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How to bring up English from B2 to C1 ? | ||
Tags: Advanced Level | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Enrico Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 3744 days ago 162 posts - 207 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Italian, Spanish, French | Message 1 of 66 09 September 2014 at 12:03am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Hello all,
How to bring up English from around B2 to C1 ? What methods and materials to use? Now for English I watch movies when I have time for it, watch video courses on interesting topics, read internet articles and forums, and recently started doing grammar exersises using iOS app. Thank you. Edited by Enrico on 09 September 2014 at 8:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Enrico Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 3744 days ago 162 posts - 207 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Italian, Spanish, French | Message 2 of 66 10 September 2014 at 11:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Have anybody done it?
Maybe in another language? Edited by Enrico on 10 September 2014 at 11:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5261 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 3 of 66 11 September 2014 at 3:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Enrico, to bring your English up, you're going to have to work, hard. If you really want it, that means a lot of hard work. You'll need to read extensively, and, better than watching films, in my opinion, is watching (and finishing) a TV series- or three.
Your English is at a high level, but you want to take it higher. If you are sincere about that- then do that. Scale back Spanish, French and Italian as serious study and work really hard on taking your English to the next level. There are English-speaking Russian-learners here on HTLAL who would be happy to give you English speaking practice if you could help them with your Russian. You have only to ask for a language exchange. What you can do, without speaking is read, listen, watch and write. Read a lot and read extensively. Listen to and watch native English media. There is so much English-speaking media on the web that you should have no trouble finding enough TV series to watch in English. TV series are better than films for learners because of repetition. You get used to the actors accents and speech. You spend more time in the same situation/locale. After you've watched a couple of native English language television series, along with practicing speaking and writing and reading extensively, plus some focused grammar study, you should notice a huge improvement. The HTLAL Super Challenge was designed to get people to do that in order to take their language to the next level. You should consider doing a Super Challenge in English- and try not to get bogged down in the minutiae of the rules- watch a hundred hours of a TV series in English (without Russian subtitles) and read a hundred books. All the advice and help is right here if you are humble and sincere. If you ask, you will receive. A good start would be to have a look at emk's log. He has written the best road map for taking a western language to the next level on this forum, in my opinion. Your fellow Russian, Serpent, is one of the most amazing learners I've seen here. She won't agree with my telling you to at least scale back your ambitions a bit in the other languages, but she can help you from a different perspective. She gets her massive input in a much different way than I do. She loves football. She also does output- here, and on tumbler and twitter. By the way, your last post should read "Has anybody done it?". In this context "have" is incorrect because of "anybody" which is singular and takes "has". Or, you could make it correct with "have" by changing "anybody" to "any people", "any of you" or "any members", since you are asking the membership of the forum. If I can help you with English, let me know. PM me. Edited by iguanamon on 11 September 2014 at 1:49pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Enrico Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 3744 days ago 162 posts - 207 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Italian, Spanish, French | Message 4 of 66 11 September 2014 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Thank you very much Iguanamon for such very useful answer.
What counts for extensive reading? Does internet articles counts? I read internet articles in English every day I would say 80% I read in the Internet is in English. Very interesting advice about TV series but I do not like them too much, I have seen LOST, just for learning purposes. Of course I can try to find something to watch just to learn, may be Californication, I do not watch TV series. But I agree that it can be useful because of simple live situations etc. Should I watch them with English subtitles or better without subtitles? When I switch on subtitles I start to understand up to 70-95% but if I switch them off my comprehension decreases to around 50%. BUT if I watch interviews or master classes I understand without subtitles around 80-95% of what been said.
What counts for media? I watch master classes and another videos on topics of my interests like music, sport, business, computer technologies, languages. Does it counts?
Oh, I have completely forgotten about Super Challenges. I have read some of those topics several years ago.
I know about this rule but I thought I can use 'Have anybody done it' if by 'anybody' I mean 'any of you'. Or is it not correct to mean 'any of you' by 'anybody'?
Thank you. I will PM you if I will have any questions. You also can PM me if I can help you on topics I have some knowledge about. Edited by Enrico on 11 September 2014 at 3:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4233 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 5 of 66 11 September 2014 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I'd recommend watching without subtitles, because in my case I've come to the situation where I can't watch anything without them primarily because I don't think I will understand enough. But, of course, if it's too hard to work without them and you think that is no use it's ok to have subtitles. And my case may not be correct for the others.
Series are awesome. I spent a summer watching 6 Feet Under and then Dexter (with Russian or English subs) and I have actually felt some improvement. Songs are great too, but don't trust the pronunciation too much (as I fan of Dream Theater I do have to say that. hehe). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Enrico Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 3744 days ago 162 posts - 207 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Italian, Spanish, French | Message 6 of 66 11 September 2014 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Yes, I have also been in the same situation, nowadays I try to watch films without subtitles and maybe switch them on at hard places. Also I have noticed that when I switch them off I become more immersed in a movie and start to notice much more details. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Enrico Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 3744 days ago 162 posts - 207 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Italian, Spanish, French | Message 7 of 66 11 September 2014 at 4:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Now I have put aside French and Spanish materials and try to keep at least one lesson of Assimil Italian a day + English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4233 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 8 of 66 11 September 2014 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Yeah, immersion is bigger if you are watching without subs, it's an imitation of real-life situation when you're participating (or more like just listening) to a conversation and intend to actually understand it. I have noticed that with German, but my English is too bad at the moment to even try this tactic.
You also need to have an idea of the level of the series/ film you're watching. Shows like House M.D. are full of professional lexicon, and many other shows sometimes use relatively rare words in the dialogs. This is damn useful for natives and advanced learners, but to me these words which I ofter hear (or read in subs, to be honest) in Hannibal are really annoying sometimes. I am annoyed with myself though :) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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