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At what level do you say you speak? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4501 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes  Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 17 of 63 30 June 2012 at 2:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I voted "C1 or C2".
I mean, what are we talking about here? I thought it was "the point when you switch to _speak_ here on HTLAL". Why would I claim to be better than I really am? Besides, just getting my point across somehow isn't speaking in my book. It's some kind of "somehow being able to communicate" and thus, "learning". But this thread is pretty interesting. I was always pretty impressed by the number of languages people claimed to speak. Now I know better. ^^ Edited by atama warui on 30 June 2012 at 2:18am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4471 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 18 of 63 30 June 2012 at 2:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Don't get me wrong - I liked your post. But I just wanted to say that the natives I communicate with constantly determine my level is much higher than it really is.
Ouch! Edited by Wulfgar on 30 June 2012 at 2:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4465 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 19 of 63 30 June 2012 at 2:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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When I'm comfortable using French to talk about anything I'd be able to talk about in English, with a similar pace and amount of hesitation as I would have in English, then I'll say I can speak it.
Nowhere close to that yet! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5332 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 20 of 63 30 June 2012 at 4:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's a really hard standard to meet. I've spent my entire life using my English, including 17 years of school, many thousands of books, and a fair bit of writing. I'm never going to recreate that in French (though I expect to have a lot of fun trying). Native fluency is a deep and weighty thing. Natives have decades of daily use and exposure, starting at birth. A skilled, educated native speaker is far beyond C2, and this will ultimately show up in all sorts of little ways. Students of foreign languages would be better served by practical tests. Can you pass university classes taught in your second language? Can you hold down a white color job? Can you write persuasively? These are all much easier standards than "almost on par with your native tongue." Today, my French is much weaker than my English. I have days where I feel like a total idiot, where I say "Pardon?" and "Quoi?" and "Une chenille arpenteuse? C'est quoi, ça?" a hundred times. Every time I hit 95% comprehension, and start feeling really good, the native speakers speed up. I agonize over the fact that it takes 5 minutes to boot my French up to some kind of sustained fluency, because I often need to speak French at a moment's notice, even when I'm up to my elbows in some task that requires serious concentration in English. But on the other hand, I really do speak French, often for hours every day. Most of my personal life takes place in French. So while I'm the first to admit that I speak French badly, I can't deny that I speak it. I agree that we shouldn't set the bar too low. But we shouldn't set it too high, either. If you can live your life in a second language, albeit imperfectly, then you speak it. And that's when the serious fun begins. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Umin Triglot Newbie Germany despairedreading.worRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4347 days ago 37 posts - 52 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Japanese Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 21 of 63 30 June 2012 at 6:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I guess my spoken English is around B2. I can pass tests on C1 level, but I think speaking is by far my weakest part
and there's still much work for me to do here. As for Japanese, I have no idea how to really apply the CEFR to it, but looking at it, I'd say it's around B2 on good days but can drop to A2 level if I have a bad day, so B1 on average I think. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4668 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 22 of 63 30 June 2012 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm wondering why you lumped B1 and B2 together. There is a huge difference between those two and I think the poll would be more meaningful if we knew whether people claim speaking at B1 or B2 level.
The criteria this forum gives for Basic Fluency are definitely B2, so as soon as I pass the test for Higher Intermediate Korean I'll claim Basic Fluency (if my speaking skills are up to par, that is). Please note that this is the same level that is required to enroll at a Korean university, so it is certainly not "unimpressive". I think there's a tendency to underestimate what B1 and B2 actually mean. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6397 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 23 of 63 30 June 2012 at 2:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
As for requiring near native skills... How many people who have them say that's their criterion for fluency? No offence meant but it's mostly monolinguals who speak about this... And as for newspapers, I have to admit that to me this automatically means the same level of listening comprehension. Ie if you still struggle a lot with understanding movies/TV programs, you're not fluent (except in Latin, Ancient Greek or Sanskrit, lol) Edited by Serpent on 30 June 2012 at 2:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5332 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 24 of 63 30 June 2012 at 4:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Interesting. I'd disagree, for two reasons: 1. Lots of people can speak quickly and well without getting more than 50% of movie dialog. I know people who've spoken English fluently for 10 years, full time, who still leave the subtitles on when they're available. The only thing worse than movies, in my experience, is fast, informal conversations between multiple native speakers who know each other well. 2. Listening comprehension varies tremendously depending on speaker, accent and subject. I'm really good at TV science documentaries, anywhere from 75% to 95%+ on radio news, about 50% to 75% on Quebec TV news, and less than 40% on rural Quebec accents. I recently watched Largo Winch and followed the plot just fine (except for one monologue), but I got destroyed by Bon Voyage—I kept missing critical plot points. To be fair, listening comprehension is my weakest skill right now. For example, I'm missing several items on the following B2 checklist from the Council of Europe:
Actually, I find that having strong speaking skills and weak listening skills is frustrating but useful. Natives speakers compensate less and less for my limitations, and they get slightly cross with me when I don't understand. I actually prefer this to the slower, more repetitive speech I was hearing a month ago. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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