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"Finishing" a language | ||
Tags: Advanced Level | Time to learn | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 44 28 January 2014 at 2:49pm | IP Logged | ||
In another thread, luke wrote:
I've been wanting to talk about "finishing" a language, and this seems like a good opportunity. :-) When I was starting out, the idea of "finishing" a language was probably the most misleading thing I read on HTLAL. Or at least it was misleading for me. Personally, my French will be "done" when I can use it nearly as well as my English. I'm even a little hesitant to say "C2 French would be good enough," because honestly, I suspect that it's possible to pass a C2 exam without actually reaching what the US government calls "ILR 4+", which basically amounts to "Not actually a well-educated native speaker, but certainly a pretty good approximation." And that's my lifetime goal. Now, there's absolutely nothing wrong with settling for less and moving on. B1 is a fantastically useful level just on its own, and something like C1 passive/B2 active is enough to read pretty challenging literature and to survive your first term in a university. There's nothing wrong with saying "My skills are good enough; I'm going to start a new language/work on my garden/whatever." But "finished"? It seems like the only way to "finish" a language is to say, "Ah, OK, that's more than good enough for my purposes, so let's move on." The table of "Guided Learning Hours" Early on, I ran into one other thing that now seems very misleading. I'm sure we've all seen a table like this? A2: 180-200 hours B1: 350-400 hours B2: 500-600 hours C1: 700-800 hours C2: 1000-1200 hours I strongly suspect that either (1) this table is misleading, starting somewhere around B2 or C1, or (2) I'm overestimating the skills required for C1 and C2. But to explain why, I'm going to have use the ILR scale that FSI uses. The FSI French program runs for about 24 weeks. Each week involves 5 days of studying, and each day apparently averages something like 5 hours of class and 4 hours of homework. This gives us 1080 hours. At the end of this course, students should reach ILR 3/3, which is supposedly equivalent to CEFRL C1. If anything, FSI graduates still struggle with being the only non-native speaker in a fast conversation, which C1 students ought to be able to manage moderately well. But according to Achieving Success in Second Language Acquisition, those FSI students who push on from ILR 3 to a level like ILR 4+ (near-native) typically take an additional 4 to 20 years, depending on the extent of their contact with the language. In other words, there's a big gap between "professionally competent" and "near native." And so, when you come right down to it, I'm very suspicious that students can reach C2 in 1200 "guided learning hours" unless one of two things is true: 1. Their C2 exam can be passed with skills well below "well-read near native" or ILR 4+. 2. The student gets significant exposure to the language outside of the 1200 "guided learning hours" at the upper levels. For example, maybe they spend 300 hours studying French in a classroom, but 2000 hours working in a French office environment or attending a French university. But really, all of this is based on my own, personal experiences. And everybody's different. Do other people have a sense of "finishing" a language? Does anybody say, "Oh, yeah, give me 1200 hours and I'll speak French like a native graduate of one of the grandes écoles, except for a faint residual accent?" I mean, I'm willing to believe it's possible; there are plenty of people around HTLAL who are so good at languages that I'm in awe. But for me at least, the better I get, the more I want to learn. I just don't have any sense that my French will be "finished" with another several hundred hours of study. 16 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 44 28 January 2014 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Finishing is utopia. Finishing is an asymptote. Finishing is what you do when you die.
Finishing is not something you desire. Constant improvement. Constant Zen. Keep on trucking. Don't let it stop you from studying Twi. Just realise that you don't finish, you just speak very well and the improvements you make are more marginal and incremental. 15 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4522 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 3 of 44 28 January 2014 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, they can only teach you that much in a class setting (what guided learning hours
are usually about). Especially at the higher levels, classes alone would never be enough to reach the next level. They can teach you the fine details of grammar and style, they can give you some conversation practice. But you can't do it without mass input. So it is certainly assumed that the student uses a lot of additional time on input and those small number of hours reflect just that. I too always thought of C2 as a "well-read near native" and could never imagine to reach even C1 in a language without staying in the country in question for a prolonged period of time. And I did reach that C1 goal in English without ever even visiting an English-speaking country. Mastery in CEFR terms doesn't really mean mastery at all. So I'm sure you can pass a C2 test without being a "well-read near native" given you prepare well. But to the real question of finishing. I consider a language finished at the C1 passive/B2 active level. This is when I stop learning the language and really start using it. Using the language can certainly improve you language abilities over the years, as I experienced with English. I'm a long way from mastering English or even being near native especially in speaking, but I considered my studies finished already a few years ago. It's more about the mindset though, using a language is the same as learning the language at a high level minus the danger of burn-out. In a way, not caring about progress makes it easier for me to actually make progress; and language acquisition is a never-ending process. Edited by daegga on 28 January 2014 at 3:23pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4359 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 4 of 44 28 January 2014 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oddly enough, the first language that came to my mind was my native one. Still a work in progress, and I suspect for all of us.
If it takes forever to really learn our own language, I can't even dare imagine being happy about my knowledge of a foreign one. However, there is a point one can reach where you are quite happy with using a language. Usually you have become familiar with culture, inside jokes, slang etc. Even then though... I also think that the talk of hours is not accurate: we should be talking years. Full dedication. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 5 of 44 28 January 2014 at 4:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think we are ever finished with our native language, far less a foreign one. I'm 42 and my vocabulary is certainly bigger compared to when I was 22. I'd lke to think that at 62 I will have learned even more English words and expressions.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4255 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 6 of 44 28 January 2014 at 4:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me personally I would consider myself having "finished learning" a language when I stop needing courses and translations from my native language to use it. I think you can always keep improving a language, and there are still a lot of skills I want to improve in my native language. Edited by YnEoS on 28 January 2014 at 4:49pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4370 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 7 of 44 28 January 2014 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've seen that table before and I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks it's misleading. I suppose at that point it's possible to prepare for and take a CEFR level test, but I can think of several people who would probably be able to pass a C2 exam but I would never think they were near-native. Even people who live in the US for several years, there are very distinct differences and skills between the 1 year, 3 year, and 7 year mark. As obsessive as I can be about counting hours, I'm starting to think that around the C1 passive/B2 active point, the improvements come in years, not hours.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 8 of 44 28 January 2014 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wouldn't exactly say that the table is misleading. I think it represents an ideal scenario of someone who has
nothing else to do but prepare for the exams. The problem seems to be the upper reaches, from B2 to C1 and C1 to C2. Those hours in the table are teaching contact hours. They do not represent the sum total of hours studying and practicing. Let's say you took two months to prepare for the C2 tests with in-country immersion. So, off you go to the country of your choice. How would you use your time? Per week: a small group class (15 hours), private speaking tutoring (3 hours), daily writing and correction (10 hours), listening to radio and television (5 hours), studying grammar and vocabulary (10 hours). That's around 45 hours a week for 8 weeks. 360 hours of systematic studying while being in the country will do the trick. The actual contact hours with a teacher or tutor is closer to 150 hours. What is misleading in the figures is the fact that it is rarely stated that most people do not study under those ideal conditions. This is why the whole thing can drag on for years. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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