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 Language Learning Forum : Languages & Work |  | |
| Azariah Triglot Newbie Italy Joined 4426 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, German Studies: Hindi | Message 9 of 11 07 March 2012 at 10:43am | IP Logged |
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Hello :)
Last year I taught beginner's German for fun and for the experience at the school where I teach English. My boss was part of the class and everyone really enjoyed it. Now they want me to be the beginner's German teacher once a week. I'd say my level is only just touching C1, but to teach basic A1 level, I think it's OK. I feel confident that I could probably teach higher levels, but I won't until I complete the KDS exam which I plan to do next year. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5866 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 10 of 11 07 March 2012 at 11:27am | IP Logged |
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Hi Azariah,
check with the Goethe Institute here, but here in Germany the KDS and the "old" GDS were offered for the last time in November. There's a new "C2: GDS" and it replaces the old one and the KDS. It's not as difficult as the old one. If the KDS is still offered where you are you might want to consider asking about "C2:GDS". edit: I'm interested in updating my certification and I called the Goethe Inst. in Frankfurt to make sure ^^ Edited by Sunja on 07 March 2012 at 11:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4649 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 11 of 11 17 March 2012 at 2:06am | IP Logged |
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I can't give any Sweden-specific advice and don't know the level you need to actually get a job, but I'd say: If in doubt, improve your languages before getting into teaching. Solely based on the level of the material you're going to teach I think you might not need C1 or C2 levels as a language teacher at a high school. Most of the time you'll probably be teaching basics anyway and it'll be far more important to have very good grammatical knowledge of those. But if you're not comfortable with your overall language skills you might still experience some embarrassing situations that will challenge your credibility. The graduating classes at my high school sometimes had teachers whose English proficiency was weaker than the level of the best students (most of whom had spent time in English-speaking countries) - imagine running into a student like ellasevia! :)
1/2 year (or maybe even your proposed 3 months) of staying in an English-speaking country will probably make you a fluent speaker. For improving your overall proficiency I can only recommend that you read a lot and from a wide variety of sources. Watching lots of TV in your target language doesn't hurt either. Responding to the C2 debate: From my experience this is nowhere near an educated native speaker. I read that a 7.5 on IELTS will earn you C2 level English. IELTS 7.5 means respectable language knowledge. A couple of people who took IELTS when I did had a 7.5 score and they could generally understand texts on all topics (but probably with a few gaps) and could write acceptable essays with few mistakes. I was 16 when I took IELTS and I scored over 7.5. The age alone should tell you something about the requirements. My English has improved quite a bit since then. When I took IELTS it was still rather stiff, but I had trained the skills needed for the test in a course designed for exactly that. I was also still making minor grammatical mistakes and didn't understand every word in the exam and that didn't hinder me from getting a good score. Even now, after 8 more years of study and although my passive vocabulary could pass as that of an educated native speaker with middling language talent, I make the occasional mistake. So yes, native-like ability is several steps up from certified C2. Edited by druckfehler on 17 March 2012 at 2:08am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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