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A dead honest language CV... | ||
Tags: Curriculum Vitae (CV) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 33 of 104 02 November 2013 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Please don't ruin this fun thread.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 34 of 104 02 November 2013 at 10:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
Besides, the certificate system is already only for the tests you actually passed, not self-assessment. If anything, we need a separate list for languages we don't speak but understand well enough for the standards of basic fluency. Frankly, I'm tired of your implications that everyone is lying about their skills - especially in a thread with this name. 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 35 of 104 02 November 2013 at 11:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't really think s_allard think we all lie. However in a number of threads threads he has been eager to show that you can survive on very few words if you just can use them well, and then it is somewhat surprising to see the same person propose in another thread that at least four languages of the languages claimed by polyglots should be certified at a C1 level. Both ideas can be defended, but uintil now I wouldn't have expected the same person to harbour them.
Apart from that my general stance is that I took my last language exam in 1981, and I have no interest in paying good money for test which aren't relevant for my job prospects. Especially as I know from experience that I can have long discussions in languages which I only have estimated to be at the B1 or B2 level. Besides I also prefer a precise picture of my skills instead of just one all-encompassing figure, and that means that I at least would demand separate assessments of my passive and active skills for both the written and the oral language (and maybe also other skills which we haven't discussed here, like the ability to think logically and present your opinions without irritating the judges). But that would of course make those tests even more costly. It has been suggested in this thread that people give their notes according to a level they once had, but can't muster here and now. This demands a more detailed answer. My general impression is that my passive skills disappear slowly, whereas active skills in my weak languages can get rusty in no time. And this is of course related to the old claim that you only can maintain seven active languages - the rest should according to this theory be 'on hold' and need reactivation. I can't recognize this for my passive skills, but to some extent it is true for some of my weaker languages - including some I have assessed at B1 spoken actively here. But this doesn't mean I can't speak them with short notice - I'll just speak them badly for the first couple of minutes until I have mobilized the relevant parts of my brain. If I couldn't do this I even wouldn't claim to speak them. Like before 2006, where I had forgotten all my Latin, Romanian and even most of my Italian and didn't even try to hide it. Ironically, this situation wouldn't be revealed by a certification test. If I for some reason had to take a such test I would of course spend some time brushing the language in question up before the big event, and then it could for that matter slip away when I had received my diploma. It is actually more informative to take a plane to a suitable country and see how my skills develops there during the first day or so. And it is certainly more fun... Edited by Iversen on 03 November 2013 at 9:14am 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 36 of 104 03 November 2013 at 12:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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Having reviewed all the CVs I have reached the conclusion that I would hire Ivversetzerin if I had a vacant
position I wanted to fill. :-) Otherwise this thread was indeed intended for some light hearted fun, after a fairly vivid discussion in another thread, so do keep very honest appraisals of your languages coming. No certificates needed yet. You can send those when you get the job :-) 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4830 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 37 of 104 03 November 2013 at 12:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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I interpreted Cristina's original question or invitation to be more describing the
journeys we have so far taken to reach whatever standard we think we have achieved in whatever languages we have achieved that standard, and she entertainingly described her own linguistic journeys. i.e. not so much the level itself, but how we got to that level. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 38 of 104 03 November 2013 at 1:18am | IP Logged | |||||
I certainly agree. Despite all appearances, I like to have fun and enjoy myself. I know I'm often the whipping boy around here, but, like the Energizer bunny, I don't give up. I'm a stickler for the proper usage of words, not that I claim to have a monopoly on perfection. The simple question that I have raised is what I would call the fast and loose use of the CEFR grading system. I do not have a problem with people showing their personal language history and their assessment of their own language skills. I don't think that anybody here at HTLAL has a reason to exaggerate or misrepresent their levels of proficiency. Neither am I claiming that unless a language skill is certified it should not appear on a person's profile. What I have noticed is that certain individuals only mention the CEFR for their certified skills and use some other terms to describe their other language skills. At the same time I see people put down CEFR labels for every language, including that fictitions and supposedly humourous A0. What I have simply questioned - and this is what has seemed to gotten under some people's skin - is how do people determine their specific CEFR levels. This is where the document "Self-assessment checklists from the Swiss version of the European Language Portfolio" suggested by @emk is enlightening. When I see somebody put C1 next to a language in their profile, usually with some disclaimer like "still needs some work", I go to the reference document to see what C1 means. Just under listening skill I read: 1. I can follow extended speech even when it is not clearly structured and when relationships are only implied and not signalled explicitly. 2. I can understand a wide range of idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms, appreciating shifts in style and register. 3.I can extract specific information from even poor quality, audibly distorted public announcements, e.g. in a station, sports stadium etc. 4. I can understand complex technical information, such as operating instructions, specifications for familiar products and services. 5. I can understand lectures, talks and reports in my field of professional or academic interest even when they are propositionally and linguistically complex. 6. I can without too much effort understand films which contain a considerable degree of slang and idiomatic usage. This is just Listening. We haven't gotten to Reading, Spoken Interaction, Written Production, Spoken Production, Strategies and Language Quality. If all this is what people mean by C1, then I take their word for it. I am not saying that people are lying. I'm saying that people may not realize the significance of the CEFR system. Edited by s_allard on 03 November 2013 at 1:24am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 39 of 104 03 November 2013 at 2:16am | IP Logged | |||||
It's not official, but sometimes used by language schools to denote a starting point, in order to guide their students into realizing that A1 is something they reach after a certain number of hours put into studying.
That list and another one with "can do" statements has been circulating on this forum for quite a while. Rather than suspecting that people do not have access to what being at a certain level encompasses, I would put down a lot of the differences in self assessment to how people interpret the idea of "I can" - with which margin of error, how reliably can I do this? If asked "Can you give directions in English?" I would hesitate for a moment until I remember, yes, I have done this before. In Spanish? Yes. French? Only once, and then I managed to make two mistakes in a sentence of four words. Still, the customer understood and seemed relieved by me trying to speak his language. I know the relevant words and phrases in French and Japanese, but I would leave that box unticked, because I haven't done it repeatedly and satisfactorily before. Somebody else might think "Oh, sure, I know the expressions!" and tick that box. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6905 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 40 of 104 03 November 2013 at 2:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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And there are also all kinds of exams which are supposed to confirm your CEFR level, and yet they check only a selection of skills and situations. On many advanced tests, you don't have a lot of slang and dialects to deal with, nor do you have to read complex instructions or product specifications.
4 persons have voted this message useful |
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