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Moving from B2 to C2 | ||
Tags: Advanced Level | Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4532 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes  Studies: German | Message 49 of 177 17 February 2015 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Another great and usually free resource is a high quality newspaper - that is if you are lucky enough to be studying one of the bigger languages. 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 5225 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 50 of 177 17 February 2015 at 9:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
It should be both actually -- you don't want to be routinely derailed by stupid words or constructions seemingly popping out of nowhere because you didn't bother to check 'obscure' areas. None of them will rear its head often, but most of the time you can be sure some of them may do. Still, truly mastering all the more basic stuff will likely take you much longer, if only because more practice is needed to fully iron out mistakes in wide areas than it is to 'acquire' new minor points here and there.
I passed a number of university exams studying exclusively on my own too -- I guess that's one good thing that came out of having really lousy teachers :-) Sometimes the system can degrade too, which leads to weird situations. I recently tutored a Physics graduate on Physics to help him pass some public examination and, for example, I found out he had gaps in his knowledge of Quantum Physics that could be covered with what I had studied in General Chemistry in my first year, a subject he studied only marginally. I can imagine if I had to impart the classes he attended with a syllabus to cover, there would be only so much that could be done to ensure everyone met the course prerequisites before starting. Multiply that by n subjects and m years and the picture is not nice. This is of course the excuse my bad teachers would hold too, but back then we had a good reason to tell it was all bollocks -- the good teachers in other groups or courses who consistently did better jobs at it. Apologies for going a tad off-topic :)
Due to individual variability and issues with measuring the work needed, as a tutor I prefer to do this only to avoid or address wildly unrealistic expectations on the part of students -- which happens quite often anyway. For example, I often tutor people who want to pass a set level exam by studying X hours a week for Y months before sitting their exam, and I always go, "OK, let's assume for a minute the Cambridge guys actually know their stuff. They say it takes 150 hours or guided studies per CEFR level. We are here, we want to get there, and we have so much time left... so you're telling me you want to gobble x months of studies in one third the time without tripling the weekly hours?"*. For somebody who will accept that such approximations are just ballpark, though, it may still be very useful. I mean, if someone reasonably knowledgeable (a tutor!) says it takes some 100 hours to learn something, it doesn't mean any given learner will learn it in 100 hours -- what they're actually saying is that one can't expect to learn it in 10 hours, and they shouldn't desperate before it hits the 200 mark. Bearing that in mind, this is of course a very useful element for planning ahead. *Of course studying more or less hours per week will speed up or slow down studies but, as been mentioned or implied, there are clear limits to what can or should be done before grinding to a halt -- too much study will cause saturation, too little will ensure you forget between sessions, and nobody wants either. Edited by mrwarper on 17 February 2015 at 9:47pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5206 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 51 of 177 18 February 2015 at 10:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||
This seems like a good point to me, although again I'm basing it on instinct rather than experience: I feel like I'd speak my languages pretty damn well if only I could fully use and apply all that knowledge I already have. Being able to use the wide range of vocabulary and expressions that I can recognise, nailing the grammar points that I can explain in theory but often mess up in practice, employing the most appropriate expression for a particular situation. Obviously that knowledge isn't perfect, and filling in the gaps also merits some attention, but I don't think that's the main point. I feel like I've been at C1 level for listening and reading for years, yet the same level for speaking and writing remains elusive. I can't speak for C2, but it seems like going from B2 to C1 is a question of activating and strengthening existing knowledge more than gaining new knowledge. Hence the focus of my "TACtivation" log for this year. How to do that in practice? I'm not sure, but so far it seems that for me, lots of input, lots of production practice, and some grammar study are all important. And some immersion on top of all that would no doubt do wonders. Edited by garyb on 18 February 2015 at 10:41am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 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 52 of 177 18 February 2015 at 11:23am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Both are important. Granted, I did take a pretty unique CEFR exam that had an explicit "grammar and vocabulary" section (a remnant of the previous system, abolished soon afterwards), but my advanced grammar was tested to its very limits and I definitely wished I had practiced it more. But I did score C2 in that section :-)
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| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 53 of 177 18 February 2015 at 2:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is probably the situation of many people, including myself. Reading and oral comprehension are not a problem; the real challenge is speaking and writing at comparable levels of fluency and accuracy. The explanation is pretty simple. Reading and listening are passive tasks; everything is given to you. You just have to figure things out. Not to say that it's easy but you can guess a lot and gloss over things you don't understand. You can't do this with the productive skills. I believe that much of the solution to this problem is simply brute force, i.e. writing and speaking a lot. I have found that writing at least one page a week and correcting it with my tutor has worked wonders for my written and spoken Spanish. We tend to measure how many words, pages, books or hours that we consume but rarely do the same for what we produce. We hear a lot about massive input + 1. Where is the massive output + 1? And that's the problem. All that reading and listening don't do much good if you are still stumbling when you are writing or speaking. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 54 of 177 18 February 2015 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't agree. Lots of listening input, that's what made me fluent when speaking.
I am fluent, I speak freely without searching for words or getting stuck at grammar and without causing any discomfort to a native speaking with me, I can speak about anything I want. My accent is minimal and only shows sometimes. And all that thanks to lots of listening input. With such a large amount of immersion, you needs just a few hours (no matter whether with a tutor or just a random native) to get your speaking to fluency and at least C1, not months and months of corrections from a tutor. Actually, those few months with a tutor lately haven't changed my speaking at all after the first hour or two. Writing was the main point of our meetings and all the speaking, including corrections, was more a maintenance than progress. Before my tv series devouring, I was at the lowest passable point for a B2 exam, despite having taken French at highschool and therefore getting corrected as much as it was possible within the classroom setting limitations (and the teacher and classmates there had been of exceptional quality, considering it was a highshool). I needed bits of time to remember some words, I used mostly basic vocabulary despite knowing much more passivley, I used to make tons of mistakes. In short, I used to think less fast than needed when speaking in French. I hate the myth that by passive activities, you get only the receptive skills. That is pure nonsense. Yes, you learn the receptive skills before the productive ones this way, which is fine. But your active skills won't stay unaffected. It is all connected. Sure, you won't speak like a native without having ever tried before but listening and reading gives you a huge pool to draw from. My trouble at the C2 exam wasn't fluency or accent. Sure, sometimes I speak faster when I am not that tired or nervous but my tutor had warned me against speaking too fast as it may come at cost of being precise. And neither the other C2 candidates I heard speaking before the exams used the excited-Doctor-Who-speed, so I don't think that should be any problem. Nor the vocabulary, despite messing up one word due to mixing it up with it's English counterpart, that was just one second of stupidity. I spoke no less naturally than with the tutor a few days earlier, which means noticeably better than his other student, aiming for dalfC1. No. I made several grammar mistakes, that's what I consider my largest threat to the passing grades when it comes to speaking. And when the first one was pointed out, I got a bit nervous and was suddenly much less confident in the grammar. I know at least of two or three grammar mistakes, which is more than I should have made there. That's what I got for returning to formal grammar learning too late. Don't put your grammar books aside for too long until you are totally 100% sure about every point of grammar in all the situations even when you are tired, nervous or drunk. :-) So, my experience points out it is possible to get fluent and to the C levels this way (whether to C2, that is still unknown). To get there from the intermediate stage devour lots of input, study and review the grammar and get an opportunity to speak for a few hours from time to time. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 55 of 177 18 February 2015 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Wow. I'm impressed and intrigued. With lots of listening input,"...you needs just a few hours to get your speaking to fluency and at least a C1...'" I am astounded. What have I been doing wrong? After hundreds of hours of listening to Spanish, hundreds of pages read and countless hours of grammar study, I didn't notice that my Spanish became "fluent" in a few hours. In fact, it is very much a work in progress. And with a tutor. Something's wrong. Edited by s_allard on 18 February 2015 at 5:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5058 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 56 of 177 18 February 2015 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If you are already understanding at C2 level in a passive language, you can get speaking to C1 level in a few
hours. Hundreds of hours and hundreds of pages is probably not enough to build up the necessary base--we're talking about someone who knows all the necessary words, can recognize correct and incorrect grammar, and identify and predict common turns of phrase. When that person starts trying to talk, they will likely produce something fairly accurate, but halting. Not everyone can pull it off so quickly, but yeah, in that situation some people can get fluency that fast. (Obviously, to reach a level of fluency worthy of C2 or comparable to your passive level, it would take longer!) Based on what you post here, I assume you learned Spanish often pushing the boundary of your knowledge while working with speaking. In that case, of course it will take more speaking time (and, the reading/listening time required will correspondingly decrease). If you feel that it took an inordinate amount of time to get your Spanish speaking up to the level you'd expect given your passive skills, then we can talk about why some people take more time than others to go active to passive, but it's not impossible. I remember speaking A2~B1 Dutch the first time I ever tried to speak it, at which time I was probably understanding at about a B1~B2 level. After 6 hour-long sessions with a native speaker, my speaking was probably at a similar stage to my listening. Edited by robarb on 18 February 2015 at 5:59pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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