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Where are the advanced speakers? | ||
Tags: Advanced Level | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 25 of 37 19 December 2012 at 3:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I meant professional human translation as a point of reference, not machine translation.
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 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6379 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 26 of 37 19 December 2012 at 4:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Yes. Amazon is putting the brick and mortar chains out of business. Even here in Singapore where we pay a premium for postage when buying from Amazon a number of book chains have closed. Edited by newyorkeric on 19 December 2012 at 4:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 27 of 37 19 December 2012 at 7:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
(I mentioned Ilya Frank books in English but I've never read one myself, haha. I just recommend them to anyone who wants to improve their English :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6151 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 28 of 37 19 December 2012 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
There is actually a lot of materials written for advanced learners, but it rarely makes the bookshelves of a typical bookshop. However, most of the material is written entirely in the target language. For French, I like the materials produced by CLE International. Their book, Grammaire progressive du français, niveau perfectionnement is aimed at students at the B2-C2 level, and in the description, it mentions that it focuses specifically on typical difficulties learners encounter. For more casual reading, I'd recommend, Grammaire - Nouvelle grammaire du français, which is also aimed at foreign language students. Where possible, I avoid grammar books written in English, if I can understand the basics of the language. Edited by DaraghM on 19 December 2012 at 12:09pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5207 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 29 of 37 19 December 2012 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I think that it's a matter of advanced learners being a smaller market. I think the
idea that all you need at the advanced level is exposure to native materials and practice is a bit of a myth - study is still very much needed, more so than before if anything. Advanced level is hard work; perhaps it's not as intellectually challenging as the initial stages but it still takes a ton of effort, consistency, and hours, and it's extremely easy to get stuck in a "good enough" plateau if you don't keep pushing yourself. And while self-guided study can get you pretty far, I definitely think that there's a place for guided materials and lessons that focus on specific difficulties. I meet very few advanced learners of French for example - at my local meetup group the average seems to be B1, even amongst members who've spent a year in France. For English it's much the same: I know a lot of foreign people who've been living in my city for years who get by in English but have never reached an advanced level because they stopped learning once they got to the point of getting by. And they don't exactly have any shortage of exposure or practice. To reach advanced level you really need to have a strong desire to do so; it doesn't just happen. (Interestingly, I do meet a lot of advanced Italian learners - it seems that people who like Italian really like Italian!) DaraghM's post is very interesting - I might take a look at these books myself! It seems that that kind of material is out there, you just have to dig around for it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 30 of 37 19 December 2012 at 2:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
The situation is bad, and it's getting worse. Here's what we have locally: Books-A-Million: A large chain. No foreign language books except one shelf of Spanish. University bookstore: Managed by Barnes and Noble. Maybe 20 books in Spanish. A used bookstore: Three or four small shelves with several languages. Of course, the two big bookstores both have huge shelves of Rosetta Stone and beginner courses. But actual novels? No. When I last visited the Harvard Co-op near Boston (a massive university bookstore), they had maybe 30 or 40 titles in French. These were mostly books like L'Étranger, Candide and other obvious classics.
If you read the logs, we have plenty of intermediate and advanced students who regularly write in French, and I'm impressed by how well they do. And some of them are quite prolific writers on lang-8, where they're allowed to write about a much wider range of subjects, and where they can get detailed corrections.
Well, there's fluent, and then there's fluent. There's a difference between reading an easy popular novel (which might be perfectly readable by the average 10-year-old), and reading something which uses a large vocabulary and lots of metaphor. I'm not ashamed to admit that the latter can be very tough going at times. Even then, I probably wouldn't want parallel texts. But I'd love to be able to tap my finger on a sentence, see a translation, tap again to mark some French text in boldface, and tap once more to export a card to Anki. Or if I find an interesting word in a paperback novel, I'd love to be able to search for example sentences in Harry Potter, and see the word in context with translations. Then I'd like to pick one or two examples for Anki. The goal here is to clarify and to capture useful words without needing to waste lots of time on data entry overhead. And sure, it means that I'd capture too many sentences, but that's what deleting cards is for. :-) As a programmer, I tend to find paper to be frustratingly barbaric the moment I need reference tools.
Thank you for the recommendation!
I'm within an hour and a half of two French groups: An Alliance française with a handful of native speakers and a lot of beginners (up through a weak B1, maybe), and a Meetup group where my B2 French makes me one the weakest students in the group. The advanced students do exist, but they mostly hang out with either natives or other advanced students, and beginners tend to find those groups a little intimidating because everybody speaks so fast. Edited by emk on 19 December 2012 at 2:27pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5009 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 31 of 37 19 December 2012 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Well. Firstly, there are much less advanced speakers than the beginners. Seconly, when
you get to that stage, it's like a fish getting out of the river into the sea. There are so many options and you need to find your own way to survive. Some get afraid and return back to the river of B1. Others quite often ask on the forums (I have seen a few French "how to get from intermed to adv level" forums lately as an example). But it is harder to give advice to these than to beginners. I usually try to give at least tips on where to begin, where to dive in the sea. There are several things we do and it is true that many, especially those advanced in less common languages, have trouble to find something suitable. But in general, there are several "currents in the sea" to follow and each does carry a different trap for forum consultation: 1.native materials There is a ton of those. Usual and good question is "Where do I start?". After that point, it is much harder to ask for advice on the forums because we differ a lot in what interests us in the language and in general. It is less difficult with tvshows or so. But there are not so many fantasy-scifi readers or medschool students around here to create a sub-community for me. And vice versa, I cannot give advice on French or Spanish books on geography or economics and many other topics. 2.things aimed at high level learners There are much fewer, but they are there. With the wider spread of internationally recognized language exams like DELF/DALF, DELE, Goethe Zertificat, Cambridge exams, it seems that we are no longer ignored. There are grammars for advanced learners at least for some languages (that French example is among my favourites), there are textbooks aiming for B2 or C1 levels (basically a bit of native material exemples combined with preparation book for the exams), there are a lot of things available now that we were missing just a few years ago. But the market is smaller, so the offer is far from complete. 3.do it yourself things The tools like anki are awesome but you need the content. And, due to the variety of our interests, we are most often on our own when it comes to the most time consuming part of this-creating a deck. Those ready to download decks are usually far bellow our needs. The same applies to lists of interesting or troublessome structures and other similar things. 4.immersion in the country Even if I had the money, which I don't have, I cannot go there for half a year now. And by itself, it doesn't work, you still need to study. Hmm. Once again, I am happy to live in Prague with our wonderful bookshops. The situation is not ideal, Amazons do have a wider range to choose from, but it is still good around here. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| LittleBoy Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5310 days ago 84 posts - 100 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 32 of 37 19 December 2012 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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In Birmingham today (second/third largest city in England), I was in a branch of Waterstones, a very large bookshop chain. This was one of two huge shops they have in the centre, it has 5 stories, etc. They have one set of shelves with books in other languages that I know of, next to a fairly sizable collection of Teach Yourself, Rosetta Stone, Colloquial, etc. Stacking all them wouldn barely reach the ceiling. For French they had lots of Astérix, lots of Harry Potter, 50 shades of grey in translation, two copies of L'étranger and one other novel (whose name escapes me). Spanish was pretty much the same, with Astérix and the novels substituted for García Márquez (Cholera and Solitude) and another novel which escapes me. I also spotted the usual suspects - Italian, German, Portuguese and, slightly surprisingly, Latin, but nothing else. Harry Potter in all of them.
A huge book shop in one of the largest cities in the county. That's all they have. As for the other branch, I've only ever found one book in French in there, nothing else. I suppose there is just not the market for books in foreign, especially as getting them online is so convenient nowadays. Besides, I doubt physical stores could ever justify having a reasonable range (except Foyles in London, which I loved). Sorry for the long, only semi-relevant moan, but it annoyed me! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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