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Percentage of understanding | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6707 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 25 23 May 2011 at 10:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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Those percentages are of course just a way of saying that you understand ordinary texts more or less well, they aren't based on scientific measurements. If used with caution they are just as informative (or the opposite) as saying that you can read almost everything, that you can read normal text with a few holes here and there or that you barely can understand anything. In that sense they are as elastic as saying that you can speak more or less fluently, or that you are an advanced beginner or intermediate or whatever.
Even claiming 100% isn't entirely unambiguous, because you may not want to say that you can read texts which would leave educated and knowledgeable native readers crying. And at the other end at the scale you might be able to guess what an article is about from just one name in the text - but is that reading or guessing? So it would be silly to take those percentages at face value, but they can still give others an idea about you own self-assessment - whether it is realistic or not is quite another thing. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5851 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 25 23 May 2011 at 2:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There are difficulties in measuring which percentage of a target language you can understand. Most reliable are word counts with written texts. If you choose 5-10 texts of a certain level of compexity, you can make word counts with it by counting first the total amount of words and then the amount of unknown words. Afterwars you can calculate the percentage of unknown words related to a certain difficulty level of a text.
The info gets unprecise, if somebody asks me which percentage of words I understand when I watch my foreign TV channels CNN (Am English) and TV 5 (French). This deals with my listening capacity, so I cannot make an oral word count. My only possibility is to give a very rough estimation about which percentage of words I think I can understand. If I for example tell you that I can understand about 80-90% of the news programs of TV 5, you have to take this with a grain of salt, because such an estimation can never be precise. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 23 May 2011 at 2:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5434 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 11 of 25 23 May 2011 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
Since everybody seems to agree that these figures really don't amount to anything and are just a way of using figures rather than adjectives, I wonder why we should even use them when we could use a rating system such as the CEFR. If I say my oral comprehension is C1 instead of 80%, that would seem to make more sense. On the other hand, I could see that whereas a CEFR rating would cover general proficiency, one could attempt to approximate the level of comprehension of specific texts. For example, in the Grisham quote I gave, I would say that I only understood about 50% of that text although my overall proficiency in English is C2. Just to push the envelope at bit, I think one can qualify the use of the word understand. At a certain level, there is understand-recognize where we perceive a phonetic or graphic form that is familiar. At another level, there is understand-comprehend where we are at the same level as the originator of the form. If I go back to the Grisham quote, at first reading I had an vague idea--the gist--of what was happening because I recognized all the words. "Shotgun" and "wishbone" are relatively common words. The interesting thing is that I didn't really have to push my understanding further to enjoy reading the passage and move on. That's my understanding-recognition. Out of curiosity I did a bit of research into football terminology and discovered a whole world that I knew nothing about. When I read the same passage again a couple of times, it was a different experience. It was like watching the game on television; I could "see" what was happening. For example,when seen from above, the layout of the players behind the quarterback can look like an inverted Y and therefore like the wishbone of a chicken. This has certain implications in terms of strategy. The term "shotgun" refers to a formation that has the shape of a shotgun. Knowing all these details adds to what I call understanding-comprehension. Is the latter 100% and the former 90%? I'm not sure. I think they are different experiences. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5564 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 12 of 25 23 May 2011 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That passage is totally incomprehensible to me. I suppose I should knock off a couple of point from whatever subjective assessment I previously had of my English level, but I think because I've got no interest in the sport, it doesn't have any bearing.
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| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5312 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 13 of 25 23 May 2011 at 7:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
Because my mum understands "90%" but not "C1 on CEFR". If I told her I'm at C1 in French, she will tell her mahjong friends that I got a C in Spanish. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 14 of 25 23 May 2011 at 10:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
True, but it's subject to (flawed) human perspective. Personally, I find my estimates tend to go down over time, rather than up, because my perception of my flaws improves as my knowledge of the language improves.... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5434 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 15 of 25 24 May 2011 at 5:07am | IP Logged | |||||
I know this is not a big deal, so I don't want to spend too much time on this. For most people, it seems that these figures are nothing more than figments of the imagination that are not really based on any really systematic attempt at measurement. As Iversen has pointed out, instead of using vague words we use figures. The problem, however, is that figures are precise, at least superficially. If we say 90% comprehension instead of "very good" comprehension, does that in fact mean anything from 70% to 95%? In fact, it means nothing, except that it's better than 50% or 25%. The only way to resolve this is through testing where we are given a written or spoken test and then some questions on comprehension. Pretty much the run-of-the-mill stuff for language testing. What is very difficult is to do what Fasulye suggests and count the words that one does not understand in a text. This is fraught with major methodological difficulties. For example, the passage quoted in the OP contains 67 common words, what words are not understood? Can you really look at each word individually and identify the words you don't understand? In some cases yes, in others no. In the following sentence, "Backs in motion, three receivers on one side, two tight ends, new plays, and new formations." most people know the words but many people here probably have little true understanding. Is it 25%, 50% or 75%? The really interesting point is that the question of understanding is basically irrelevant. This is a work of fiction. It's not a football coaching manual. It's not really important to know the exact details. For many readers, it's just a question of realism and atmosphere. All we need to know is that it's the language of football and that it looks authentic. Edited by s_allard on 24 May 2011 at 5:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5385 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 16 of 25 24 May 2011 at 6:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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I never take such claims seriously. I could set out to watch a French movie and not understand 90%,
depending on where it's from. Neither I nor my wife get 90% of Coronation Street. Yet, I can sometimes get 100% of a conversation in a Japanese show. It's so subjective, it's pointless. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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