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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 17 of 41 31 March 2015 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
I love this. What is a "measurement system that is adapted to the requirements invoked by real life situations"? But at the same time "We don't need an objective measurement system." I find this very confusing. What real life situations does the CEFR not cover? Here is a short definition of the C1 proficiency level: Can understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts, and recognize implicit meaning. Can express ideas fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. Can use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes. Can produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, showing controlled use of organizational patterns, connectors and cohesive devices. This seems very broad to me and covers a lot of real-life situations. It is true that this definition does not explicitly include the ability to write poetry in the language, but this level of proficiency is certainly very high. I would think that it includes the ability to understand some poetic language. To come back to the theme of the thread, the situation described is pretty simple and very common. Most people who claim to speak Spanish are in the A1 range, if that, and, when confronted with native speakers, fall flat on their faces. At a B level they start to get by and at a C level they are comfortable with native speakers. It's a simple as that. It doesn't matter what people think they can do, it's what they can objectively do. That's what the CEFR is all about. Edited by s_allard on 31 March 2015 at 6:01pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 18 of 41 31 March 2015 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's very abstract, and in the exams they don't test your ability to write poetry ;)
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| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3534 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes Studies: Serbian | Message 19 of 41 31 March 2015 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Is writing poetry really a real life situation that most people will deal with? I trow not. Do the points that CEFR
describe cover real life situations that most people encounter? Seems like it's at least in the right ballpark in terms of real life applicability. Edited by basica on 31 March 2015 at 11:29pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 20 of 41 01 April 2015 at 2:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh please, do not troll yet another thread. This discussion has been here several
times already and always lead to the exactly same results with exactly the same people being on either side of the barricade. Some people prefer cefr to be the best, while others prefer their personal goals. Cefr does have some limits despite being probably the best scale around. And the definitions are not that objective. Even various examinators can take it a bit differently what is "can describe briefly" etc. it is not a maths test where you either get to the correct result or don't. The definitions are always somewhat vague, there is no clear line between the levels.There is quite a wiggle room so, while cefr is good at many things, it is still not an objective scale like anything in real science. I wonder how can anyone consider anything in humanities to be objective and clear. Humanities, including languages, that is no science. And majority of the people this thread is about do not use the cefr. And it is very unlikely majority of the humankind will exchange their usual statement "I can speak Spanish" with "I am B1 at Spanish". So, why bring the same topic to every thread? This isn't a thread about why everyone should or shouldn't use cefr, it is about the situation as it is and about natives' reactions to it. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 21 of 41 01 April 2015 at 5:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I certainly don't want to get into another ad hominem shouting match over the CEFR. I do find it a bit curious that
somebody can on the one hand belittle the CEFR for all its defects and at the same time proudly display their recent CEFR achievements. Achievements that are certainly meritorious, by the way. But that's the besides the point. The real point here in this thread is that many people, in this case Americans, claim to "speak" a language "fluently". But in reality, they can't have a fluent conversation with native speakers. Is this surprising to anybody here? My only suggestion was to frame this observation in terms of levels of proficiency using a well-known scale. If some people get their knickers in a knot over the use of the CEFR, then we can use something more general. We can say that whereas many people (Americans) claim fluency in a foreign language, in reality they have only elementary fluency and are unable to conversely fluently with native speakers. I can live with that. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 22 of 41 01 April 2015 at 10:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think we've all done that. (Haven't we? OK, I have). The gringo-Spanish thing I see is something really different. Most of us will quietly admit that maybe our TL isn't that good after all. What I see some Spanish students do is insist that they are speaking properly - and that it's the native speaker's fault if they can't understand them! And now that I think about it, I have experienced this with some Chinese men (always men, and always bureaucrats), who get angry when people can't understand their English. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 23 of 41 01 April 2015 at 11:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is interesting and intriguing because what we have here is speakers insisting that they are better than they really are. This actually reminds of something that I have seen in my part of the world where learners of French will say that they speak Parisian French and that speakers of Québécois French don't understand them. But it does raise the question of why do people tend to overestimate their abilities in a foreign language. Few people will claim to speak like a native, for sure, but many people do say that they speak language X. I see two lines of explanation. Firstly, there is wishful thinking and a tad of dishonesty. This happens a lot of resumés where people will put down whatever they feel the job requires and hope they can wing it if called upon to demonstrate their language skills. We have a very famous case of this in the example of Kim Campbell, famous for being the first and only female prime minister of Canada and the prime minister for the shortest period in history, six months in 1993. She was touted as being fully bilingual but during the subsequent election campaign, it became apparent that her French wasn't very good and she was severely trounced by the opponent, Jean Chrétien, whose command of both French and English was also considered tenuous. Secondly, I think people overestimate their language abilities because they are not aware of what it takes to really speak a language. The problem is in the use of the word "speak". I don't want to get into trouble by bringing up this issue of the CEFR scales, but let's just say that cobbling together a few phrases or just getting by is not the same as speaking a language. I personally think that if you want to interact easily with native speakers, as Ms Campbell found out to her chagrin, during the televised debates, you have to speak really well or you might as well not bother. It's kind of all or nothing. Mind you, there is lots you can do with just a little knowledge, but this is not the same thing as exchanging conversation spontaneously with native speakers. For this you have to be very very good. That's the problem. Many people delude themselves into thinking that the little they know is all they need. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4288 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 24 of 41 01 April 2015 at 11:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Does this have something to do with culture of that country instead? Is it that
Americans are seen as a bit more confident (or overconfident, rather) sometimes than for example, Canadians or Britons in general? I have never seen this phenomenon happen with people in the UK. It is usually the opposite--they say that they have studied Spanish or German or French or whatever for 6 years, or to A-Level, but they say that their skills are just rubbish, which seems to be underconfidence. I generally say that my Spanish is "average at best" despite having studied it since 2003. In the rare case that someone finds out, just to have extra security blanket; in other words, I let them judge myself, not me. But doing the opposite just seems ridiculous. It would be like someone who just passed their driving licence by the minimum going to a F1 race and saying, "Yeah I know this well. I can get first against any of these drivers". To me that means several things. They must have an extremely high tolerance of being embarassed on a mass-scale in public, think that they can cover up their insufficiencies in the language, or are simply just complete idiots, or a combination of all three. Edited by 1e4e6 on 01 April 2015 at 11:52pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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