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Is comprehension measurable? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4670 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes  Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 145 of 211 22 August 2014 at 3:08am | IP Logged | ||
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What about European languages which lack the C2 exam?
For Swedish, the highest level is TISUS (a C1 exam), For Norwegian, the highest level is Bergenstesten (between B2 and C1, but more like a solid ''B2"" test, according to those who took it). If we were to be test-centered, that would mean near native-fluency in these languages is never achievable. Edited by Medulin on 22 August 2014 at 3:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5377 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 146 of 211 22 August 2014 at 3:12am | IP Logged | ||
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I'd think of it like this... when someone is explaining how well they understand something the following sequence of terms makes sense:
I understand 1 really well. I understand 2 really really well. I understand 3 really really really well. I understand 4 really really really really well. When they use percentage terms they are not really saying anything different except it allows them to have a lot of "reallys" to play with and classify where on their scale of understanding it is. Edited by James29 on 22 August 2014 at 3:14am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4256 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 147 of 211 22 August 2014 at 3:14am | IP Logged | ||
(psst, incase you missed it while you were typing, I deleted my old post and posted something new, that's hopefully more constructive)
In response to your recent post: I think the issue is that words have flexible usage, and people use vague words to refer to specific things, human conversation is murky and inexact. You can guess what someone means based on the situation, but asking what words mean in the abstract, you often find that the words themselves don't refer to anything specific. Take the word "big" it doesn't really mean anything that's actually out there, but in situations of communicating its useful. If I say "wow I just saw a really big pig" you assume I mean big compared to the average pig. And you might say "how big is a big?" and I might say "I dunno, maybe 50% bigger", if I think that gives you an idea. And it can get further complicated if I'm visiting another country and in their pigs are a lot bigger than where I'm from, so what's big to me is not big to them. Enter the realm of science and "big" is useless, now we have to use weight, length, height, volume, and compare the animal's specif statistics to average statistics. The conversational phrases are mean to highlight situational distinctions, science is about making measurements that someone else can verify, but situationally scientific language may be harder to picture if the listener doesn't have a frame of reference. Again I think people use "understand" to refer to a lot of different things, and so its difficult to discuss these things in the abstract like it's difficult to discuss "what does the word big in itself refer to". Personally when I communicate my comprehension I like to say statements like "I ran into about 1 or 2 words I didn't know per sentence" which is less likely to produce ambiguities, but still isn't terribly scientific. In terms of measuring personal comprehension, I don't really have a specific system, I keep reading a book if I can follow the story, and if I feel I'm recognizing new words I assume my comprehension is growing. I can't really see how I've improved until i re-read it and understand more that I previously didn't. Edited by YnEoS on 22 August 2014 at 3:18am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5132 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 148 of 211 22 August 2014 at 3:15am | IP Logged | ||
No, all it means is that a B2 (or C1) level is all that is needed to function in a job or university. That is, after all, the reason the CEFR-based tests were created. R. == 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5377 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 149 of 211 22 August 2014 at 3:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Edited because I either misread a previous post or it was changed. Edited by James29 on 22 August 2014 at 3:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 150 of 211 22 August 2014 at 5:56am | IP Logged | ||
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I had already posted why the cefr levels aren't a good way to assess one's skill at times:
1.the purpose of the CEFR is to rate your overall skill with high focus on application useful for an employer while things like enjoyment are not a priority. You either get one grade or at most there is a note about level at each four basic skills. Reading of books, which is the main point of this thread, is just one of many subskills to the reading comprehension. Therefore a person with B1 certificate with B1 grade to the reading comprehension part of the exam may read the Harry Potter book with complete comprehension or struggle to make any sense of it or anything in between. 2.The descriptions of cefr skills related to reading books in particular are vague. You are not supposed to assess your skill based on one such subskill alone. So even self assessing your CEFR level isn't that reliable. 3.The gaps between the CEFR levels are quite wide, which is why the scale is totally useless for someone wishing to make note of their progress in between the levels. Like it or not, people are not at B1 until the 22 August midnight and at B2 from the 23 August. It is a gradual process and learners in general need to express their progress somehow. Without this need, no % guesses would have ever begun to appear. But they are here and they obviously serve their main purpose: expression of ones self assessment of a passive skill, based on scale of their own experience and goals. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 151 of 211 22 August 2014 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I won't bother to argue over the appropriateness of the CEFR system for measuring comprehension. That's
another debate. But I did have an interesting experience last night. A German-speaking friend and I watched the film Das Boot in German but with English subtitles. I had studied German some years ago and could catch the odd word and phrase here and there. As I was watching the film, from time to time I would ask myself how can I estimate my level of comprehension. I would normally say Some, of course, but for this debate I decided to think in terms of percentages. As the images and the words were flitting by, I kept trying to imagine what figure would best reflect my experience. I tried to "feel" a number. Nothing happened. No magic number popped up in my head. The words were going by too fast for me to even begin to think about estimating what percentage of the words I could understand. What number should I put down? 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 6%, 7%? Pick any number. And how did this number compare to the experience of the native German speaker sitting next to me? Can I put a figure on the difference between our perceptions of the same thing? Edited by s_allard on 22 August 2014 at 3:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7207 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 152 of 211 22 August 2014 at 4:48pm | IP Logged | ||
100% - 1% = 99% 100% - 7% = 93% 1 person has voted this message useful |
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