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Native speaker failing C1 / C2 test | ||
Tags: Native Speakers | CEFR Language Levels | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Immersion, Schools & Certificates |  | |
| markchapman Diglot Groupie Taiwan tesolzone.com/ Joined 5472 days ago 44 posts - 55 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Portuguese | Message 9 of 11 16 April 2010 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | ||
I certainly think that native speaker might get a low score on IELTS. To get a high score you need to be able to read well, and have a good vocabulary. However, the most difficult part is probably the writing, because most people are not used to clearly expressing an argument in a logical way. I've had students who had better English - in terms of vocabulary and writing skills - than many native speakers. But I still think the test is quite fair, because students of English need to try to over compensate if they want to study in an English speaking country. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| izan Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie Spain letmewritealittlebit Joined 5869 days ago 20 posts - 34 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Basque*, EnglishC1, FrenchC1 Studies: German | Message 10 of 11 17 April 2010 at 1:20am | IP Logged | ||
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You would be surprised at how many native speakers fail the most popular test of Basque language (yeah, although we're natives we have to prove our skills in the language, since not everyone here can speak it). It is called EGA (Euskararen Gaitasun Agiria, it's a C1 test). Of course, we are required to know "life or death" things such as what type of calls should be used in Basque in order to call hens, so no wonder why so many people fail it... (By the way, the answer is "purra-purra", which I've never used again since I passed the test about ten years ago, perhaps I should visit farms more often...)
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| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6852 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 11 of 11 17 April 2010 at 1:58am | IP Logged | ||
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A few years ago I brought a couple of American exchange students to my English class, where we were preparing for an FCE (B2) exam. They took a mock test with the rest of the class, and scored lower than most of the students.
Of course this just proves that the exam is silly. You need to know what they expect you to write in order to score, and know formal grammar. "I just ate" will get you no points at the exam, while it is correct American English (or so I was told repeatedly when I lived in the US... until I stopped saying 'I've just eaten"). I don't need to know how many declension types there are in Polish, and how to classify words into these categories. At school I was taught descriptive grammar, not the basic building blocks of the language, ie how to form a sentence correcly. That is why I'm not surprised that these exchange students didn't know what 2nd conditional, phrasal verb or future in the past were. They don't have to know arbitrary names for constructions they use naturally. If you want to study in Poland in Polish, you need to pass a special exam as well, and one 'PSL' teacher told me that many Poles would fail that exam, because it's not obvious at all. Don't forget we're all nerds. I wouldn't be surprised if even educated native speakers scored lower than expected on a C2 exam. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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