PeterMollenburg wrote:1. Could I reach C2 by March 2017 if I'm already currently a B2?
Having followed your progress for several years, and knowing your style of learning leans heavily toward formatted instruction- I would have to say that I doubt it very much if you continue with your same style. (Sorry, PM, but you and I have talked about this before) However, if you were to make radical change happen in your learning- reading every day, listening for an hour every day (something, really working with a series would be helpful) speaking with a conversation partner or paid tutor a couple of times a week, I think you could be knocking at the door by then.
PM, I don't believe it's your study time that's holding you back, I believe the issue lies within your unbalanced interaction with French. Each skill informs the other. Conversation, listening, reading, writing
and explicit study in combination all have synergistic effects that help to grow the language inside your brain. Nobody can tell you what that mix should be for you individually, but by your own admission, you have been out of balance. Until you decide to give activities outside of what you consider to be formal study the same importance as a course, I don't believe you will progress that rapidly.
I'm going to digress here to tell you so0me of my experience with Portuguese. I just want to give you an idea of how I went about breaking out of the intermediate stage.
When I was learning Portuguese, I was using a private tutor in addition to individual work. She decided it was time for me to start watching a novela. I didn't just sit there like a couch potato just mindlessly watching TV. I had to work at it. There were no subtitles. It was a native show that had been on prime-time in Brazil. It was bloody hard at first. So hard that I felt like a failure. I'd watch once. Then I'd watch again and take notes. Then two more times before I had to talk about the episode with my tutor.
She expected me to write down every unknown word I heard and we'd talk about them over an hour. As I said, I took notes (in my own shorthand) with time stamps of the video. We both used the same streaming site. We had twice weekly one hour sessions on skype. The first session at first was all unknown words and missed speech. The next session was to be me giving my review of what happened in the episode. For the first 15% of the episodes my unknown words and missed speech bled into the second session too. I could only do one episode a week for a while.
Then, about six weeks in, something started to click. I got used to the actors voices and accents. I started really
hearing what they were saying. I had been used to São Paulo speech and the novela was set in the Northeast of Brazil with a bit of a different accent and some different vocabulary taking place almost a hundred years ago. Then when I got used to it, I was able to go through the episodes with less difficulty. Being forced to discuss the episode made me really pay attention. I had to not only get my review right but I also had to get my grammar right when speaking. My writing also improved. Every facet of my language use improved because I was working on every facet. I was also studying grammar at the same time formally as I saw what I needed to work on. In addition I was reading novels and listening to an hour a day (news magazine) while I was on my morning walk. Towards the last third of this novela process, I got to where I was reviewing three episodes a week in two one hour sessions. My unknown words and speech dropped practically to zero. I continued to move on from there. and have never looked back. It worked. The whole novela process went on for about five months.
I consider myself to be at C1 and perhaps C2 on a good day. I don't believe I could have advanced as far and as fast without this work. It was what I
needed to do. It was definitely not what I
wanted to do and it was not fun at first. Once I started to see real improvement it became very enjoyable work because I
knew it was working for me... helping to get me to where I wanted to be.
Today, I am doing a similar approach without a tutor for Haitian Creole and without a novela. I'm using a Bible study with a transcript- one guy speaking for half an hour about a chapter. I'm doing this because there simply isn't the choice available in Haitian Creole that there is in other languages and this is the closest I can come to replicating what has worked for me in the past. I've been at this for a couple of months now and I am seeing good results.
I know people have had bad experiences with tutors and hiring one isn't absolutely necessary. What I did with a series, to a large extent, can be replicated without a tutor by using a dubbed series and a transcript (made from a subtitles srt file) as a check. Then, just notice what you are hearing and reading and try to replicate that in speech or writing. I'm not saying that you should slavishly copy what I have done but this is what I mean by "
working with a series"- emphasis on work. I believe you would also benefit from conversation practice, either with a good tutor or even just a native-speaker. Even once a week would help you in ways that you wouldn't believe. I know it does wonders for me in Haitian Creole speaking with a native-speaker.
I have never taken a formal test. I can't justify the expense involved for myself, living so far away from anywhere I could take such a test and I don't need it for what I do. If I were to take such a test I would want a guide, practice exams, work with a tutor who has taught people taking such tests etc. I do believe that it is necessary to train all the skills in order to have that base that can be built on with specific help. I believe that this is what you have probably been neglecting because you haven't given skills outside of formal study the same respect or attention that you place on formal study. Don't get me wrong, formal study with textbooks has its place, but you have shown yourself to be out of balance with this. Can you do all of this at the same time. Yes, you can, but it's going to take dedication and hard work- which I know you are capable of doing.
Should I leave Dutch alone for now?
That's up to you. Can you be disciplined enough to stick to a limited time period in a day? That would be fine and could actually be beneficial to you, ala Kuji. (Though Kuji is
living in Japan while learning both Japanese and Portuguese.) If you start going great guns into Dutch, then, you'll have a problem... in my opinion. You're at a crossroads, PM. You can indeed take your French to the next level but I believe it's going to require major change in the balance of what you're doing to get there, and... that's something you have been unwilling to do. I believe you need to do that in order to get to where you say you want to be. Ultimately, do what
you want to do... whatever makes you happy.
Cavesa will be able to give you more specific advice about French and the C2 test in particular. I am in awe of what she has accomplished in language-learning and life... and how hard she works at it. She makes us
all look like slackers.
. Good luck, PM. Sorry to come off as sounding harsh. I genuinely want you to succeed, but how long have you been doing what you're doing with French? The first rule of holes is- when you're in one, stop digging.