Listening Skills - C2 Level

[tastyonions]

Political speeches are mostly pretty easy. In a Romance language a good deal of the vocabulary in them will also be shared with English, so once you have the typical "transformations" between English and your TL down, you will have a lot of words. They are (usually) delivered in a standard accent, at a measured pace, and are well-organized topically. French presidential speeches were probably the first "real" content I fully understood in that language, coming long before things like movies or spontaneous, fast-paced group radio shows.

I think that a B2 English learner could understand the vast majority of Obama's speeches, especially if they were at least semi-regular readers of political news.

However, there is an ambiguity when you say, "Speaking at a B2 level." Could a B2 learner produce the content of Obama's speeches, with all the grammatical turns and whatever stylistic, rhetorical flair is present? Almost certainly not, and neither could the great majority of native English speakers; that is, after all, why politicians hire professionals to write their speeches.

[issemiyaki]

@tastyonions

Thanks so much for your response, Tastyonions. Sometimes it's not always easy to decide what is at a B or C level.

But you made a pretty good case as to why presidential speeches might be at a B2 level.

Thanks for chiming in. Great feedback.

[aokoye]

I think it's somewhat difficult to figure out if what you're listening to is at a C2 level. That said one not exactly accurate way, at least for media in the US is that if there are suddenly subtitles for someone who is speaking English that weren't there previously, it might be able to be classed as such based off of the person's accent, style of speech (slurring words, not being able to easily pronounce specific sounds, etc), or a really noisy ambient environment.

Of course, I have definitely watched news segments were someone has been subtitled (when speaking English) and I felt that it was totally unnecessary so it's not necessarily a good rubric.

[Cavesa]

Well, I'd say the difference is not only in the amount of nuances and details, not only in the circumstances under which you understand. One of the largest differences, from my experience, is how comfortable I am. Around B2, I could understand a lot, no matter the missed details. Now at the C levels, I barely notice the tv series is not in my native language.

I know this difference is not described in the cefr materials and perhaps isn't even considered important there. However, the criteria there overlap quite often and tend to be vague when it comes to the high levels. I found this "comfort criterion" to be quite a nice measure of progress.