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Article: Students fall short on Vocabulary | ||
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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 145 of 319 15 April 2014 at 2:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thanks. I had a look, but I still don't see how you could fake and pass a C2 exam. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4667 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 146 of 319 15 April 2014 at 5:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It's easy to ''cheat'' when it comes to vocabulary,
all you should do is avoid overused words, and use alternatives: novel instead of new, wealthy/affluent instead of rich, appealing instead of nice, appalling instead of horrible, contrived instead of fake etc. Idioms and phrasal verbs can be of help as well (especially when it comes to overused words, so use fend off instead of defend, give in instead of surrender etc)... Album reviews are my choice when it comes to learning vocabulary in the 15k-30k range. In essays, you'll want to avoid ''basic English'' and have a more elaborated style, bordering on bookish (awakened to the danger; I feel compelled to.. etc.) If the context is right, words like ''nowheresville, maneuvers, maraschino, woozy, faux, aspirational, gambit , transfixing, swagger , signifiers, faux-swagger, swigged , evocative etc.*) will spice up your essay and overwhelm the examiner. (*These are words used in LA Times' review of Lana del Rey's ''Born to die''). Chambers Thesaurus, Oxford Collocation Dictionary, Routledge 20 K Frequency dictionary of US English are your friends. ;) Edited by Medulin on 15 April 2014 at 5:41pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5531 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 147 of 319 16 April 2014 at 1:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
[Even though the forum is currently very hard to access, I've had this post sitting around for a couple of days now, and decided to go ahead and post it anyway.]
Well, that's a moderately rare usage of the word "shop", but most well-read adult anglophones should certainly know it. Usually it shows up in newspaper reporting about white collar crime. Anyway, the sample DALF C2 exams for French are perfectly willing to include stuff like this. They usually include passages written in an academic style, or in a "ridiculously literary newspaper" style. For example, I've never seen this usage of vases communicants before. (It's a nice metaphor, but there's no obvious English equivalent.)
But DALF C2 exams may also include pure slang, and even SMS messages:  
Now, there are ways to bluff around not knowing things like vases communicants, ce bins or trop teubé. (It's actually harder to bluff around issues like that on the DALF C1, because the C1 exam has a nasty habit of asking you explain specific phrasings in the text. The C2 exam wants essay responses, so you have a little more flexibility.) So, basically, yeah: On the DALF C2, it's pretty much open season on relatively obscure metaphors, slang, etc. Please note, however, that I've never studied for the DALF C2. I've passed the DELF B2 and studied for DALF C1, but I don't have an especially good grasp on the grading standards for the C2 exam.
Yes, the DELF/DALF exams actually use two oral examiners: One who asks questions, and one who concentrates solely on listening and taking notes. I'm told they do this because it's too hard to carefully evaluate somebody's language quality while actually carrying on a conversation. And the test is structured in such a way that you have to stay on topic: The DELF B2 oral presentation, for example, is supposed to be a structured presentation with a summary of the question, a thesis, supporting points, evidence for each supporting point, and a conclusion. (And they didn't let me use notes while presenting.) You can't just start telling random stories unless those stories support your argument. Maybe during the Q&A afterwards, if you're clever about making a connection to the topic. However, this is one bit of good news on these exams: The passing score is only 50%, across the entire exam (at least through C1). So if you're weak in one skill, or totally unprepared for one of the exam topics, you can still make it up by being strong elsewhere. Again, I don't want to make anybody think these exams are super-hard. They're not, thanks to the low passing score and the use of level-appropriate expectations. But at the same time, if you want to take an advanced exam, you almost certainly want to have a good bit of what patrickwilken mentioned as "medium frequency vocabulary" in that 3,000 to 9,000 range. This will be most important for reading comprehension. Now, it's often possible to bluff your way through an exam with lots of unfamiliar vocabulary. But at some point, it's nice to be able to look at a page and know virtually all the words. And at least in a Romance language, an English speaker can reach that point relatively pleasantly, mostly by reading, with perhaps a touch of memorization to help make the rarer words stick. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5390 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 148 of 319 17 April 2014 at 8:45am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Just to add that according to the guides I've used for the C1/C2 exams, they
deliberately thrown in some vocabulary that most test takers probably won't know. They're testing your ability to infer meaning from the context and to work around it when needed. Which is understandable if the goal is to see how well-adapted your language skills are in academic and professional settings. You're never going to know every last word that can be used in the language (and sometimes people will make up new words entirely) but you should know how to deal with it without skipping a beat. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4081 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 149 of 319 19 April 2014 at 3:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Really? I've never heard of that usage. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4908 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 150 of 319 19 April 2014 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
It's pretty common in the UK. I never heard it before I moved here. But it's a pretty good example of a word whose meaning is clear enough from the way it's used. There is occasionally a risk involved in inferring the meaning of a word from context. It is possible to misunderstand it completely. My favourite example of this is the word "hirsute". (I won't give away the meaning until the end.) When I have come across the word, it has usually been alongside "wise"; for example, "My grandfather was a wise and hirsute man." I recall seeing the word twice in the Guardian newspaper, and both times it was clearly being used as a synonym for wise. However, the word means nothing of the sort. I assume the journalist came across the word in a similar context to the one I read it in, and assumed the words were being used together as synonyms instead of looking it up. Now to satisfy your curiousity, I'll reveal the meaning: The word actually means "hairy" or "shaggy", but the people referred to in the articles were relatively smooth men. 1 person has 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 151 of 319 19 April 2014 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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:))) I used to think hilarious means something like epic or awesome, not necessarily funny.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4081 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 152 of 319 19 April 2014 at 5:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Regarding inferring word meanings form context, I have been using vocabulary.com to
boost my vocabulary. One nice feature they have is that each word comes with sample real world usage sentences pulled from newspapers and articles. Unfortunately there have been several occasions when the word is used incorrectly in these articles, like Jeffer's example. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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