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Article: Students fall short on Vocabulary | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5427 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 161 of 319 21 April 2014 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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What is interesting in current developments of language testing in systems such as the CFER or the CLB
(Canadian Language Benchmarks) is the complete absence of specific linguistic criteria. There is no mention of specific vocabulary, grammar or accent requirements. Language proficiency is framed in terms of the ability to do things using the language and not knowledge of the language per se. As we go up the proficiency scale, the language used becomes more sophisticated, complex and nuanced, but nowhere is there any requirement that specific linguistic items be used. As I said, I don't know of any tests that ask for specific words. What the tests demand is that you have the ability to use the language in an adequate manner in your field. The examiners for the oral test French of doctors here in Quebec are not doctors. How much medical terminology do they know? Could you pass the French C2 exam without using the subjunctive mood once? It seems unlikely, but why not? You won't lose points if you don't use it. But you'll certainly lose points if you use it incorrectly. The point of all this is that you are not being tested on how much language you know but what you can do with the language. Logically we can assume that more vocabulary and grammar are better than less but there are no minimum requirements at any given level. Edited by s_allard on 21 April 2014 at 6:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4662 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 162 of 319 21 April 2014 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm using the various JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) to measure my own progress. Until the revision in 2010 (or thereabouts) there was a list of vocabulary (and possibly grammar points) for each level. No more than some set percentage of the vocabulary was supposed to be drawn from outside the published list. I'm not sure that the JLPT is the same sort of test as those you've mentioned, but it was apparently used to determine whether an overseas student was sufficiently proficient in Japanese to be able to attend university in Japan.
I presume that the test here would be to determine whether they could adequately interact with patients and so abstruse medical terminology would not apply. Understanding "I've got a problem with my waterworks, doctor", OTOH probably does very much apply. Issues with domain-specific terminology would presumably be sorted out at the interview by fellow professionals. That's more or less how things work when we're hiring. We have a fair number of people in the office for whom English is not their first language. As far as I know we don't check for any official language qualifications: they either sink or swim at interview the same as anyone else.
Indeed. However, I'd be surprised if you can get to the stage when you can wield your language like a C2-capable individual without having picked up rather a lot of grammar and vocabulary along the way. Everyone agrees that it takes a good deal of time and effort to reach C2 proficiency.
I certainly agree with the first part. However, I think I have to disagree with the second part. There appears to be documented evidence that knowledge of how to use ~1500 word families correctly will get me through such a test. I would posit that knowledge of no words whatsoever would fail the test. Therefore, I conclude that there is a minimum that will get me through the test, it's just unclear where along that line from 1 to 1500 it is. (For the record, I don't think one word will cut it either :-)). It is also unclear how much more than this minimum you need to have picked up in order to wield this minimum proficiently. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5427 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 163 of 319 21 April 2014 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I think that in the Milton study mention was made of the fact that earlier versions of the CFER test materials had vocabulary lists up to the B1 level. They have since been dropped. Neither is there any sort of prescribed grammar inventory. What we see at work here is the assumption that at a given level of proficiency or in a given occupational environment there is a genre of written and spoken language that users must master. How this genre is acquired and tested is another matter. As I've often said here, my argument isn't with vocabulary size, it's more with the desire or need to test for vocabulary size for our needs around here. I've argued that a small repertoire well used is a powerful arsenal but I don't argue that you need a specific number. I personally believe that too much importance is given to language testing. I fully understand the various administrative reasons that underlie the testing mania but I think that people often learn best when they are plunged into the real world and have to sink or swim. I'm not saying do away with language testing, I'm just saying that this kind of testing should not become a tool for unjustified exclusion. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5529 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 164 of 319 21 April 2014 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
My DELF B2 tutor specialized in exam prep, and she once worked for the Alliance Française. According to her, it is highly recommended for students taking the DELF B2 to use both the subjunctive and "if" phrases with concordance des temps in both the written section and the oral presentation. These are covered under the following sections of the scoring grid:  
For those who don't read French, these sections score the candidate on being able to use a good variety of grammatical forms correctly and when appropriate, and the same for vocabulary. And according to my tutor, if you don't use the subjunctive at all, you're giving up points here. Yes, they don't mention it specifically. But in general, they're looking for a nice sample of things like that. Edited by emk on 21 April 2014 at 9:42pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6594 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 165 of 319 21 April 2014 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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The vocabulary is also tested in how the tasks are worded. They are typically very short, and there's not much context. If you need to rely on guessing for the reading part, you are going to lose points by misunderstanding a task or two.
BTW, for listening the vocabulary is even more crucial, as you normally get to listen only once. You can't skim to have a general idea, can't study the surrounding context for each unknown word, can't reread the beginning when at the end everything becomes more clear. The time limits prevent you from doing this too much with reading tasks, but with listening it's downright impossible. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5427 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 166 of 319 21 April 2014 at 10:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
As emk has correctly pointed out, the subjunctive mood - or any specific grammatical feature for that matter - is not singled out in the examination criteria. According to emk's tutor, if you don't use the subjunctive, you are giving up some points, i.e. you are not getting some points that you could possibly get. I think it's a good idea to use the subjunctive where it is called for, i.e. you start with a construction that requires the subjunctive. But what did I say in the passage quoted? "You won't lose points if you don't use it" This is not the same as making a big mistake by using it incorrectly and then losing points. The tutor's thinking is essentially correct. You want to show your grammatical prowess. So you display what you can do. Nothing wrong with this, but you can also show your skill in different ways. You can speak French very well without using the subjunctive. In fact, it takes quite a bit of skill to do so. for example, if you want to really impress the examiner, you could use vouloir que with the present tense to render an interesting nuance that is too complicated to explain here. Let's take the "if" or conditional construction. This is often a bit tricky because of the verb tenses that must be used in the subordinate and main clauses. If you are going to use it, then try to get it right. But you should keep in mind that "if" is only one of a number of ways in French to make hypothetical statements and can be avoided completely. Similarly, let's say you avoid the future tense by using the continuous form aller + verb in the spoken test. I don't think you'll lose points. Looking at the use of past tenses, will you get extra points because you use the passé simple in your writing instead of the passé composé? Should you use the imperfect subjunctive to score bonus points? I'm not sure. In spoken French, you could lose points. On the other hand, you would really impress your examiner if you use what is called the historical present or the historical future when talking about past events. The point of all this is that you have to look at things holistically. It is possible to speak elegant and sophisticated French without using certain constructions. This is exactly why there are no specific grammar requirements in the test description. That's the whole point of these "can do" statements that make up the CFER. Edited by s_allard on 22 April 2014 at 9:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5427 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 167 of 319 21 April 2014 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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For those who may be interested, here is an interesting article on mandatory language testing for all immigrants to
Canada, including those whose native language is French or English. This should make for some interesting results. Man datory language testing 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4287 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 168 of 319 22 April 2014 at 2:46am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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To withhold all use of the subjunctive in French, although to me it seems to use it
less than the major Romance languages, i.e. Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, and Italian («J'espère que... + indicatif» always seems extremely unintuitive for me), would to me sound rather odd, since I always hear about Anglophones trying to avoid it since English rarely uses it. I fear that it might give the impression of the speaker trying to avoid it altogether, which is the case, but not to display that one tries to do so. It would be like avoiding the gerund or infinitive completely in English. It seems actually easier to actually learn it than to learn how to avoid it. Grammatical mastery and vocabulary reasonably wide in conjunction, with neither (hopefully not both) lacking seem to me to be a rather reasonable compromise. Also, that is interesting since I was thinking of immigrating to Canada too. What happens to native Anglophones or Francophones who fail their respective English or French exams? Edited by 1e4e6 on 22 April 2014 at 2:53am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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