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Language competence | ||
Tags: CEFR Language Levels | Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| fireflies Senior Member Joined 5186 days ago 172 posts - 234 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 49 of 80 14 October 2010 at 2:28am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I watched the English a1 and c1 videos and the ranking between the 2 seemed sensible. In the a1 video the subject just stammered and said 'the snow is very freezily' and in the c1 video the subject sounded natural (even her accent was good).
The c1 video was about cell phone use and the topic itself did sound a bit forced or artificial (not a convo you would ordinarily have...a bit like asking each other the way to the beach in very loud voices). At least that test makes some effort towards objectively analyzing speaking skills. Maybe proficient fluency is just a matter of sounding natural. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5435 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 50 of 80 14 October 2010 at 5:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||
What is the problem? I looked at the sample for C1 in Italian and read all the comments of the evaluators. For General Oral Production, here is what was said: "General comments La maggioranza dei valutatori, insegnanti di Italiano L2 in contesto accademico, ha indicato il livello C1 di produzione orale generale, poiché l’apprendente è molto fluida e naturale, con errori quasi impercettibili. Le autocorrezioni e le precisazioni del discorso sono del tutto spontanee, come potrebbe succedere a un madrelingua. Un altro tipo di compito potrebbe qualificare la sua produzione di livello superiore, vicino al C2." My understanding is that the majority of judges gave an over-all C1 for the reasons given above. When you look at the more specific criteria, the individual assessments ranged from B1 to C2 for a specific criterion, but the average for each criterion was C1. So the overall average was C1. Where is the problem? Should all the judges have given an identical rating? Isn't this why we have multiple judges in any kind of competition or contest? We then take the average or the sum of all the points. This is precisely the power of the CEFR system: relatively clear criteria and a panel of judges. Of course there is a certain amount of subjectivity, but we tend to think this is balanced by having multiple judges. After looking at the sample in question, is there any reason to believe that the level is not C1? Are there members here who believe that it is more a B1? What is wrong with the CEFR methodology? Should we scrap all these detailed criteria and just call this intermediate fluency? 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6444 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 51 of 80 14 October 2010 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The problem is that (presumably professional) evaluators are evaluating individual criteria over every non-A rating on the scale, for a single speaker in a single session. I have no problem with judges giving the same person two adjacent ratings; there is middle ground. When nothing aside from 'utter beginner' is ruled out (I've taken an intensive course for a month which aimed at reaching the A1 level, and I think some people hit A2), though, that suggests that there is a problem. Wikipedia calls B1 "pre-intermediate" and C2 "mastery or advanced"; that is quite a range, no matter what label you put on it. The problem isn't that someone is being evaluated wrongly. The problem is the sheer range in considered evaluation. That it all averages out to something that isn't clearly wrong is not surprising; the same happens when a large number of people try to guess how many jelly beans are in a jar. This has more to do with statistics than any benefit of the method - you'd find the same thing with any reasonable attempt to give a ranking to 'how well' someone speaks a language given a few criteria. Let's not turn this into a discussion of false alternatives. Even in the unlikely event that you were to conclude that the CEFR is unworkable, that doesn't mean that a particular system that you dislike is the answer. I think the CEFR is a useful, though flawed, tool. As you have repeatedly said, it is aimed at specific needs, and does a somewhat tolerable job of doing what it is designed to do in those niches. As Iversen and others have pointed out, it's not particularly well-suited for purposes more relevant to this forum. I've been evaluated on the CEFR scale, both by professional teachers and by self-evaluation before. It has some value, but it's wildly unsuited to expressing a number of things which are quite relevant to this forum. A few personal examples: I can read novels in some languages where I could reasonable fail an A1 speaking exam, and I've proofread far too many academic papers which are comprehensible, valuable, and would fail the C1 criteria because of patterned grammatical errors (and spoken at length with far too many people to which similar statements apply). Too many of the criteria are overly specific, and too often have to be ignored to come up with 'common sense' evaluations. In practice, I find the criteria of this site to not be worse than the CEFR, for the purposes of this site. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6277 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 52 of 80 14 October 2010 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
OK, no parachutes. I will be a little more concrete. Two weeks ago I went into a laundrette in Vienna to wash my clothes for the first time at that particular place. A couple of English-speaking tourists (Australian from their accents - I didn't actually ask where they were from) asked my help. They wanted to wash their laundry but didn't know how. There was nobody working in the laundrette, which is self-service, and all the instructions on the wall were in German. I looked at the instructions and then told the tourists how to operate the machines. Advanced fluency, basic fluency, working knowledge? Whatever it is, I stopped being a monoglot a long time ago. The next time I went to the laundrette I went with a Turkish-speaking friend who spoke no German. There was an attendant on that occasion. I interpreted a question by the Turkish speaker to the attendant, and then translated the response. The Austrian attendant asked me if I was a Slav. He could tell I was not a native German speaker but he was having trouble placing me. His guess was not totally wrong, as I am partly of Polish descent, but I said my native language was English. "But you can speak Turkish?" "Yes." A few days before that I was asked by another Turkish friend to act as interpreter. He was studying German and had just moved to Vienna and wanted to attend an appointment for a room to rent. He wasn't confident about his German, so I went along and did German-Turkish, Turkish-German interpretation for him and the potential landlady. He got the room. None of this was exactly interpreting for the UN, but I am quite functional in many non-English-speaking environments. In terms of tests, years ago, I tested my languages at www.transparent.com, which at that time had online tests for languages. I got "advanced" scores in German, French and Russian, and lower scores in Spanish, Italian and Polish (there was no test for Turkish). But the tests only covered reading ability and grammar. There was no spoken element. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5435 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 53 of 80 14 October 2010 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
As interesting and impressive as William Camden's tale of his experiences is, it still does not tell us in a clear and comparable way what his level of proficiency is in any of the languages quoted. Granted, this concern may be of no interest to him because his main focus is actually using the languages rather than demonstrating to the world a CEFR score. I'm sure many people here share that opinion. On the other hand, for many people and institutions in Europe, the CEFR certification is serious business. The whole universe of language teaching and testing in Europe is evolving in the direction of the CEFR. As I have said far too many times, the fundamental raison d'être of the CEFR is to facilitate comparison of language skills in a (relatively) objective manner. This is the crux of the matter. The anecdotal approach à la William Camden does not lend itself easily to comparison. It's not wrong or bad; it's just awkward to use. After reading the list of CAN DO statements defined by the ALTE (Association of Language Testers in Europe), I've come up with a self-assessment of my own foreign language skills of Listening/Speaking, Reading and Writing along the following lines: English: C2-C2-C2 Spanish: B2-C1-B1 Italian: B1-B1-A2 German: A2-A2-A2 Russian: A1-A1-A1 I like this approach because it is compact and clearly indicates my strengths and weaknesses. I don't claim to speak five foreign languages. Nor do I have to apologize or make excuses: my Russian is CEFR A1 rather than weak, terrible, beginner, basic or whatever. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5435 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 54 of 80 14 October 2010 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm trying to understand why the CEFR is not well suited for the purposes "more relevant" to this forum. What are these purposes? If the current system is so good, why do we have to "rehash what is involved in fluency"? (I won't even state what I think about usage of the word fluency, less I fly off the handle again.) If the current system is so good, why do we have to make a list of what fluency is not? And I'm still scratching my head over: "An interesting middle ground is when someone speaks a language well, and knows enough sound shifts to come up with something native speakers of a related language can understand, as well as being able to understand such speakers. However, most members of this forum would not call that fluency."? I admit that HTLAL is not a European Union institution confronted with concrete problems of assessing second language skills, but I do believe that the CEFR brings clarity of definitions and a simple rating system that can be useful here at HTLAL. Sometimes I think some of us like to talk about "fluency" for the sheer fun of it. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that I feel there are more useful things to discuss for those of us who are truly interested in improving their language skills. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6444 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 55 of 80 14 October 2010 at 8:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I rehashed it, once again, because it's a source of misconceptions. If the CEFR was used on this site, similar posts would be needed for it. Discussing CEFR or discussing fluency are rather similar. Neither is particularly useful for improving language skills. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5435 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 56 of 80 14 October 2010 at 9:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
It is gratifying to see that the OP recognizes that the term fluency is a source of misconceptions. That we agree on. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for nearly all the rest of the above quote. Why would similar posts be needed for CEFR? Is it a source of misconceptions like fluency? 10 years of research and development of the CEFR have produced nothing more than a synonym of fluency? I certainly agree that discussing fluency is not useful for improving language skills. On the other hand, while discussing CEFR will not improve one's language skills, the main advantage of using such a system is that we don't waste time talking meaninglessly about kinds of fluency when we really mean proficiency. I suggest for example that rating self-study products with the CEFR levels would allow us to choose more wisely and adjust our expectations. Before the Rosetta Stone bashers start hyperventilating, I would suggest that it would clarify things if the program stated clearly the target CEFR levels. The same goes for all the other products out there. This question comes up all the time. Where will Michel Thomas, Assimil, Pimsleur, FSI, GoFluent, Speak Spanish Like Crazy and all the others take me? It's hard to find out. The CEFR rating system allows learners to focus on specific issues. If I speak of improving my Russian Listening/Speaking from A1 to B1, I think most people will have a pretty good idea of what I want to accomplish. And when I speak of fluency, I'll be sure that we really are talking about fluency of speech and not everything else under the sun. In other words, discussing CEFR and discussing fluency are not similar at all. We just have to look at this very thread. Edit: Actually, I think this discussion is becoming moot. As I look around this forum I see more and more people spontaneously using the CEFR model or at least the terminology. This is very exciting and encouraging. Edited by s_allard on 14 October 2010 at 9:52pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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