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Moving from B2 to C2 | ||
Tags: Advanced Level | Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4791 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 57 of 177 18 February 2015 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | ||
I cannot tell you what you have been doing wrong, I can tell what I had been doing wrong for years. And I am unsure whether you understand what I've been describing. I haven't writen about a miraculous method "learn a language in a few hours". I speak about getting well prepared for very fast activation of the language. So, what I had been doing wrong before I could breech the barrier of fluency: I had been participating actively in classes, doing what I had been told and even more. But I had been too afraid to use native sources. I had trusted my teachers too much. Most teachers really have no clue what to recommend their students for further practice and immersion. (Really, if I got a dollar every time I meet people desperate from the things their teachers recommend, usually the radio and some classic books, I could buy a car.) Therefore after twelve years or so, I was barely at B2 with speaking being by far the worst skill. A few years with lots of immersion taught me to think in the language, made my grammar more automatic, especially the application and use of the grammar in appropriate places. The idiomatic speech you mention in most threads, that's what I got from the tv series and books as well. Listening a lot changed my accent. I already had mostly correct pronunciation but the speech as a whole hadn't sounded natural before. From an obvious foreigner identified as soon as she opened her mouth, I got to the point when the natives start thinking where the hell I'm from after a while, most of them guessing a different francophone region from theirs. My progress is more or less documented in my logs, so far I can guess the amount of input to be over 15 000 pages of books + things I do not log anyhow, and a few hundreds hours of listening, usually in larger doses. After a year or two, I went to Berlin where I met lots of francophone people and I was already more comfortable with speaking after a short while and the discomfort for others was not significant. After another year or two and much larger amount of media, I could trully consider myself fluent in a similar situation. When I started meeting my tutor in December, I got the dust away from my speaking very soon and was told I had no accent and made only one smaller mistake during the 60 minutes. But hasn't been much progress from that point on. My mistakes are rather stupid ones, caused usually by lack of focus and sleep deprivation but there aren't fortunately many. So, no idea what you are missing. Perhaps you just need more time. Or you could do with listening in larger doses, if you mostly do smaller bits every day. Or your tutor may not be that good. Or the books you've been reading are alredy too easy for you. I don't know. Edited by Cavesa on 18 February 2015 at 7:00pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5212 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 58 of 177 18 February 2015 at 11:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Now I think I understand what is meant by lots of input for achieving fluency after a few hours. First of
all, 12 years of classes with active participation. Then some years of immersion, whatever this means. I would assume that this means some talking. A trip to Berlin and meeting lots of francophone people - and some talking I assume. And then, finally, start working with a tutor. I assume the tutor gives lots of corrective feedback. All this looks fine to me. I even went to have a look at Cavesa's log. It gave me a better perspective on what is meant by input. I see here that's it not that passive after all. It's not what I thought. It's not just listening, reading and then suddenly start speaking at C-level in a few hours. The kind of input here involves a fair amount of very active studying and actual speaking with natives. And of course a tutor. So, this idea of achieving C-level speaking in a few hours after lots of passive input does not really mean that. I don't see just a few hours. Quite the contrary, I see lots of hours. I actually agree with this. This is pretty much the strategy I'm pursuing. Lots of active input, including two hours a week speaking over Skype. I think it's going to take a lot more than a few hours to achieve C-level speaking. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6379 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 59 of 177 19 February 2015 at 2:01am | IP Logged | ||
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Not sure whether to headdesk or grab some popcorn...
Just thought I'd mention that while listening and reading are (relatively!) easy for s_allard, he's mostly quite lucky with that. But nobody is so lucky that they're automatically C2 at listening or reading, even in a related language; nobody is A1 at speaking and C2 and listening. I find it hard to imagine anyone whose speaking is more than two levels below their passive skills (or in general, whose best skills are three or more levels above the worst ones). 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4791 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 60 of 177 19 February 2015 at 3:04am | IP Logged | ||
I didn't say 12 years of classes! sorry if there was a misunderstanding. It was 12 yeaars since I started learning and the result of the 12 years was nothing to be happy about. 12 years of classes? -3 years of classes when I was a child, so they were good but by far not as intensive I would have prefered even when I was ten years old. -1 year nothing, due to school not offering anything and no private classes found.it was before the Internet and a child couldn't just go and search libraries in the city. -1/2 year of worthless "class" where the native teacher taught the students two or three sentences and then gave up despite having gifted children from an elite public school as students. -1 and 1/2 year of nothing, just a little review thanks to a textbook I got as a present. Nothing not because I didn't want to continue but because of not having any opportunity. There weren't any good private classes accepting people under 15 because of prejudices towards teenagers -1 year of classes at supposedly the best French learning institution in the republic. Well, the first teacher was bad, the other was average but I still learnt quite a lot. Officialy, I should have been B1 by the end but I don't know. -Than 5 years of classes at highschool, four of which were covering the same things I had already learnt before and I had hard time trying not to despair and give up. I was forced to suffer with beginners again and again due to stupid educational system. The last year was better but not intensive enough for me by far. So, my point was that after having put considerable amounts over the course of 12 years, the results were pitiful despite all my efforts. Certainly not that I had 12 years of great classes and now I am claiming success of great teachers as my own. Yes, one of the teachers was very good and one was passable but in the end, the educational system, the curriculum and majority of the teachers just wasted 8 years of my time. And what I learnt during the four remaining can be learnt by an adult with today's resources and good discipline in one or two years. Serpent, I think headdesk is the correct option here. Edited by Cavesa on 19 February 2015 at 3:13am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4072 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 61 of 177 19 February 2015 at 3:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I tihnk that it takes a long time whether one uses tutour or not. And I must say that
self-teaching is something that is underestimated. I must return to the example where my friend and I decided to learn ourselves the entire calculus curriculum in secondary school, because the department refused us to skip a maths cycle. I find that this situation closely parallels the B2 advancement dilemma. Granted that we are good at maths, we are no geniuses, nor prodigies, rather just regular people. We decided that if they would not let us skip a cycle, we would learn the material that the "advanced" students had, a bit like immersion--daily advancement, slow but steady progress. Short story is that we passed and did well this test that those who had one year of formal instruction had, and many of them did worse than we, even failed. It was a huge surprise to everyone in our year, who never would have imagined that someone could teach themselves calculus by themselves, with the added caveat of passing that class's year exam as well. With our passing mark, we were even allowed to go into differential equations at age 17. It must be repeated that we were (and are) no geniuses, just regular people, with the determination to find an alternative to formal education to achieve what we wanted. Likewise, I would not be surprised if some person just did a daily advancement from their B2 level (which is a very good level already) to C2, over a period of years, even faster if they live in country, but even if they do not live in country, this is still possible. Do a little of each four CEFR skill everyday, in any way possible, and C2 is there for the taking. It is just that it is a long an arduous process, which should not be surprising--almost all high level academic-styled things like this are long and arduous. A B.Sc. takes 3 years, a M.Sc. 1 or 2, a Ph.D 4 or 5. All take a hell of a long time, as would a C2 level, but just like how I tended to "avoid" formal instruction in university (if a class had no required attendance, it was sure as hell that I would consider staying home), and strangely (or not?) I tended to do better learning by myself than in a class. Putting my mobile phone in a target language for a few months has taught me more than some of the language classes during the whole terms that I have taken. It should not be taken that I am a hopeless optimist, because I am not--I am a stark pessimist naturally. But I do believe that this C2 goal, anything is possible, not like blind belief, but rather because these things do happen, testament hereto are the many who learn languages with such a high capacity that they make the natives look like non-natives, disobeying all of the "commandments" of getting to a C2 level, namely, classes, tutouring, living in the country, and so forth. And what I did at age 17 is something that always inspires me in terms of academics, and this definitely includes languages, despite languages not being in any part similar to my university background. Edited by 1e4e6 on 19 February 2015 at 4:22am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4791 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 62 of 177 19 February 2015 at 3:42am | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, I agree with 1e2e6. I learnt all the physics for acceptance exams to faculty of
medicine in one year because the teachers had been failing for seven years of teaching me and I hadn't found motivation until that last year. And I wasn't the only one by far, selfteaching one of the three subjects required from scratch was rather the norm than exception. Really, teachers and schools are being overestimated all the time. The fact someone has a degree in teaching doesn't mean he can actually teach. For exemple in my country, most people going to the faculty of paedagogy are there because they are too stupid for better schools, that's the simple fact. And the more clever ones with potential to become good teachers are rare and some of them get their potential destroyed by the nonsense they obviously learn there. And yeah, just so that Sallard doesn't find another nit to pick, I had a private individual tutor during those years for several months and she wasn't good either so I gave up on her lessons. Really. Not everyone can simply choose classes and join and get awesome education, it is more utopia than reality. I am not saying all the language teachers and tutors are bad (from my experience: 13 out of 28 were bad or even horrible, 11 were passable under otherwise favorable conditions such as a motivate group of intelligent students, 4 were really good). It's just that dependance on them and too much trust in their methods, advice, curricula etc., that is a way to the hell and failure. My recommendation wasn't "don't get a tutor at all costs", it was "no matter whether you use a tutor, the key is your own work with lots of native input and some grammar study". Edited by Cavesa on 19 February 2015 at 4:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4912 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 63 of 177 19 February 2015 at 4:18am | IP Logged | ||
So then the next logical question would be: Why wouldn't "your own work with lots of native input and some grammar study" work with bad teachers as well? Your previous post seems to suggest that motivation comes from the teacher, not the student. Personally, I think that a healthy dose of motivation from the teacher (or tutor) AND the student's motivation is key. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 19 February 2015 at 4:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4791 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 64 of 177 19 February 2015 at 5:16am | IP Logged | ||
1. A bad teacher can be very demotivating. There are people who were able to demotivate even me and I was nearly always one of the most motivated in class (Unfortunately, that wasn't true in all the subjects.) 2. A bad teacher can teach you mistakes. It took me lots of efforts to get rid of a few such jewels. 3. A bad teacher is a waste of time and money you could put into self studies or into time with a better teacher. Neither time or money is an infinite resource. 4. Trusting a bad teacher's advice too much usually affects negatively even your individual studies. I don't know where you found the motivation coming from the teacher. I was never expecting a teacher to motivate me, the few who did were nice surprise, but I was being demotivated by all the disappointments. My usual complaints about most teachers and tutors: -not being able to find the balance of how demanding they should be -not being that good at the language (yes, that happens, especially when the students cannot quit, which means until the end of their schooling) -not being able to explain things well -insisting on methods and coursebooks that obviously do not suit the student and making the student believe it is their fault (I've even seen an extreme where the coursebook didn't suit anyone in two classes per 15 people, everyone had the same complaints and the teacher still believed the students were all just stupid bad at languages) -expecting the student to have the same troubles like other students the teacher already had. well, various students and various groups of students have various troubles and therefore need a different structure of the class. -inability to recommend appropriate self study tools, resources and native media suitable to the student's level and interest. -wasting time on things the student can do on their own, and just consult with teacher when needed, instead of putting the time to better use. So, to your question. There are two options. 1. If you are experienced enough to choose lots of media and grammar sources, why would you put up with a bad teacher? 2. If you are dependent on a bad teacher and cannot tell they are bad, how are you supposed to find your way through the native media and self study resources? Most people suffering from bad teachers just don't have the information. The only case in which such an approach could work is this: You are at highschool and you have no escape from a bad teacher. However, you find your way independently and your native language is a large one, that gives you access to sufficient amount of both learning resources and online advice. Try to imagine having Czech as a native language and learning just English. There is no ajatt, benny or htlal to point you in a possibly good direction. You are on your own and the teacher seems to be your best advisor. They might be. Or not. Edited by Cavesa on 19 February 2015 at 5:23am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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