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Is C2 possible without a tutor ? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4668 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 73 of 144 17 December 2014 at 11:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||
When my daughter was studying for French A level (exam typically taken at 18 years old), I read through bits of the specification. The instructions for the oral explicitly mentioned that the examiner should avoid allowing the student to simply recite a set piece. So I'd expect an examiner in a professional examination to simply tow you away from such an island and take you out towards a reef ... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 74 of 144 17 December 2014 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Aren't you the 300 word C2 guy? 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4668 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 75 of 144 17 December 2014 at 12:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This idea doesn't hold nearly as well for Spanish as for French, IMO. In Spanish you'll need both the simple past and imperfect if you want to sound...not weird. And you'll also need both imperfect and present subjunctives if you want to speak the language correctly rather than just settling for getting your meaning across. Also subbing in "[ir form] + a + infinitive" for every reference to the future seems less common even in casual speech in Spanish than is the equivalent in French, but I could be wrong on that. Edited by tastyonions on 17 December 2014 at 1:43pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 76 of 144 17 December 2014 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
In Spanish, the present and past perfect are also very useful. Edited by luke on 17 December 2014 at 12:35pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5433 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 77 of 144 17 December 2014 at 3:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I try not to use words too loosely. It is true that there are differences in the range of verb forms between French and Spanish in the spoken language but it's interesting to actually look at some conjugation tables and do the math before rushing to judgment. I have in front of me Barron's 501 Spanish verbs (fully conjugated in all the tenses in a new easy to learn format alphabetically arranged). On each page there are two columns: The Seven Simple Tenses and The Seven Compound Tenses for a total of 14 tenses. I would quibble about calling all these forms tenses and not tenses and moods but that's another matter. We should also add the alternative Imperfecto de Subjuntivo forms, i.e. hubiese vs hubiera. That gives us 16 little tables on each page. How many of these forms are used in spoken Spanish? I will concede that I should have said "in everyday conversational language" because there are very formal situations where all sixteen verb forms might be used. That said, I stand by my original statement: "...at least half of those tenses and little tables are hardly used in the spoken language." Edited by s_allard on 18 December 2014 at 5:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 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 78 of 144 17 December 2014 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Um how about no. As far as I can tell, the French and English exams are very much not "typical", and possibly the Spanish one too. When I was taking my Finnish exam, there was a 10-minute part where you speak into the microphone, 1-2 min at a time according to the instructions (questions or situations described). That was early in the exam, after the listening part. (for B2 and lower, this is where the speaking ends) Then after all the other parts, we waited for 30 min to 2 hours and were invited one by one to speak for 15-20 min. Obviously we told each other which topics were there and shared ideas, and it felt natural to speak Finnish so that this worked as warm-up (along with the previous parts). I'm not sure it applies to all levels, but I know Goethe Institute uses interviews too.
I'm not sure whether it's common, but my interviewer was a just conversation partner. She had a list of questions for every topic and kept me talking when I ran out of things to say. She was impressed that I thought her day had been harder than mine :D She was seriously awesome. She knew what a menstrual cup is. It felt like a normal conversation, except that the roles kept changing. At first it felt like telling someone things they honestly don't know, then like being pestered by a Green Peace member on what I do for ecology. She probably had some sort of mental compass for keeping the conversation on topic and preventing me from using language islands and maybe for exposing the holes in my vocabulary. But she wasn't filling a grid, not then, nor later. The whole thing was being recorded, and then someone else, maybe even in a different city, watched the video and made their conclusions. One of the crucial things for them is that the person assessing you is not the person interviewing you, and if you've ever had classes at any affiliated centre, neither of them will be a person who's taught you.
In 30 sec we can only figure out the most obvious cases, including whether or not the person is from our own speech community. Well, of course this depends on whether there are several acceptable standards of the language (or at least dialects that still "count" to us) and how much benefit of doubt we're ready to give. Sadly, the benefit of doubt can vary simply based on the looks... The criteria you listed have little to do with CEFR. That's your personal bias. Whether you "like" someone's pronunciation shouldn't be more relevant than whether you like the opinions they give. Edited by Serpent on 17 December 2014 at 5:54pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5062 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 79 of 144 17 December 2014 at 11:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Maybe instead of language islands we should talk about language continents and oceans: While an
examiner shouldn't allow you to get a way with a very specific, practiced speech, you can get away with having good coverage of a limited range of domains (the continents) even if you have some severe holes in other domains (the oceans). For example, you may not be familiar with basic technology vocabulary, or exercise- related vocabulary, etc. You may look really bad if you don't know how to say "keyboard" or "treadmill" or "weight lifting." But you can avoid these treacherous "oceans" by changing the topic, as long as you can handle general things plus a few areas of interest that you do have covered. You can appear to express yourself with the ease of a native speaker even if you are missing things that any similarly educated native speaker would know. If I were being tested in Portuguese (a heritage language for me), I'd strongly avoid talking about computers, or math, which are holes for me (I minored in math in college, but I have to strain to talk about even arithmetic in Portuguese). But I have native-level coverage of travel, books, talking about language, and most things that are general enough that you could talk about them with anyone regardless of their interests. Edited by robarb on 17 December 2014 at 11:56pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5433 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 80 of 144 18 December 2014 at 5:28am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't necessarily accept the terminology of islands and oceans here but I agree with the general principle here of knowing how to talk well in general and more specifically about a few subjects rather than claiming to know everything. This is exactly what native speakers do. Nobody knows all the vocabulary of their native language. Every day I learn new words in French and English, not to mention Spanish. Just yesterday I had to look up "ice queen" and "dead to rights" after hearing them for the first time. One can be a native speaker of a language and not know the terminology of many fields. As I have attempted to show earlier, the essential thrust of language testing is to assess how one can handle the language and not a specific subject. So a native speaker can talk about any topic while recognizing and acknowledging their vocabulary limitations. I'm not a plumber but I can have an interesting conversation with a plumber because I can ask intelligent questions and learn the vocabulary on the spot. Ditto with a neuroscientist. What do I know about neuroscience? Not much but sit me down next to a neuroscientist and I don't think I'll make a fool of myself. I think I can ask relatively interesting questions, albeit in my non-technical vocabulary. So what. The neuroscientist knows that I'm not technical and will adapt their terminology to my level. We all do this all the time. What is important here is mastery of all the common elements such as pronunciation, grammar and fluency that I have discussed in detail. This is what allows us to tackle any subject. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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