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A simplified CERF | ||
Tags: CEFR Language Levels | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5435 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 41 of 44 15 February 2013 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that many if not most people here at HTLAL have no need to pass the CEFR tests but they are useful as personal goals or challenges. My own goal is to sit the C2 in Spanish later this year. The good thing about doing these tests is that you are focused on specific topics oriented towards your main objective. It reminds me of piano exams that I did just for the sense of personal achievement. Edited by s_allard on 15 February 2013 at 2:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4770 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 42 of 44 15 February 2013 at 3:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Following this topic and thinking about it, I'm getting tempted to try to pass some sort of CEFR level after I finish FSI. It would be a good way to actually *prove* that you have learned something.
I do think that it would be useful to have some sort of standard test of passive skills that one could do for free. A cloze test on some sort of material might work. Years ago, in a couple of language training programs where I worked, we found that cloze tests could do a pretty good job of differentiating between levels. As I remember, the version we found most useful went like this: 1) Take a passage and remove every fifth word until you have removed 25 or 50 words. 2) Scramble the words you removed and put them at the bottom of the passage. 3) Have students put their pencils down, cover the scrambled words at the bottom of the page, and listen to the passage three times while students read along. The passage should be read with no hesitation or emphasis on the words which have been removed. 4) Then students have pretty much unlimited time to fill in blanks in the cloze. It is trivial to show how this test does not test all language skills, but it does test many. It does include reading and listening, and the "random" every fifth word cloze assures that it will include a variety of grammar/vocabulary points. There is no spoken production, of course. As the person making the tests, I liked the ease of preparation. The difficulty of the test depends on the passages chosen, the speed with which they are read, and other factors which could be adjusted. Perhaps, using something like the Flesch readability measures, a series of tests could be developed that would measure different levels. I wish somebody had developed a set of such tests for Spanish... steve There are 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6602 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 43 of 44 15 February 2013 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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there's dialang, it even tests writing to some extent.
there's also this great tool for making your own tests and exercises. you can use gloss as a source of suitable texts with recordings. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5887 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 44 of 44 17 February 2013 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | ||
This is a nice summary. Of course, ALTE's system is not the last word, but it would be necessary lots of good evidence to substitute it. I do respect serious professionals and I do believe that there are a lot of serious people involved in ALTE's projects. Of course, there are financial, political and many other interests involved as well, and not all of this people will be that serious and/or well intended. Anyway, it also seems to me that a lot of people here often ignore a VERY important idea behind this system: Let me quote this document: "Thus, candidates achieving an ordinary pass in an ALTE examination at a given level should have an 80 per cent chance of succeeding on tasks identified as describing that level." In my opinion, this statement makes some of the concerns and complaints that I've read on many HTLAL topics about this system pointless. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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