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Cheaters Guide to B2 Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6074 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 11 01 June 2012 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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I know some people are wondering, how is it possible to cheat your way to B2 Fluency ? Well, it depends on your definition of B2 fluency. My definition is to be level assessed from an established institute such as Cervantes, Alliance Française or Goethe as B2\C1. As far as I know, all these institutes run free level assessments, to determine what level of classes you need. The Cervantes level assessment generally consists of a conversation in the language and a short written test. I think the conversation is key as they use it to determine what written test to apply. By cheating, I mean studying the language independently much faster than the progression you would make attending classes, or using most off the shelf courses.
How to cheat ? Most language schools that have aligned themselves to the CEFR use very specific subject matter and very specific tests to assess levels. This even applies to the language certificates they give. All you need to do is determine what course material the local ones are using and obtain it yourself. The students normally get a specific student book, but there's also a teachers book. Get the teachers book and you'll have the answer key and transcriptions of the recordings. The teachers books also contains photocopyable material for use in class. Sometimes the CD's are separate, so you may need to purchase these. You'll also need a good dictionary, as both the students and teachers books are entirely in the target language. Now the hard part. Work through the course answering all the questions in the student book and checking your answers. Some questions are quite free form, but the teachers book gives key words to look for. The student book will also contain a number of listening tests which you should complete. Make sure you learn the material thoroughly. You can also supplement it with vocabulary and grammar books designed for each level. These tend to use the same multiple choice formats as the actual certificates. Again, these should be entirely in the target language. When writing essays post them to Lang-8, or a similar site, to get corrected. You'll also need to practise speaking with native speakers as much as possible. It's not a magic method, and you need to put in a lot of hours, but it will work. Are there any other cheats you would add to this method ? Edited by DaraghM on 01 June 2012 at 4:43pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4601 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 2 of 11 01 June 2012 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | ||
If I understood correctly, by "cheating", you just meant "use the material that would be used in class, but practice it faster"? If so, I don't see how that can qualify as a cheat. (nor how can anyone cheat at language learning... at best you can cheat your way to obtaining a certificate of a certain level with learning only what's required for the test, but not more). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6074 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 3 of 11 01 June 2012 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | ||
You're correct. You can't really cheat at language learning but you can be highly focused for assessments, and other tests. Edited by DaraghM on 01 June 2012 at 5:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5353 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 4 of 11 01 June 2012 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Like @ermillion I don't see how you can call this cheating. If you can pass the B2 oral production test, then you are at B2, regardless of how you got there. Maybe one can game the system a bit by focusing on typical questions, but I think most examiners can tell the difference between someone who has just memorized some stock answers and someone who can really speak the language at a given level.
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| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4580 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 11 01 June 2012 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Best way to a certificate is to tweak the language skills toward this exact certificate. Learn what is expected and work through weak points.
One can certainly overdo it - there are courses here, where in a year one doesn't learn nothing new, you are drilled in "correct" answers, writing in correct form... I am not interested in further certificates - I never really needed the one in German I have. But I could cheat my way through French exam - I got equivalent of C1 result simply through cramming for the exam going from solid B1 level in 2 weeks. The problem was that in certain sense I cheated myself. Part of it was that my real level was somewhere around B2 when I took the exam, skewed because I knew what the examiner expected from us and I "optimized" my learning. And because I didn't follow through, I didn't internalize the knowledge enough I went back to my previous level very fast. I missed the opportunity - I had the knowledge, perhaps even really grasping the C1 level. But it would take either everyday use or, better yet, further learning/practicing with the same intensity for a few weeks or months to hold on it. What I wanted to say - it is certainly possible to cheat your way to certificate. Such certificate is not worth it, unless you need it desperately and you are prepared to invest more work in the language after you have it already. I hope people here don't collect certificates for bragging rights only. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4945 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 11 02 June 2012 at 1:05am | IP Logged | ||
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@DaraghM. This is meant as tongue in cheek right?
EDIT: Because it reads like : "Here's how to cheat at exams : work really, really hard!". Edited by dbag on 02 June 2012 at 10:34am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6074 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 7 of 11 05 June 2012 at 10:26am | IP Logged | ||
Initially, I wasn't intending it to be tongue in cheek, but it had a much longer title which I then changed. I didn't think it was possible to really cheat on the certificates, but it was for the placement tests. I should add that some of the placement tests are taking directly from the teachers guides as photocopies, including the listening tests. After reading Majka's account, I'm now questioning my assumption that the certificates can't be cheated as well. Obviously, they still require a tremendous amount of hard work, but the certificates are meant to be used by employers to ensure a potential employee has the necessary language skills. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5455 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 11 05 June 2012 at 9:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm most familiar with the DELF B2 exam, which I've recently been studying for. Some
things I've observed along the way: 1) The upper-level exams mix linguistic skills and academic skills. And the academic skills are not always obvious to people who haven't taken the bac in France—they like a certain kind of very thorough answer, which stays extremely close to the text and hits all the key points, both implicit and explicit. I used to do very well on standard tests in the US, but I still find the French exams to be a little counterintuitive. My wife tells me that this approach is very standard in France, so I'm treating it as a cultural exercise. 2) Similarly, DELF B2 oral presentations have a fairly specific format. It's not enough to just discuss the topic under consideration; you need to state the central question, contrast the given positions, state your own opinion, support it with several examples, and summarize. You could sacrifice all those structure points if you had sufficiently good linguistic skills, but you'd definitely take a hit. 3) You'd better make sure that your vocabulary includes some very predictable themes: mostly cultural trend stories that can be discussed by intelligent high school students from another country. If you're 15, you read newspapers, and you're living in a French- speaking environment, you'll get most of this for free. But if you don't know the word for "adolescent" or "drug addiction", you better brush up, or take the DELF B2 Pro (which is all business jargon) instead. All that said, I rather like the DELF exams. They test useful, practical linguistic skills with a bias towards surviving as an educated French speaker, and they're actually pretty well-designed. (They definitely seem much nicer than what I hear about the JLPT, for example.) But I definitely would never take one of these exams "blind", without doing some test prep. As far as I can tell, you're meant to study for these exams, just like any student in France would study for the bac. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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