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How difficult is C2? | ||
Tags: CEFR Language Levels | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Immersion, Schools & Certificates |  | |
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6675 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 1 of 24 27 December 2010 at 12:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I often receive job applications from people with their language skills certified. I am often greatly impressed by how some applicants have several languages to C1 level. However, I can hardly remember ever seeing people with a C2 level qualification. Does anyone else have experience of this?
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| lerner Groupie Germany Joined 5628 days ago 51 posts - 79 votes Speaks: Hindi* Studies: EnglishC2, GermanC1, Spanish, Dutch | Message 2 of 24 27 December 2010 at 1:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My opinion is that reaching C2 - almost native fluency, requires that one spends a sizable amount of time in the country where the target language is spoken. Since that might not be possible for everyone, most people who learn a language while staying in their home country may not be able to reach the C2 level.
Moreover, the difference between any two consecutive levels is not constant, the progression from one level to the next is hardly linear. And the difference between C1 and C2 is rather inordinate, at least compared with that between other levels and consequently, it takes a long time to bridge this gap. People learning languages for economic or professional reasons might feel the it's simply not worth the time and effort and may decide to move to another language. I find it hardly surprising that people manage to reach C1 in several languages but C2 in only a few. Edited by lerner on 27 December 2010 at 2:53pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5676 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 3 of 24 27 December 2010 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It is slightly off topic but I never understood why, on the CEFR proficiency scale, C2 is the highest level and A1 is the lowest level. In academic proficiency levels, A is always at the top. 1st Class is always the best. Why would A1 be the worst? There seems to be a similar pattern in other language proficiency systems. Aspiring to B2 from B1, or C2 from C1, never seemed to have a built-in motivational factor.
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| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5036 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 4 of 24 28 December 2010 at 4:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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Tomm:
In an academic environment, you take tests to measure your proficiency, so you get marks between ~0 mistakes and ~0 right answers, and you can label them from A to say F, or the other way around. The general consensus :) is A = better, but it is arbitrary. The same goes for first/business class, or any other system with a clear, closed set of levels. OTOH, when trying to define language proficiency in general, only one of the extremes is well defined: 0, or no knowledge at all, while the other is only asintotically approachable (even for native speakers, in case someone wants to bring that up.) So, no matter how many levels of proficiency you want to define, it only makes sense to start labeling from the lowest one, so that's why it always becomes "A", "1", etc. In other words: zero knowledge is a clear and definite limit to how poor your language can be, and no matter how good it might be, there can always be someone better at it. The apparently inverted label system just acknowledges that. --- WRT how hard reaching a C2 level is, or what such a level certification really represents, the answer should vary from person to person. Let me give some examples / explanations / isolated facts as a guide, with the CEFR definitions as reference (I think they have reworded them several times): -Cambridge says that C2 => 1,200 guided learning hours. I had that and a dash extra between primary and high school (~5 hours per week + homework, 9 months per year, 4 years, twice), and I was on the right track but nowhere near C2. -I'd say my English and Spanish levels eventually reached C2+ or, as Carol Beer would say, f***ing advanced. I don't know how long it took me to reach this level, because languages were not something I was 'studying' and constantly testing but rather something I did in the background. I feel I'm there but you have to take my word for that, maybe sometime I'll feel like spending ~300€ on each test to officially qualify. -5/6 years' worth of study at the local Official Languages Schools (8 months per year, 4.5 hours per week) grant you the right to take a B2/C1 test, depending on the school. For 60€ I directly took English level 5 (B2) and it was a piece of cake: finished the whole thing in 1/4 the assigned time, perfect score. In comparison, a German level 3 test of average difficulty made me seem a victim of hematohidrosis. -One of my examiners, and head of studies at that school, once said she wouldn't place herself at a C2 level even in her mother tongue, because she isn't able to read and understand the economics supplements of newspapers, and that clashed with the level definition. I think her problem with that isn't exactly the language part. -My little brother, official level placement pending -straight to C2 I'd say-, states that anything functionally below the C1 definition won't let you get out of your 'tourist bubble'. Other highly proficient friends of ours agree. Their language education background is roughly the same as mine: besides actually learning what we were taught at high school (unlike pretty much everyone else), basically keep reading, watching programs, playing games, working, etc. for years. -An immigrant friend has been immersed here for ten years, no studying, almost no locally-integrated social life. He continuously makes mistakes obvious to any adult native, regardless of education. Still, they're so minor I've never seen him having problems to understand something other than isolated words or to get his points across. Because sometimes he uses a dictionary when I'm around, I'd place him functionally at C1 instead of C2. I don't know if he'd pass a C2 test, he'd be close enough to make it a very interesting question. -I've had English students with certified B1/B2 levels ask me what things like 'advance[d]' meant, regardless being not only fairly common words at their theoretical level/in their environment (students?!?!), but also cognates in their mother tongue. I lost my little remaining faith in official qualifications after getting some of that. -From sample tests and my own experience, I think most Spanish and English natives (I'm not sure about other countries/languages) wouldn't pass a C2 test, but I'd leave to you the task of telling Groundskeeper Willies out there that they "doesn't speak the language" because that's what the test says :) So, you basically have to study seriously (traditional fashion) for a couple of years, or find another more relaxed (invest more time) or more efficient (more effort) way, and keep using the language. Eventually, scratching your head or taking trips to the bookshelf become things of the past. One day you go abroad, everyone wants you to be their translator, and you realize you *know* the language. Then you might be at C2. Certainly at C1 as a minimum. As I intended to illustrate, the distinction between C1 and C2 comes from education + attention to detail + dedication + time in varying amounts depending on the person. So even if I can't precise better how difficult it is to get to C2, for me CEFR "C" is the only label that really certifies a competent speaker that deserves some credit from qualifications alone. Edited by mrwarper on 28 December 2010 at 4:42am 12 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6104 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 5 of 24 28 December 2010 at 6:04am | IP Logged | |||||
So they can add a D1 and D2 level later. ;-) 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5844 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 6 of 24 28 December 2010 at 8:07am | IP Logged | |||||
This is counter-intuitive for anglophones, because you use the same letters for academic grades and you're indoctrinated into thinking C is bad ;-p. For me it feels natural to progress from point A to B, and finally arrive at C. For example in the Russian grade system, and this applies to many Eastern-European countries, grade A is 6; Then you have grades 5 and 4, corresponding to B+ and B-; And then 3 for C; The fail grade is 2. In the olden days teachers used 1 to denote total failure and bad discipline, but I don't think it's used any more. Edited by Sennin on 28 December 2010 at 8:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6513 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 7 of 24 28 December 2010 at 11:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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I found several noteworthy passages in mrwarpers' message above, not least this one: "I think most Spanish and English natives (I'm not sure about other countries/languages) wouldn't pass a C2 test". I have no intention of trying to take any formalized exam so I'll probably never know exactly what the level of such a test is. However it is fairly obvious that 100% native speakers also make linguistical errors, and for some of them it is not something they can avoid just by paying attention - they just have a consistently high error rate. So they might actually be denied a C2 rating, even though any native speaker is supposed to be hovering way above any near-native speaker.
So what it is it that even this kind of native speaker has? First, it is a immense stock of passive knowledge, encompassing both words, expressions and cultural snippets of information which it will take any learner years to collect - especially if you aren't living permanently in your Targetlanguistan. But possessing this hoard of knowledge isn't a guarantee that you know how to use all of it in a way that will satisfy the C2 criteria. The second thing is: a native speaker doesn't belong somewhere else. An example: yesterday I heard a lady on CNN speak with an accent I didn't recognize, but it was pleasant and consistent and I didn't catch any errors. If her speech had reminded me of something I had heard from an Australian or South African or British or US american citizen then I would of course have accepted her as a native speaker without even thinking about it. If I had caught some of the typical mannerisms of people of for instance Austrian or Swedish or Italian descent (I didn't) then I might have placed her as an excellent second language learner - but I could have been making an error there, because she could have been a native speaker from some region with a lot of immigrants who had put their stamp on the local variant of English. In other words: if she had made something that surprised me she might still be a native speaker, and then I would have to accept that MY knowledge of the variations within the English language was too limited (and that could of course also happen to a native Anglophone). The point is: you tend to blame apparent irregularities from a fluent speaker on yourself if you believe he/she is a native speaker, but on the person in question if you have a suspicion that he/she 'only' is a L2 learner - though maybe an excellent one. Edited by Iversen on 28 December 2010 at 12:12pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5676 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 8 of 24 28 December 2010 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree that grading systems are essentially arbitrary. However, you suggest that the CEFR is open-ended because language skills are difficult to measure and could extend to perhaps D or more. And you suggest that academic ability and knowledge levels have a definite upper limit. I suggest it is the very opposite for both. As a university professor, I had the privilege of knowing some students who were a lot higher than A+. I suppose you could say that some people's language skills are well beyond native fluency. So it comes back to an arbitrary system. But it still seems wrong for A1 to be the worst level.
Here you are referring to language skills. Don't you agree that this statement is even more applicable to academic skills? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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