in the language, listen to various things, actively use the language daily etc. And to previous question: Yes, I think I would pass CPE if I went there right tommorrow morning. Not ace it but very likely pass. I am quite sure I would pass the writing part as I got the C2 grade in 2010, I would very likely pass both comprehension parts and Use of English (I got C1 grade in 2010 and got much better since). The only part I have no clue about is Speaking. I'd need a bit of speaking practice for sure and some feedback. Last feedback I got was the CAE, in which I got B2 grade and it was my weakest part. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 45 of 80 24 June 2013 at 2:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The reason people fail the test is that they can't answer the questions properly. The test may be bad, unfair or whatever but the end result is that many people who do not prepare properly end up failing. For these tests you can't memorize common answers and repeat common assignments. As I said in my previous post, you can't cheat in these language tests to get scores "unrelated to real life skills." How do you cheat on a oral comprehension test where you have to listen to a telephone conversation you've never heard and answer 20 questions? How can you memorize the answers when you are given a question that you've never seen before and are asked to write a minimum of 200 words on the topic? How can you memorize some common questions and discuss a topic with an examiner seated in front of you? You can't cheat or bullshit your way through these. If you know the material and can pass the exam, as was the case mentioned here, congratulations. But for many people, preparation involves basically learning what is required of them. You can't memorize common answers for the C2 exam. You can't cheat by preparation. But you can practice for it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5224 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 46 of 80 24 June 2013 at 2:48am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Nobody AFAICT, and certainly not me, recommended *not preparing* for this or any other test. Of course preparing for a test is the smart thing to do. However, not all kinds of preparation are equal, some are useless, and some really border honesty, which is what Cavesa and I among others have been 'hinting' at.
I've been asked to do this, so I wouldn't laugh. Precisely for the same reasons, you shouldn't dismiss as "laughable" the idea of "cheating by preparation" even if you've never experienced it. People do exactly that all the time. Certainly, you can't cheat in "summarizing, presenting or discussing at C2-level". But if you regularly do those tasks so you're familiar with them, and your TL is not rusty, some of us are sure there's little to no benefit in setting aside extra time to do those tasks in that TL as preparation for the test. This is exactly how my brother and I did "not prepare" for our 2 test. But, equally certainly, you CAN cheat in other parts of the tests, as Cavesa has documented extensively. For one, most tests, including language C2, are made of questions taken from the same piles of 'sample questions of past papers' that many students carefully collect over the years, with little to no variation. Going through enough sample tests thus boosts your chances of getting a higher score by merely parroting stuff. This has happened just like that to people I helped to prepare for their C1, and Cavesa also mentioned people discussing if question X was like sample exercise Y during her CAE. You can claim as much as you want that it is impossible to memorize common answers for the C2 exam. As a last example from real life, I'll mention how in the last German test I sat, one girl complained that a letter we were asked to compose was 'extremely difficult to write because it's not like the letters we've seen in class, and we only did three different ones this year'. Whether we like it or not, that's a mind-frame that only responds to situations that happen in real life — test questions are —perhaps surprisingly for you— often expected to be directly taken from reviewed material, and thus, for many people, preparation basically involves more memorizing stuff than actually learning what is required of them, because for them it looks easier. Of course, it's up to you to consider that aspiring to "cheat" or not. I do.
Sometimes it's not even necessary, if tests suck enough*. In my oral comprehension test for German we had to pick 8 statements that were true according to what you heard, from a total of 24. I have a friend who sat the English test for the same level at the same time. They had 15 statements to be marked as true or false according to the English recording. They knew there were 5 true ones. If you do the maths, English candidates were gifted 5 points just for sitting there. *Which is our point. It's possible to, and many people do, get higher scores by focusing on and exploiting weaknesses of the examination system. And let's be honest, CEFR tests tend to be as alike as drops of water, so system weaknesses stand out pretty quickly. Edited by mrwarper on 24 June 2013 at 3:30am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 47 of 80 24 June 2013 at 3:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is exactly the point, I couldn't have said it better, thanks. These exams claim to put the candidate against a wide variety of real life like tasks. What they do is choose from a pool of tasks very similar to each other and often not that close to things you encounter in the real life. Therefore parrots who may not really be at the level have better chances than people whose level is higher but didn't go through through the whole task pool, usually represented in two or three coursebooks, and perhaps collection of past papers somewhere on the internet. Sure, the real life/bullshit ratio is better when you are doing the exam for educational purposes because you are required to write tons of such crap (and preferably totally unimaginative and predictable) in most schools and many universities as well. P.S. I'm a woman, so "her CAE" :-) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 48 of 80 24 June 2013 at 6:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm trying to understand how one can "cheat by preparation." If I understand properly, this involves memorizing material from previous examinations and preparatory textbooks. People who can "parrot" can thus score better than people who make know the material better but who did not prepare as hard. This works because the CEFR exam questions are "alike as drops of water". What in the world does this mean? Are last year's test questions the same as this year's? If I want to ace this year's DELE C2 exam, all I have to do is memorize the answers to last year's test questions. I wished it were so simple! How can this work in a language test? Let's take a typical written comprehension test. You are asked to read a text and then answer 30 multiple choice questions (a, b, c, none of the above, all of the above). How can you cheat on this? Candidate A doesn't bother to study any test preparation materials. Candidate B practices with exams from the past 5 years. Who will get better grades? We can't tell. I would say the person who knows the material better. Practicing with past test material does not replace knowing the material. It familiarizes one with the test format and the mindset for optimizing test results. Why are past exams made available? Why are the people who make the tests not afraid that people will learn the previous examples by heart and "beat the system?" They know very well that although exam questions may resemble each other from year to year, memorizing last year's exams will not give you much of a benefit this year. Unless of course the test "sucks." What does this mean? I don't know but it would seem to mean that the students is guaranteed some right answers. Now suppose you are asked to write a composition on a specific subject. You may have memorized some sample questions from the past. Does that replace knowing how to compose? Of course not. But let's come back to one of the hardest parts of the CEFR C-level exams and look at the oral interaction test where you are interviewed by an examiner. How can you cheat for this? How can you get better grades than what corresponds to your "true" worth? How can you outfox the examiner? There is this idea that test questions can be aritificial, boring, bullshit and have little to do with real-life and that people who are good in real-life may be penalized. That may be the case, but we are talking about the ability to pass the exam not about whether the test is realistic or not. So how do you game the oral interaction part of the C2 test with the examiner sitting across from you? You have memorized the answers to 20 typical questions from past tests. Do you think you are going to fool the examiner with this? Some people must think that the examiners are stupid. The examiners have seen it all. Having been an examiner myself - not for the CEFR exams -, I know that I can tell the level of the candidate in the very first minute of the interview. You can easily spot someone who has memorized an answer and doesn't really understand what they are saying. At the C level you are expected to be able to debate. You can't fake this with some stock answers from last year's exams. You can't cheat. Explicit test preparation tells you what to prepare for. Last year's exam questions don't tell you what will be on this year's exam. It tells you how the qusetions are structured and what form to expect. It gives you an idea of how to study. It doesn't replace studying the material. So, to come back to our summarize, present and debate C2 oral exam, practicing these steps with a tutor isn't cheating; it's learning the skills. If you are lucky enough to come from a background where this is an everyday activity for you, you're lucky. For most of us, it's not the case. Edited by s_allard on 24 June 2013 at 6:51am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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