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C2 possible without living in country? | ||
Tags: Class Learning | Self-Study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4432 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 9 of 20 12 August 2013 at 1:22am | IP Logged | ||
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I would say my German is at C1 level without ever having lived in Germany. I do spend 2-3 weeks in the
country each year (in a German-only household) and I have several telephone/Skype conversations per week with native speakers. I also get a fair amount of input from my wife, I read books in German and attend language meetups for face-to-face contact. But C2 seems out of reach given my current situation. Maybe I could get there if I spent huge amounts of time immersed in oral and written material, but I have other things going on in my life. For it to happen more naturally, I'd have to be working full-time in the language and be surrounded by it in my free time. In other words, living in a German-speaking society. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4179 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 10 of 20 12 August 2013 at 4:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Considering the writing levels of some posters here who have never lived in an English speaking country, I wouldn't doubt that it's possible to at least come pretty close to a C2 level. Now, whether it's possible to be at that level in all language skills, I don't know--certainly if you don't speak it regularly that would be harder, and I would actually think that it might be "easier" to develop C2 skills for English without living in-country than for other languages, because of the amount of exposure.
So I'm sure that it is possible, but at least for my situation, realistically I'm going to live in an English speaking environment, and my speaking ability will likely never get above a C1 without spending a signficant amount of time surrounded by the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5191 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 11 of 20 12 August 2013 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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This summer, I had intended to write a C2 level exam in Germany (while having never lived there), but it turned out that the exam was fully booked and I couldn't write it. To be honest, I would probably have failed. Still, I refuse to say that C2 is not possible. We can however agree that it's certainly not easy, exponentially so as you move out of Level I languages.
One reason I see is that the level of language you need to expose yourself to is beyond the language of simple everyday interactions: debates, intellectual discussions, precise descriptions or explanations, etc., all require a high degree of determination to push yourself to a level of eloquence many native speakers don't really have or need. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4517 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 12 of 20 13 August 2013 at 12:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't even know what being at C2 concretely
means. Do I speak flawless anything? Not in any of the languages I didn't grow up speaking from day one. But I was able to hold a concrete debate on nuclear power and renewable energy sources in French sans grave mistakes. I went to a French meetup and was clearly a senior practitioner though not native. Is this C2? No I guess not but it is as good as it is going to get and at least at this level I will not have much trouble. Language is a tool. Its use is an art only in so far as it aligns with the goals you can realistically set. And if that level is impressive or not is not for me to judge. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4100 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 13 of 20 13 August 2013 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have been trying for several years since leaving secondary school to achieve C2 in
Spanish with self-study/training, as well as other languages with no classes, and I would say it is absolutely possible. It probably requires years, however. I am not sure how C2 "feels", because the only method, I suppose, is to pass the C2 test. Also, what happens for someone who spends years trying for C2, and the achieves a level where one can communicate with almost no grammatical mistakes, can speak quickly without almost no hestiation, but makes some slightly odd choices of words or sentence structure, yet is perfectly understandable? For example, if I think of a random example in English, if I say, as a native speaker of English, "The customer shall check the boxes on the order form to determine the books to purchase. Books shipped will be delivered via regular post. Should the customer request for a more rapid delivery, expedited delivery shall be arranged." which, I think sounds not awkward. But if a self-studying non-native speaker says, "The customer shall place a mark on the empty spaces of the form to order, in order for the books chosen to be sent to the customer. In the case that said customer shall wish delivery with an quicker acceptance, a method of delivery with accelerated pace shall be organised." The latter sounds slightly more awkward, but there are no grammatical mistakes, and if one can say that quickly, it sonuds like this English speaker is C2 to me. Being a self-studying learner, the most difficult is after perfecting grammar, and trying to speak with and understand speakers of varying accents at a quick pace, is to stop having "awkward" speech. This I find diffiult for self-learning, since there are no obvious mistakes that the learner themselves can find (grammatical, speech pace, etc.). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4940 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 14 of 20 13 August 2013 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||
I suppose that depends on what "native speaker" means to each of us as an individual. As an American English native speaker, both those examples sound equally awkward to me. R. == 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| casamata Senior Member Joined 4072 days ago 237 posts - 377 votes Studies: Portuguese | Message 15 of 20 14 August 2013 at 12:21am | IP Logged | ||
I would say that "shall wish delivery" sounds like a grammatical error. I would say, "shall wish to have a delivery." It is definitely not C2 in my admittedly very stringent standards, but I conflate C2 with being near-native and the second paragraph is definitely not as a native would speak. It's not just getting the message across, but speaking like the natives do that separates the men from the boys. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4638 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 16 of 20 14 August 2013 at 1:01am | IP Logged | ||
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Neither sounds exactly elegant, but it would depend on the exact context.
Assuming these are some sort of procedural instructions, then that sort of thing is actually quite hard to write well, even for a native speaker. Anyone who has struggled with instructions for DIY or self-assembly furniture will know this, but even more sophisticated manuals, etc, can be difficult to write in such a way that that they can be well understood by a range of people, and are moderately interesting to read without the reader losing the will to live. But to return to the point that I think 1e4e6 was trying to make, a native speaker will usually be able to pick exactly the right word or phrase to use (varying with register) without too much effort, whereas the non-native may struggle, and won't know when it "just sounds wrong". And the native speaker won't necessarily know why exactly it's wrong, any more than he will necessarily know grammatical rules in his own language, although rarely making grammatical mistakes. Dad to son: 1. "Hey son, you are in big trouble with your mother I'm afraid". Yes. 2. "Hey son, you are in enormous trouble with your mother I'm afraid" - Probably ok. 3. "Hey son, you are in large trouble with your mother I'm afraid". No. 4. "Hey son, you are in gigantic trouble with your mother I'm afraid". Probably not. 5. "Hey son, you are in mega trouble with your mother I'm afraid". OK now, but was not always, and may not be in future. Some are a bit subjective, but no. 3 just feels wrong, and is likely to remain so, but this could change over time. And I could not tell you why. Edited by montmorency on 14 August 2013 at 1:09am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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