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Americans and Spanish

  Tags: Fluency | Speaking | Spanish
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
41 messages over 6 pages: 13 4 5 6  Next >>
tarvos
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 Message 9 of 41
31 March 2015 at 11:17am | IP Logged 
But that true proficiency scale can't measure the emotions I convey when I am talking to
a prospective significant other in Chinese. So why should I care?

Sorry, but the CEFR is for academic purposes. There are many things I can do that the
CEFR just doesn't measure. And they may use shitty grammar, but people find them funny as
hell :) And that's what I wanted to achieve :P
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garyb
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 Message 10 of 41
31 March 2015 at 11:28am | IP Logged 
Yeah, I've seen similar things here with French. In fact, after five years of high school French I thought I could "speak French"... not particularly well or fluently, of course, but I believed I could at least get by and have simple conversations. Until I went to France and got an unpleasant surprise: I couldn't understand the French and they couldn't understand me. I see similar things with other people who've studied a language at school. I think that if you've studied at school but not had much "real world" exposure then you can have a false impression of how much you've learnt and how much there is to learn.
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solocricket
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 Message 11 of 41
31 March 2015 at 1:37pm | IP Logged 
It's really common in the US for people with 4-5 years of high school language classes
to think they speak the language. My boyfriend, who is seriously learning French, was
recently taken aback when he met a friend's girlfriend who claimed she spoke French.
He immediately thought she was fluent, if not native and he was pretty excited! Later,
they had a brief conversation in French, and it was clear that she hardly spoke any at
all.

When I was in my first year of university, my friends all talked about the language
they "spoke," which was the language they chose in high school. I had four years of
Spanish myself, and I was well aware that I could read the tiniest bit, but that I
didn't speak it at all.

Still, I've never met someone so confident that they would speak fast, garbled Spanish
to a native speaker!
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Cavesa
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 Message 12 of 41
31 March 2015 at 1:39pm | IP Logged 
CEFR is made for different purposes than those of many learners, doesn't include all
the normally needed skills and has one more trouble. Even various learners with the
same official international certificate can have very different speaking skills. Some
are at the bare limit for the level when tested while others are above it in the
particular skill. For some, the cefr exam tasks and skills are their peak of the
speaking skill while others are much more confident and proficient in another setting.
And now I've been speaking only of the oficially tested ones, there are people who get
less reliable tests (such as a national high school leaving exam claiming to be B1
where the spoken part could be passed with a few beginner sentences. That is a real
example, no fiction) or their only clue is the level of the course/class they've been
attending. And there could be many more reasons why cefr is not the panacea, I think
those have been already covered in many threads.

Why are we discussing it: Obviously, it has become a more wide spread phenomenon for
Spanish among the americans than usual and it is affecting the natives' approach
towards learners already.
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s_allard
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 Message 13 of 41
31 March 2015 at 3:32pm | IP Logged 
Well, the CEFR scales may have its warts and deficiencies, but what's the alternative? Who says the CEFR is solely
for academic purposes? It is true that the CEFR exams used are used for selection purposes in many European
schools and for professional or immigration requirements but that the CEFR was not designed for academic
reasons. It was designed to represent in the most scientific way the true components of proficiency. For example,
here, as a reminder, is the definition of a B1 level:

1. Can understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work,
school, leisure, etc.
2. Can deal with most situations likely to arise while traveling in an area where the language is spoken.
3. Can produce simple connected text on topics that are familiar or of personal interest.
4. Can describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes and ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations
for opinions and plans.

There is nothing particularly academic about this. It's a list of things you can do. If you say to me "I speak Spanish
at B1 level", I have some idea of what this means. Can you talk to your significant other in B1 Spanish? Sure you
can, albeit to a limited extent. If you're at a C1 level, it will be more sophisticated.

Again, my question is: What are the alternatives?
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tarvos
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 Message 14 of 41
31 March 2015 at 4:31pm | IP Logged 
The alternative is to let your success in life decide how good you are. I had a
Russian class today and set myself the task of improvising Russian poetry on the spot
and make it heart-wrenching and emotional.

I succeeded in the task. I don't care if that makes me C1, C2, or D57. It just means I
can spontaneously produce rhyme and reason which moves other people. Isn't the
knowledge that you can do that enough? Why do I need a diploma to show that I can move
other people with my speech?

Or, if we're going to talk French, I remember a quote Eddie Izzard had about his
stand-up routine in France (which he did in French even though he is English), which
was along the lines of "people say: oh, his French is not that brilliant, but he's
funny!"

Why isn't that enough? Why do I need to measure this with a ruler and a pen and
analyse it? Why can't we simply be moved like human beings when we have to be?

Edited by tarvos on 31 March 2015 at 4:33pm

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s_allard
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 Message 15 of 41
31 March 2015 at 5:00pm | IP Logged 
The reason for having a system of reference for language proficiency is pretty simple and is the same for any body
of science: we agree on an objective set of concepts that allow us to discuss a subject in a meaningful way. Again, it
depends on one's needs. The subject in this thread is the fact that people claim to speak Spanish yet are unable to
have a decent conversation. So, the fundamental question is what do people mean when they say they speak
Spanish? It seems that the term speaking a language is very vague. For some people that means the ability to
"spontaneously produce rhyme and reason which moves other people". That's fine. The problem is that not
everybody agrees with this definition.

Is this a problem? For many people no. They define speaking a language in a way that suits them. This way they can
claim to speak many languages. Just like all those Americans who claim to speak Spanish. The problem is always the
same. Nobody knows what this means.
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tarvos
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 Message 16 of 41
31 March 2015 at 5:12pm | IP Logged 
Oh come on there is a very big difference between coming up with poetry in a foreign
language spontaneously and speaking Spanglish. You don't need a measurement system to be
aware of that.

We don't need an objective measurement system. We need a measurement system that is
adapted to the requirements invoked on it by real life situations, something which
a purely academic definition can never achieve. You know very well what I mean and
repeating yourself isn't going to make the matter clearer.

Edited by tarvos on 31 March 2015 at 5:13pm



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