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At what level do you say you speak? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4456 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 63 29 June 2012 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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At what point do you toggle your language on this forum so that it says you "speak" that language? I've heard
different comments here, so I'd like to find out what is most common. Feel free to state why you chose your level if you'd like. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4492 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 2 of 63 29 June 2012 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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When I can carry a conversation and keep it flowing, regardless of however many errors I
make (the errors should not impede comprehension). What that comes to in CEFR I don't know and I don't care either, but it's probably B-something 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5120 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 3 of 63 29 June 2012 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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I voted for around B1/B2 because I consider B2 to be a level where you can start to claim
some meaningful level of proficiency in a language. If I remember the CEFR definitions correctly, B2 is when you can watch any film or TV program, read literature and converse comfortably with native speakers, so that's when I would find it acceptable for others on the forum to upgrade a language to basic fluency. However, in the case of my own profile, I will probably wait much longer because my French is nearing B2 (or maybe it's already there, I'm really bad at evaluating that) and I don't feel comfortable claiming any kind of fluency/proficiency at all. There is still so much I don't know and can't do that I would feel like a total fraud if I claimed to speak French at this point so I will probably leave it as intermediate until I've reached a solid B2 or C1. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5317 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 63 29 June 2012 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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To me, B2 seems about right: You can understand the vast majority of what you hear in
one-on-one conversation, and you can express and defend abstract ideas. But French was weird for me, because I had a ton of passive, comphrehensible exposure over about 3 years, more than a thousand hours worth. Objectively, my level was around A2, with maybe B1+ listening skills on a very limited set of familiar topics. But within these narrow constraints, I had a strange kind of fluency. People would say something to me, and 5 seconds later, I couldn't remember what language they had used. I'd spontaneously use expressions like "Ça, c'est…" that I had never studied, and which I wrongly believed to be grammatically incorrect. In a weird way, I was some kind of adult heritage learner. I listened to the language at home, but I never used for anything beyond a little bit of simple, spontaneous speech. Now, four months of speaking and studying French has done what 3 years of passive listening didn't, and pushed me to a halfway decent level. But back down around A2, I had a lot in common with a toddler: I could speak and understand spontaneously, but within very narrow limits. I have no idea how to classify this. These days, I can produce a few sentences of fairly idiomatic French with a second or two of thought, but if I want to speak spontaneously and at length about an unfamiliar subject, I often need a few minutes warmup. I still have all kinds of limitations and holes in my vocabulary, and I need to be alert if I want to work around them unobstrusively. Edited by emk on 29 June 2012 at 9:15pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rivere123 Senior Member United States Joined 4615 days ago 129 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 5 of 63 29 June 2012 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am at B1 probably. I am well understood, but I make quite a few mistakes (particularly in informal French, but if I talk current events, history, or the mundane things that you learn in school, I'm pretty alright) and I wouldn't rate myself as a speaker.
I put C1 myself but high B2 would probably work as well, although I'll never say I speak something as long as I am learning it. I like seeing that people think B1/B2 are speaking, though. It's motivating. :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4794 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 6 of 63 29 June 2012 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think "somewhere between B1 and B2" is quite precise. There are people who can use low
B1 knowledge to the highest and they speak and there are people who need to get to solid B2 to get speaking. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5317 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 63 29 June 2012 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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For reference, here's a set of B1, B2 and C1 criteria from the Council of Europe. I
think these criteria are slightly more demanding than the average assessment exam. Link
The B1 and B2 levels are often described as "independent". And there's a lot of truth in that. You haven't mastered the language yet, but you can go for days at a time without resorting to your native tongue. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6444 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 8 of 63 29 June 2012 at 10:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ouch.. I've never used numbers and letters. I just say that I speak English "fairly fluently", and no one has ever
objected to that. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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