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At what level do you say you speak? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5682 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 41 of 63 01 July 2012 at 4:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||
In my opinion, the problem is that there are a few people in this forum who are too much and too often worried about how much impressive some other members' profiles/messages/claims would be. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6503 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 42 of 63 01 July 2012 at 9:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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As I have stated elsewhere my personal criterion is that I have had a monolingual holiday somewhere - i.e. a holiday where I only speak to the natives in their own language (or rather my rendering of it), and where I try to think in the language as much as possible. If they answer me at normal speed without making any concessions vocabulary-wise then I believe that I have passed the exam, and it doesn't matter that I still have some studying to do to become better in the language.
One problem: the time I actually spend on conversations may be fairly limited, but walking around and thinking in the language and speaking it when there is a chance is the second best option. I know people (for instance my own sister) who are masters of walking up to a stranger and initiating a conversation, but we all have our strong and our weak points - disturbing people without a justifiable reason is not my cup of tea. I don't normally think in terms of B1-B2-C1 as quoted in this thread (the formulation of the criteria which targets the spoken language), because my focus mainly is on the written language - after all my holidays don't take up the majority of my time. In the written language I can take the time I need but my errors stay visible, which is a major difference, and besides the notion of 'topics that are familiar or of personal interest' in the quoted version irks me because it presupposes another study plan than mine: I certainly know more Greek words from the realm of archeology than I do from the realms of family life or cooking because of my choice of study materials. And during my recent trip to Portugal my longest conversation by far was about the mass extinction at the end of the Permian and its causes. Besides I only count 'free' conversations, not a limited use of a few prelearned phrases and words, no matter how useful they are. So my limit would probably be somewhere around B2, but in some cases B1 (for instance my Dutch is fluent, but faulty and with a terrible pronunciation). The main exception to the 'holiday criterion' is Swedish where I can understand just about anything on TV and think fluently about just about any subject, but have qualms about speaking it to Swedes because they ought to be able to understand Danish. And soon Esperanto, which I only speak at congresses and where I will have to speak another language outside the congress facilities. But I have promised to deliver a one hour free lecture on the subject of wordlists in a couple of weeks' time in Galway, and if that goes well I'll take it as a sign that my Esperanto has become of age. Edited by Iversen on 02 July 2012 at 3:00pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5253 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 43 of 63 01 July 2012 at 10:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The CEFR scale can also be used for reading and writing skills, as shown in the CEFR self-assesment grid (links at the bottom of this page). Edited by tractor on 01 July 2012 at 10:27am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5019 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 44 of 63 01 July 2012 at 11:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||
EMK wrote
Yep! That about sums it up for my Spanish. Some of the holes are sooooo big but according to my tutor my (self-studiedd) grammar is well beyond B2. I still won't say confidently that I speak Spanish until I can take part in a wider range of conversations and not be guessing at some of the vocabulary. Edited by maydayayday on 01 July 2012 at 11:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4659 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 45 of 63 01 July 2012 at 1:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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When it's firm A1 or A2 - I say "I speak a little/only a bit". When it's B1 or, even better, B2 - then I can firmly say that "I speak" one language.
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| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4668 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 46 of 63 01 July 2012 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think you have a point there, but then I guess the forum should be designed a little differently - "speaking" should only be applied to languages in which people claim advanced fluency. In the end I'm going to move Korean to Basic Fluency when the forum's criteria apply - understanding 80% of a newspaper article on any topic (which for me will probably come after reading novels) and speaking fluently on any topic of interest. Regardless of whatever CEFR level I may be at when that happens... I only know that it's guaranteed not to happen below B2. 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 47 of 63 01 July 2012 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm absolutely fascinated by how people adjust their speech for children and for language learners. A lot of it is subtle and subconscious, and the changes are extensive:
It's a cool paper; the authors conclude that "Infant Directed Speech" and "Foreigner Directed Speech" both involve careful articulation and very clear vowels. And we're not necessarily talking about a huge blatant effect—it might be as subtle as the difference between how you speak on the telephone, and how you speak in person. A month ago, I understood virtually everything that people said to me in French. But I've been cleaning up my accent and intonation and grammar, and suddenly I've dropped back to 90% comprehension, even with familiar speakers. Suddenly I'm hearing a lot more vowel reduction, highly idiomatic usage, and fast speech. And of course, when I ask people about this, they claim to be speaking exactly the way they spoke before. But on the other hand, when people speak French to my preschoolers, I still understand them just fine. So French speakers still adapt for me, but less than they do for very young children. And of course, we even adapt for other native speakers. I've spent half my life hearing things like, "You know, when you guys start talking about software design/kayaking/your in-jokes/whatever, it's like a foreign language." So we do the polite thing, which is either to change the subject, or to start explaining everything slowly and laboriously.
Well, I certainly apologize if I ever fooled anybody into thinking I had mastered French. :-) I've tried to be painstakingly honest (to the point of boring people to death) about my limitations, as you can see from my log and my profile. Personally, I prefer advice from more advanced students, not from experts. I love advice from sctroyenne or microsnout, because they've faced all the same problems recently, and they still remember what it was like to be in my shoes. Native speakers can't unpack stuff enough to make it clear. Similarly, whenever I do have real expertise, I hate to advise beginners. There's no way to unpack 40,000 hours of experience for a novice without leading them horribly astray. Experts often rely on profound intuition and a few rules of thumb, and they can only articulate the latter. But the rules of thumb are dangerous without their context. For a nice, language-related example, try asking native speakers on lang-8 to explain why something is wrong. You'll get all kinds of horrible advice, or maybe just a shrug and "Well, it sounds wrong." 4 persons have 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 48 of 63 01 July 2012 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
For me, the worst thing is words like "drug addiction" and "toll both" and "unmarked police car" and "seagull". If you need one of these nouns, no problem, you can take an extra 10 seconds to work around it. But let's say I'm standing on a boat, and I want to say, "Do you see those seagulls over there by the bell buoy, the one right by the ledge with all the lobster pots? We used to have a million of them around here, right up until they closed the town dump." Then I'm in for a world of hurt. I'm missing 5 critical nouns in a row, and I'm going to have unpack those two sentences into four paragraphs. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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