Le Baron wrote:Cavesa wrote:I am not sure you understand well enough how much does A2 already contain, if you really learn it, if you don't just gloss over it. A person fully learning all the A2 content and also having the mentioned personality traits can actually do very well. But yes, it is much harder than at B1 or B2, especially if you are a bit shy, or too afraid of annoying people.
This is the wrong way to begin a reply to me. Don't start a reply to me with "I am not sure you understand well enough". Make a mental note to strike it from your vocabulary if my name is in the quote box. Okay? I know perfectly well what the grading system is and how it is measured and what it is supposed to represent, but I am talking about the actual world when using a language at that level tends to collapse due to not being deeply-rooted and due to a relatively low vocabulary.
Nope, that is the exactly right way. Make a mental note that replies you get usually reflect what you said before. You showed clear misunderstanding, I pointed it out in a polite way. Okay? Your patronizing tone is extremely misplaced, please refrain from it in the futureYou might want to speak more politely next time.
You clearly have some significant gaps in understand how the grading system translated to the real world skills. Don't get offended, just because someone tries to explain it to you.
The A2 vocab, if learnt, is not as low as you think. Not for a well motivated learner (so usually not a privileged anglophone) and for someone with certain personal traits and social skills.
Is this explanation a bit clearer to you?
The main problem making a lot of people misunderstand A2 like you is not the A2 itself. It is the fact that vast majority of people thinking they are A2 are actually not. They sat in an A2 class, but haven't really learnt the content. They rushed through the material on their way to the more useful levels, but without really acquiring the already very useful and not that small base.
I don't and never have gone about making people default to English. That others can or might do that is just a convenient/inconvenient result of history. None of my ancestors conquered or enslaved half the planet, they were themselves conquered and enslaved. You are using the word 'privilege' wrongly. People who speak native English are not 'privileged' any more than historical speakers of native Latin, or current French speakers or Spanish speakers. It is what it is. I didn't write history and didn't cause English to become the lingua franca and as we know these 'enslavers' never forced the language onto any indigenous populations anyway. Move your ire to French for that, because they are still performing that colonial act to this day.
I have always squeezed value out of lower levels. It's hard and frustrating and has a limit. I know because I've done it for as long as I have been learning languages, which is a long time. It's why we keep on pursuing a language. It's why you chase C2 certificates, because you want people to not think you're an idiot rather than a professional when you talk; whether or not that linguistic judgement is ever justified. Let's stop this footling about in order to be 'right' on a forum. It's silly.
You're a native anglophone, aren't you? =You are privileged. You seem to not understand your privilege at all. You can choose to graciously speak our languages, but if you don't, everyone else spends lots of money to learn to speak to you. The nature of a privilege is having it without having chosen or earnt it. Denying your obvious privilege is just ignorance. Especially when it clouds all your opinions about a matter.
If you've always "squeezed value out of lower levels", why are you even having this argument?
You are mixing two different things. I am using my languages in situations highly educated natives use them in. That is not relevant to this discussion. A2, as has been discussed in this thread, is very useful for different types of situation. Tourism, or jobs not requiring high skills. For example a waiter in a touristy city will profit much more from A2 in five langauges than C2 in one.
More of that? It's not 'because' people might default to English for ease, it is 'that they can' they default. That is the issue. The difference is palpable. Everyone who spends time in a foreign country wants to be able to speak the language.
Nope, most people don't. People sharing your privilege (=native anglophones) have been ruining that. You're right that people assume English to be the easiest communication channel far too often due to experience. And expats are one the main causes. Btw they may complain about low levels being useless, but it is usually the case of not having actually learnt even the low level.
Again, the same argument. If you think A2 is totally useless and just a few repetitive phrases, you're not A2. Is it really so hard to understand?
Lower-level skills aren't useless, they are just limited. They may serve one's purpose, that is up to the individual. Unfortunately, for you at least seething with rage about English, that language is rapidly displacing major foreign language learning choices. It's great for mass communication, bad for linguistic diversity/plurality. It is nevertheless a fact. That plays no role in my life because I speak French, Dutch, functional German and increasingly improving Spanish. And I use them regularly. No-one has ever been forced to default to English for me unless they have chosen to and who am I to tell them not to? I don't own the language.
It's not great for mass communication, because the sum of mistakes of everyone part of the communication really damages the message.
Noone has ever been forced to default to English for me, but their choice to do so for selfish reasons (language banditry) or because of prejudice is harmful.
I see it differently. Who am I to tell someone to not use English with me? Someone who has invested a lot in their language, and doesnt want to give that up for nothing in return. Someone who doesn't want to deal with their bad English and the miscommunications caused by it. Someone who has the same right as them to co-direct the conversation and try to find the best channel, which is very often not English.
Well that's great, but I didn't make that argument. I already know that foreign English speakers (and of any language) are often not as good as they think they are, but I always take it for what it is. Are two bad speakers of French or Spanish any better/worse? Better probably for you because at least it isn't English? (choose your colonialist). Are two reasonable German speakers better than one excellent native Spaniard and one person stumbling thorough low-level Spanish? At a communication level what's the point?
Two bad French/Spanish speakers are simply a much less common variant. And due to a totally different marketing of the foreign languages, bad French/Spanish speakers are more open to switching to another language, than bad English speakers.
Cavesa wrote:I see it every day. Two Bad English speakers (A1-B2, or even A1-C1) together are not full value communication. A non native (from A2 on) and native are almost always better. Sure, the best is C2 and native. But realistically speaking (as C2 is not often achieved), you are much better off being a worse speaker with a native, than having to deal with someone else's Bad English.
This doesn't even make sense. You're saying A1-B1 or A1-C1 (nice choice of A1 in the first example versus 'A2 onward' for the second example) in people trying English is 'not full value', but this is a fake scenario. More often people have passable enough English, more than they ever achieve in other languages. Not that it should dissuade anyone from learning another language, but we know the reasons why already. They have learned English at school and found repeated opportunities for using it. So it it will always interfere. Which means they will often not be 'A1' but better than that. I'm only describing what happens, not what I think should happen, in situations of communication breakdown.
Passable enough? Yeah, just have a look at my patients. There is nothing fake about the situations, in which my weak Spanish gets full value information out of a native hisponophone patient, while my C1ish spoken English gets total useless trash out of their B1ish English.
You are describing just your fantasies. I am describing the everyday reality.
