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C2 possible without living in country? | ||
Tags: Class Learning | Self-Study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4445 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 1 of 20 11 August 2013 at 4:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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Do you guys think it's possible? I've heard of people reaching C1 by playing video games with Americans and watching series/movies, but what about C2?
Dutch/Scandinavians, which level would you say your average countryman has in English? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6718 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 20 11 August 2013 at 10:42am | IP Logged | |||||
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The average Swede who has had ~10 years of English in school, lives in a fairly urban area and isn't yet retired... maybe B2 (at best), I don't know. As I wrote in another thread:
Most Swedes don't have to speak English daily, most tourists are happy to get away with English while in Sweden, and don't care much whether the average Swedish person has a perfect RP accent or not. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5894 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 3 of 20 11 August 2013 at 11:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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C2 can be done if you immerse yourself somehow -- either through an immersion program or you make one yourself by doing skype-chats or couchsurfing, or otherwise making trips to an area where you can speak in your target language for at least a few weeks.
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4431 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 4 of 20 11 August 2013 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What does C2 mean anyway? Does it mean you can sit down with a group of well-educated native speakers and understand absolutely everything that is said (barring perhaps some technical jargon), make lucid contributions without hesitation, using native-like speech patterns with minimal grammatical errors?
Can you actually get beyond C2? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4342 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 5 of 20 11 August 2013 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
You can't get beyond C2, but I am sure you can be more or less advanced as a C2 user. Have a look at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_R eference_for_Languages#Theoretical_background I met a woman once in a small poor village in Egypt who was definitely C2 for spoken (not sure about written). She learnt from tourists and watching TV and the like. It was amazing how good her spoken English was; much better than many of the German graduate students I used to work with in Berlin. So I would certainly say it's possible to get to C2 in the language outside the country if you get sufficient input, and if you use the language enough. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5894 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 6 of 20 11 August 2013 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think you can get beyond C2. Having a certain degree in the target language would be higher than C2. edit: or are we only talking about CEFR? In that case, your right. Nothing above C2. Edited by Sunja on 11 August 2013 at 4:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4758 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 7 of 20 11 August 2013 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think it is possible but to me it requires the following:
1. You work every day in the language 2. You have some virtual immersion where some hours are only in the target language 3. You speak it at least three times a week with other people 4. You read tons of literature and scientific/history articles 5. You only are learning that one language I am trying to raise my French and German to C1, and the amount of vocabulary and expressions I encounter and still need internalize is mind-boggling. Also, at my level it is more and more about learning different ways of saying things I can already say in some other way, but each way of saying something might have a particular situation were it may be more appropriate (social level, time of day, age, class, etc). I am also learning the pesky nuances between words and implicit meaning of certain words or expressions. That all takes a lot of time not only to find, but to understand an successfully apply. But those are the things that take you from a B1/B2 that can interact but whose language is a bit "dry" and simplified, to a C1 speaker who can manipulate contexts and emotions by having a much broader understanding of vocabulary and expressions as well as situation, plus a bigger vocabulary plus a better pronunciation, plus much stronger grammar thus making fewer mistakes. I don't think I can reach C2 in two languages at the same time much less outside the countries. One, maybe, but it will take years of dedication. Remember even the natives do not reach C2 except after 16 years of school if you think about it! 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5341 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 20 11 August 2013 at 6:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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A Kato Lomb wrote, "a linguistic microclimate is more important than a linguistic macroclimate." It surely doesn't matter what country you're in, but who you speak with and what language surrounds you on a day-to-day basis. There's all kinds of immigrant communities, small towns which speak a different language, and so on. And of course, you can always do what Khatzumoto did, and construct a foreign-language bubble by sheer willpower.
But personally, I've come to realize that there's a dramatic difference between C1 and near-native skills. Up until a certain point, it's relatively easy to improve, because you run into the same words and grammar constantly. But after a while, the unknown vocabulary gets rarer and rarer, the grammar gets more subtle, and your goals get more demanding—it's no longer enough to communicate an idea; you want to do it at fast, without thinking, using the same words a native would, shading your nuances according to the situation. Today, I can watch TV for fun, although a few series are still too hard. I can give business advice in French, at least on a good day. I've spoken French at home for over a year, but I still struggle sometimes. I'm still not C1, but I'm getting there slowly. I'd like to be a lot better. But it's clear that the only way for me to get better quickly is to invest a huge amount of time. And it's hard to justify that commitment when I have children to raise, a business to run, and an English-speaking world outside the door. So for now, I'm taking the slow approach—I'm clearly a lot better than I was a year ago, but month-to-month, I don't see much difference. I'm only putting in 10 hours/week instead of the 40+ I was putting in last spring. But if I were in France, surrounded by French speakers, my priorities would change. I would, of course, continue to live my life in French (that's no problem), but I would feel a burning need to improve from "can get by pretty well" to "can use the language like a well-read, culturally-aware adult." I think that's one of the ultimate advantages of immersion: It changes the cost-benefit calculation enough to justify an enormous effort, at the same time it provides constant exposure and practice. So some days, my position might be, "I suspect you can reach C2 outside of the country, but—if we're not talking about English—what's the point? Diplomats usually get by with C1. International commerce runs on B2 and C1 English. You can get into Harvard Business school with an IELTS band score of 7.5, which is allegedly a strong C1." On the other hand, my French is still getting better, and one of my lifetime ambitions is to speak it at near-native levels. And I'm having a lot of fun using my French. But I've learned to relax a bit about my current level, and take my time. 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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