Why do people lie about level ?

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Re: Why do people lie about level ?

Postby Systematiker » Wed Jun 21, 2017 5:03 pm

aokoye wrote:
...

edit: if anyone is interested a more technical reason I can take out my syntax textbook which is on my bed.



For the sake of knowing, I'd be interested. It's not terribly uncommon for me to use a phrase such as "in my every thought, word, and deed", though I'll admit that when I do that sort of thing, it's for rhetoric effect.
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Re: Why do people lie about level ?

Postby Serpent » Wed Jun 21, 2017 5:13 pm

aaleks wrote:
aokoye wrote:I did find a number of mistakes in aaleks and given that his signature says to correct him I don't think it would be nit picking.


I am “she” :) . And you are right - it wouldn’t be nit picking :)

Serpent wrote:
aaleks wrote:In my case all those A2, B1 or C1, etc are just a way of speaking and a lame attempt of assessment my own skills. The only reason why, for example, I assume that my passive skills (reading, listening) are somewhere about C level is the fact that I have no, or very little, problems to understand native (English) books, series, movies, news. But at the same time I know that my active skills (writing, speaking) are far behind, probably A2-B1.
In your case I think it's the Russian education system's obsession with grammar mistakes. This still haunts me especially in German, though I can communicate just fine.
I also tend to think that you can't really be C1/C2 passively and only A2 actively. Either you're underestimating your active skills (B1 isn't that hard, honestly), or you're not actually C1. (Higher levels of comprehension require being able to notice the author's stylistical choices)

I agree to be A2 (active skills) and B2 (passive skills) :D . I’ve already written why I assume that my passive skills could be better than B2, but if I’m mistaken it’s OK, since I don’t need so high level as C1. I mean I have no need in English for work or life. More important to me is that I can understand books and movies/series.
The big gap, I think I have, between passive and active skills is a result of my unsystematic way of learning: too little speaking and no writing until last winter and at the same time a lot of reading and listening. I probably can to notice the author's stylistical choices, but I not always can repeat them. My first attempts to write in English revealed my grammar problems. And it seems that my attempts to solve those problems have backfired in some way. I had a very similar problem back in school, only then it was about orthography. I wasn’t able to correctly apply any rules which were more complicate than жи/ши, ча/ща, тся/ться, не с глаголами etc. The more I tried the more mistakes I did. In the end I just gave up and started to rely more on common sense, reading, writing practice. But with a foreign language it dosen’t work that well as with native one. I have to follow not only my feeling but grammar rules as well, and sometimes, it seems, there happens a sort of collusion in my head (and my posts).
Well, writing in a native-like way is C2 or C1 :D In writing you seem like a typical B2 to me.

As for "natural learning", the hardest part is noticing the things you would've said differently and remembering them.
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Re: Why do people lie about level ?

Postby aokoye » Wed Jun 21, 2017 5:39 pm

Systematiker wrote:
aokoye wrote:
...

edit: if anyone is interested a more technical reason I can take out my syntax textbook which is on my bed.



For the sake of knowing, I'd be interested. It's not terribly uncommon for me to use a phrase such as "in my every thought, word, and deed", though I'll admit that when I do that sort of thing, it's for rhetoric effect.

It's better if we refer to them as determiner phrases (DP) - a key thing to note is that there can only be one head of a phrase. Also NP means noun phrase. This quote is talking about why NPs are always part of DPs in syntax trees.

From Syntax a Generative Introduction by Andrew Carnie:
One thing to note about determiners is that they are typically heads. Normally there can be one of them in an NP (this isn't true cross-linguistically, but for now let us limit ourselves to English:
*the that book
In other words they don't seem to be phrasal...One solution, perhaps not obvious, to this is to claim that the determiner is not actually inside the NP. Instead it heads its own phrasal projection...Determiners in this view are not part of the NP. Instead the NP is the complement to the determiner head.

The more condensed rule/definition of determiner phrase which occurs later in the chapter: D is not in the specifier of NP. D heads its own phrase.

Thus, because there can only be one head there can only be one D (determiner) in a DP.
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Re: Why do people lie about level ?

Postby Querneus » Wed Jun 21, 2017 5:41 pm

Cavesa wrote:
LesRonces wrote:To me, it's just listening and speaking that matters when it comes to being 'proficient' or 'fluent' or 'unofficial' C level in a language. Listening is more important in my opinion, because if you don't understand then you can't be in the higher echelons of the language. Of course C level is C level and has certain criteria that needs to be met and so the credentials of being in those levels can't be argued because they are clearly defined. But for being unofficially C level or higher you definitely need to be able to understand pretty much everything you hear.

The good old "just listening and speaking matters" opinion is one of the classics. But it is based on a rather limited view of what are we learning langauges for, no offense meant.

It does amuse me, though, that this attitude of "listening and speaking matter more" exists even for classical dead languages among some people. In the time I've been studying Latin, I've come across people who insist that to be good at Latin means to be able to use it spontaneously orally, and that no place is better than Rome's Accademia Vivarium Novum and their programs where students are expected to speak the language all day. I've heard this attitude is even more common among students of Sanskrit in India too (but I don't know if it's true). Here's a list of courses for spoken Latin and Ancient Greek going on this summer (most of which are a few days long as you can tell). I once came across somebody who said the same for Gothic, a language we only have a few texts of, for which he seriously proposed expanding the lexicon to make it usable in real life, a sort of neo-Gothic if you will.

To me, this attitude as applied to dead languages seems a little misguided, inasmuch as 1) all the (few) truly practical purposes of learning dead languages involve being able to read them only, and 2) inasmuch as it is hard to set-up an environment where you'll be regularly speaking the language and maintaining a relatively high standard of usage, although I've heard of pairs of friends who speak Latin regularly via Skype. I don't deny anybody the fun of actively using a dead language--now and then I indulge in writing some Latin myself--, but to say somebody, e.g. a typical classicist at a university, who can only read Latin but read it at a high level, is not proficient in the language even though their skills are decent for their purposes, is going too far in my opinion.

While I'm on it, I also find it very interesting this attitude apparently doesn't exist for Classical Chinese, as that language, under current conventions, is impossible to understand when spoken. :D It's very much a written language only. Not that has stopped some people from using it actively by writing new things in it--they were successful in setting up their own Wikipedia after all.
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Re: Why do people lie about level ?

Postby Querneus » Wed Jun 21, 2017 5:55 pm

LesRonces wrote:To me, for a dead language, listening and reading are the only things that matter. It's dead. Which means there is hardly anybody, or nobody, to speak to.

Listening?? To Latin? To Ancient Greek? Why?
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Re: Why do people lie about level ?

Postby Cavesa » Wed Jun 21, 2017 11:07 pm

LesRonces wrote:
Serpent wrote:
aaleks wrote:
In your case I think it's the Russian education system's obsession with grammar mistakes. This still haunts me especially in German, though I can communicate just fine.
I also tend to think that you can't really be C1/C2 passively and only A2 actively. Either you're underestimating your active skills (B1 isn't that hard, honestly), or you're not actually C1. (Higher levels of comprehension require being able to notice the author's stylistical choices)

I agree to be A2 (active skills) and B2 (passive skills) :D . I’ve already written why I assume that my passive skills could be better than B2, but if I’m mistaken it’s OK, since I don’t need so high level as C1. I mean I have no need in English for work or life. More important to me is that I can understand books and movies/series.

The big gap, I think I have, between passive and active skills is a result of my unsystematic way of learning: too little speaking and no writing until last winter and at the same time a lot of reading and listening. I probably can to notice the author's stylistical choices, but I not always can repeat them. My first attempts to write in English revealed my grammar problems. And it seems that my attempts to solve those problems have backfired in some way. I had a very similar problem back in school, only then it was about orthography. I wasn’t able to correctly apply any rules which were more complicate than жи/ши, ча/ща, тся/ться, не с глаголами etc. The more I tried the more mistakes I did. In the end I just gave up and started to rely more on common sense, reading, writing practice. But with a foreign language it dosen’t work that well as with native one. I have to follow not only my feeling but grammar rules as well, and sometimes, it seems, there happens a sort of collusion in my head (and my posts).Well, writing in a native-like way is C2 or C1 :D In writing you seem like a typical B2 to me.

As for "natural learning", the hardest part is noticing the things you would've said differently and remembering them.
Agree, for me, for someone who writes as a non-native at C2+++ level, check out yourself or blaurebell. I can write at the same level as her, but only with heavy proof reading and editing. I see lots of things i could improve on for my general forum chat but i'm not too interested in improving it. For an essay at uni though, i would be methodical so it would read like C2+++ type work.

For C1 i would say check out Cavesa. She writes very, very well. Excellently in fact, but certain things give her away as non-native whereas blaurebell would never be sussed as non-native from her writing if she never admitted it.

At B2+++ level i think Voytek would fit the bill. Clearly non-native, but very good nonetheless.

There are some very learned language enthusiasts on here who have clearly put a lot of effort into their languages with just rewards. It's great that we get them as inspiration and to fall back on as a crutch when we need advice or information.

I have a feeling Tarvos is also very advanced in multiple languages despite the fact that i'm not advanced enough in my TL to make any judgements.

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Firstly, I think Serpent gives another great example of the cultural differences related to confidence in one's skills and level assessment. The usual education, the attitude in families and schools, the social norms related to bragging. And the comparation with others, which is highly influenced by the usual level in the region, for example. Of course you'll be more likely to overestimate yourself, if you live in a monolingual area, where people know only a few words of a foreign language and take even that as an achievement. Lack of clash with reality distorts the ability to assess oneself too.

I think many of the perceived liars are simply from a different culture. A Czech will usually stay on the safe side, and even underestimate themselves, partially because of the usual low self-confidence, partially because it is normal in our society. An American is more likely to have been educated to confidence, to selling their qualities, and is more likely to have never travelled. And we could put together other examples, with the possible reasons of "lying". If Russians are simply used to perfect grammar being the Holy Grail, than of course their self-assessment may be different from people from education systems prefering fluid speaking at the expense of grammar precision.

I am not sure whether or not I agree that the huge discrepancies in levels of the individual skills are just wrong self-assessment. For example, my passive Italian is very good (not excellent, but very good), let's say B2/C1. My speaking is weak. I have the neanderthal tourist skills. I could probably talk with you about medicine, or books at B1 level. But I definitely wouldn't cover many of the typical A1/A2 subjects well enough. How could I be B1, if I cannot tell you much about my last holidays or about my hobbies?

In English, there is more going on than just the unsystematic learning. Yes, vast majority of learners is spending much more time watching movies than speaking the language. But that is not the only difference. In real life, high level speaking can be rather a problem than an advantage. Speaking is my weakest skill in English. I can talk about anything, and quite precisely and with relatively few mistakes, but you will immediately notice my accent, some pronunciation mistakes, and perhaps other stuff too. And yet, I had to dumb my English down on various occassions. I rarely meet natives, I usually speak to other ESL speakers. And I am usually better than them, because the commonly achieved level is by far not as great as language school advertisements would have you believe. I had to explain or change vocabulary, use just basic grammar, speak really slowly. And now imagine people using English every day at work, but mostly among non natives. They understand each other perfectly. They understand other non natives perfectly. But a new native collegue is a communication problem. But they still might read and write really well.

About the level assessment you've described: It should be finally accepted that C2 doesn't mean perfection. It is not native level either. In any of the skills! Yes, you should be able to function more or less like a native, you are not expected to be exactly like one and very few people get to that "C3" level. While some learners like to take comfort in the idea that many natives write like pigs and don't care, or that natives with low education would have trouble with the rather academic writing assignments of the high level exams, it doesn't mean anything. A native of equal education and background to mine will always write much better. A native of your TL of equal education and background to yours will very probably write better than you. But that doesn't change the fact my writing was officially graded C2 in two foreign languages, despite not being nativelike.

Don't get me wrong, I don't feel offended by the assessment. I don't check my writing before posting, even though I should, sometimes I surprise even myself with the mistakes, I don't look up stuff on Google while writing, I write as fast as I speak. Yeah, I should probably pay more attention :-D . And it has been some time since my English exam, I could have worsened, and I could guess a few areas where. But on the other hand, my French writing is noticeably worse and still fulfilled the C2 criteria in the official exam, as there is some wiggleroom there. I suppose my writing was at the lower end of the expectations, but still sufficed. You definitely wouldn't take me for a native, if I wrote this post in French :-D

I think that we should definitely gather a bit more information about the learner before taking them for a liar, and distinguish the real criteria from our prejudice. No skill is bound to be the best for every learner. None of the skills is officially more important for the overall level. C2 does not mean native like. A1 requires some learning, it is not the starting point people should write in their profiles after their first hour of learning. Self-assessment is bound to be imprecise, that doesn't make someone a liar. Online tests are too easy and test only some skills and in very limited fashion, yet they throw the CEFR levels merrily around as if they were reliable.
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Re: Why do people lie about level ?

Postby zenmonkey » Wed Jun 21, 2017 11:38 pm

"For want of a ruler, any string will do."

Certificates and levels are a pretty artificial way of measuring fluidity and competency.
They allow for some comparison but does it matter that much?
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Re: Why do people lie about level ?

Postby arthaey » Thu Jun 22, 2017 4:05 am

smallwhite wrote:Without Google, I could be a whole CEFR level worse :?

LesRonces wrote:Of course people will be googling etc, but ask any native university student how much looking up and researching of phrases and editing and proofreading they do before submitting anything to their professors !

As an educated native English speaker, I pretty much never look up anything when I write. I'll do a once-over for clarity or dumb typos when I post online. I'll do multiple drafts for papers or fiction. But I don't research anything; I use my native speaker intuition + my education to end up with an end result I'm okay with.

I don't do very much looking up when I write in Spanish or even French, either.… mostly because I want my posts here to reflect my current level. I'm wanting feedback on what to improve, not trying to impress y'all, sorrynotsorry. ;)

On the other hand, I do research a lot if I write anything in German or Hungarian, because my levels there are so low that I can't spontaneously produce sentences yet.
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Re: Why do people lie about level ?

Postby William Camden » Thu Jun 22, 2017 6:03 am

I don't know if it's lying. Subjective assessments can be self-deceptive, and there are complexities. For example, I can read Spanish newspapers and novels and rarely need to look up a dictionary. I have interpreted for Spanish speakers and although it works more or less, my level of understanding of the spoken language tends to be lower than my reading level and I have sometimes had to ask them to repeat themselves, which they do, sometimes simplifying the sentences they used.
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Re: Why do people lie about level ?

Postby Serpent » Thu Jun 22, 2017 12:24 pm

Cavesa wrote:I am not sure whether or not I agree that the huge discrepancies in levels of the individual skills are just wrong self-assessment. For example, my passive Italian is very good (not excellent, but very good), let's say B2/C1. My speaking is weak. I have the neanderthal tourist skills. I could probably talk with you about medicine, or books at B1 level. But I definitely wouldn't cover many of the typical A1/A2 subjects well enough. How could I be B1, if I cannot tell you much about my last holidays or about my hobbies?

I tend to think the skills can't be more than 1-2 levels apart. I've noticed that especially native speakers of Romance languages often say they understand Spanish or Italian at C2 before they've even started :D (nobody ever says that about Portuguese :P)
Also I was speaking about the actual level, not the ability to pass an exam without preparation (though in other contexts I may prefer this criterion). It seems like overall your active level is B1 or pretty close (you can't talk about your hobbies but you can talk about books and probably language learning? :? :D) In other words, if you're B2 passively I think you have to be able to pass A2 with little preparation, and same about B1/C1.
Also this applies to listening AND reading. I agree that it's possible to get your reading to B2/C1 without achieving even A2 in other skills, especially in a related language.
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