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At what level do you say you speak? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4663 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 33 of 63 01 July 2012 at 12:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Personally, the absolute hardest things for me to understand so far have been (1) standup comedy (2) radio shows where there are 3+ speakers all joining into a conversation at random. I still get basically nothing out of either.
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| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4634 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 34 of 63 01 July 2012 at 12:11am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Do you think it could be said that a With Ease/Sans Peine accompanied with a Perfectionnement and sharedtalk/lang-8 can get someone to a B2? I just ask because when I first discovered levels on this forum, I did extensive searching and it was said that those two courses could get someone to B2, which seems to be the majority vote here for being able to "speak" a language. Edited by sillygoose1 on 01 July 2012 at 12:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Kyle Corrie Senior Member United States Joined 4827 days ago 175 posts - 464 votes | Message 35 of 63 01 July 2012 at 12:23am | IP Logged | ||||||||
If you ask a native how good you are or mention in anyway that you're not that good then it's only natural for them to respond with something along the lines of, "No! You're great!" or some other encouraging comment. But consider if you were to approach a child. Your language adjusts to their level. Consciously or not. Or if you also approach a familiar group of people who have a more regressed abilitity with language; then again your pattern will usually change to accomodate and blend in. That's what I meant by adjusting.
What I said was, "[...] the native with whom you are communicating with at that moment [..] Now, you couldn't be communicating with them via writing in the first place, now would you? I carefully chose the verb 'to communicate' specifically to avoid such a response. Very clever.
Correct. You may very well never reach that same level. But the person who strives for that goal longer without meeting it will undoubtedly be better than the person who simply gave up on it as an unattainable task. But now ask yourself - Are you really spending all this time learning merely so you can tell some stranger or impress some forum member by claiming you can "speak" X? If you are I'm sorry. If not - then it shouldn't even matter. --------------------------------------------- A lot of people seem to be misunderstanding me and some even taking offense. I'll clarify even further. Practically any typical person doesn't fully understand the varying levels of speaking abilities. So their only frame of reference is what they can do and as a native. To them, that is speaking. They have no trouble expressing themselves. They have (practically) no trouble utilizing varying tenses. Typically no trouble with declinations and so on. You get the idea. So when you tell someone you can "speak" a language then that is their frame of mind. That is where I draw fault with the term "speak". You shouldn't be telling anyone you can "speak" a language unless you can satisfy their only understanding of what that really is. I only have a problem with the term "speak". Now, tell people you've been "studying" the language. Tell them you're "familiar" with the language. Tell them you "practice" it. Things of that nature. But if you tell them you "speak" the language then they can only rationalize how they can perform with their mother tongue. Describing your ability in this way makes them aware you have at least some ability with "X" language, which can then be turned in to helping them, giving various advice, whatever. --------------------------------------------- I also mentioned I'd have no quarrel with people listing actual certification of their languages because then you are able to establish that level according to the guidelines according to whoever administered the test. Of course this would need to be an actual passed exam rather than simply guessing your own level. --------------------------------------------- I do understand that a lot of people enjoy telling others that they speak 'X, X, X, X, X, and X' because they like the 'wow factor' that comes along with being able to do something someone else can't. --------------------------------------------- But again... the post asked to give your opinion. I gave mine. That's all it is - just an opinion. List all the languages you want or memorize scripts and make your own multilingual polyglot videos like others on YouTube. It won't impact me in the slightest and I'll keep progressing according to my own goals. Edited by Kyle Corrie on 01 July 2012 at 12:31am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5207 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 36 of 63 01 July 2012 at 12:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Nope, your standards aren't too high; From an oft-quoted, much-voted-for thread re. the FSI document, "Lessons learned from fifty years of theory and practice in government language teaching" http://how-to-learn- any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=23446 (copy and paste, removing any spaces inserted by forum software):
And re. the original question, I'm not (yet) at the level where I would change my HTLAL status to "speaks". Perhaps when I reach B2...? Edited by songlines on 01 July 2012 at 12:27am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Umin Triglot Newbie Germany despairedreading.worRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4545 days ago 37 posts - 52 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Japanese Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 37 of 63 01 July 2012 at 12:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I've got to say, movies/TV also often seem like a kind of special case to me. For many movies and TV series, what you need are hearing rather than listening skills. By that I mean, if there's something you don't understand, it might be not because you lack vocabulary and comprehension, but because you just couldn't hear it well enough. I have that problem with quite some movies and series and that's why I often turn subtitles on (usually only in the language the movie is in though). I'd do the same for my mother tongue as well. Edited by Umin on 01 July 2012 at 12:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5451 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 38 of 63 01 July 2012 at 1:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Do you really mean this? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 39 of 63 01 July 2012 at 2:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think if you did Assimil Business French thoroughly, posted all the writing exercises at lang-8, and practiced debating business subjects on SharedTalk (a lot), you'd have a pretty good chance of passing the DELF B2 Pro. But that's because the DELF B2 Pro covers a fairly limited set of topics compared to the DELF B2 TP. You'd basically have B2-level skills at work and huge gaping holes everywhere else. That's the big headache as you get near B2: you're generally capable of communicating, but you have all these nasty little vocabulary holes. Given 30 minutes, no dictionary and no notes, can you give a coherent 10-minute presentation on teen drug addiction? Single-sex high schools? The pros and cons of congestion charges in downtown Paris? Nobody's asking you to be brilliant, but you do have to summarize a debate, present an argument, back it up with examples, and then answer questions. ("So you don't agree with the scientists quoted in this text. Why not?") I think Assimil's advanced courses can certainly help you get there. But at the very least, you also need to read the newspaper, speak a bunch, and practice writing.
Conversation is one of the easiest and one of the hardest skills, I suspect. If all you want is one-on-one interaction, some people will get "conversational" somewhere around a strong A2. But if you want to seamlessly interact with a group of native speakers without slowly them down, well, that's a whole different beast. I certainly can't do it yet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4699 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 40 of 63 01 July 2012 at 3:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The reason for me to chose the C-levels instead of the B-levels is, that the question in the OP is not directed at my opinion on what I think it means to be able to speak.
Let me break this probably confusing line down a bit. When I registered here, I claimed to be B1 in Japanese and speak English. I still speak English; my Japanese will probably have reached something protty close to B2 (but not quite B2 yet, as I lack some vocabulary to express my opinion 100% of the time. Mind you, I don't include "in 100% the style I'd like to do it" in that sentence. For me, being able to speak a language means, I can get around 100% of the time among natives of that language; not error-free; not eloquently, but comprehensible without effort. I need to be able to understand normal speech without an extra effort of my partner to approach my level to "achieve communication compatibility". Well. The "I speak" category on HTLAL is something different. When you categorize yourself as a speaker of a language, I'd expect you to be able to give advice not to be taken with a truck of salt - a grain should suffice. As a learner, you can pass on your experiences, you can give some advice, but the difference in authority between a speaker and a learner are significant. I can chat about most topics even with people I don't know at all and not get a nervous breakdown in Japanese. I can follow most TV shows without wondering what's going on (aside from some cultural references I can't possibly know, because I may have missed this and that event during the past 20 years, being the background for a pun / joke etc). I can answer a lot of questions about the language, the people, the culture. But I wouldn't claim to be able to do all of this at some expert level. That's why I voted "C1-C2". My rather sarcastic comment that "now I know better" has to be read in this context. I think people sometimes shoot first and ask questions later (myself included), but a lot make whatever it was they wrote sound like _the_truth_, when really it was just their somewhat educated (B1? B2? now you can tell by reading this thread) guess. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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