Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5024 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian
| Message 17 of 22 02 January 2014 at 1:15pm | IP Logged |
They are more likely to get you there than 99% of professional teachers. It is a sad truth but still truth.
If you can, go to the country or get a competent tutor for speaking but don't expect any teacher to pave the road for you. That may work in some cases up to B1 but it is much harder after the point. There are few teachers capable of that because the market isn't so huge when it comes to that advanced students and because it is more difficult to teach such students.
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s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5445 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish
| Message 18 of 22 03 January 2014 at 8:15am | IP Logged |
I would certainly hire a professional tutor. Indeed, I think it is the height of folly to try to prepare for the C2, spend
all that money and forego the services of a tutor. How can you correct your own writing or your speaking? How can
you simulate the conversational interaction by yourself? Call it what you want, but in my mind a tutor or a teacher is
not a luxury, it is a must.
I would be curious to know if anybody has ever sat the C2 exam and passed without having worked with a tutor. I
doubt that it is even possible
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s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5445 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish
| Message 19 of 22 03 January 2014 at 8:34am | IP Logged |
As a follow-up on my previous post, if anyone is preparing for the next DELE C2 exams in April 2014 they should
by now have started systematically writing at least a page of Spanish a week on any topic of current interest. And of
course have that page corrected by a teacher or tutor. I would say the same thing for speaking high-level Spanish.
All those excellent materials that various people have suggested are pretty useless if you can't put them into
practice.
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Hungringo Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4003 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French
| Message 20 of 22 03 January 2014 at 10:15am | IP Logged |
To tell the truth, I have never been very keen on tutors. I learnt English and Spanish up to C1 level totally on my own. On the other hand, after 7 years of formal instruction in German, 5 years in Russian and 2 in Greek I know virtually nothing in these languages.
Nevertheless, now, I feel that in order to get from C1 to C2 I might need some advice and especially feedback. That's why I am considering finding a tutor.
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s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5445 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish
| Message 21 of 22 03 January 2014 at 1:57pm | IP Logged |
Hungringo wrote:
To tell the truth, I have never been very keen on tutors. I learnt English and Spanish up to
C1 level totally on my own. On the other hand, after 7 years of formal instruction in German, 5 years in Russian
and 2 in Greek I know virtually nothing in these languages.
Nevertheless, now, I feel that in order to get from C1 to C2 I might need some advice and especially feedback.
That's why I am considering finding a tutor. |
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I know that this thread is not specifically on formal teaching versus self-teaching, but I want to express my
astonishment at the statement that after 7 years of formal instruction in German one knows virtually nothing in
the language.
First off, 7 years is probably not 7 years; it's probably a couple of hours a week for thirty-something weeks a
year. That's not really a year of instruction. We should really be talking in terms of hours. Just exactly how many
hours of classroom time are we talking about?
Regardless of the number of hours per week and the number of weeks per year, 7 years is still a long time. To
say that one learned next to nothing begs the question of what did you do during 7 years. Did you pass any tests
during that period? It seems a bit masochistic to spend all that time learning nothing.
What is usually the case when people say that they studied language X in school for umpteen years and
don't know a thing today is that they studied the subject academically - not really to speak it -and never used it
at the time or subsequently. Naturally, years later they've forgotten nearly everything and can rightlly claim that
they have nothing to show for it.
Contrast that with a two-week in-country immersion course with 4-6 hours of small-group instruction six days
a week plus some private tutoring, cultural activities and living with a host family. That would give your language
skills a huge boost. What happens after that course is over and you head back home is of course another
question.
Edited by s_allard on 03 January 2014 at 1:59pm
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Hungringo Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4003 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French
| Message 22 of 22 03 January 2014 at 2:27pm | IP Logged |
We had 2 or 3 German lessons a week, so let's be generous and say 3x40 (school weeks)x7 years=840 hours of classroom instruction. Looking at it this way it's not that much even if I add the time I spent preparing for the lessons. We basically were forced to memorise texts from "Themen Neu" and did some role play pretending that you are the waiter and your mate is the guest and similar things. I swotted the dialogue and the next day was given a good mark, but probably within a month I couldn't remember anything.
I absolutely agree with what you say about immersion. I went to France with zero French and after 3 months I passed a B2 exam. I had no formal instruction during these 3 months either but I was actively learning the language on my own, probably at least 8 hours a day and I was sharing a house with French people.
Edited by Hungringo on 03 January 2014 at 4:13pm
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