Thank you for your kind words, but let's try not to agree excessively, or discussions may become a bit dull ; )
BeaP wrote:[...] no doubt that practicing the 4 skills in a balanced way is a solid way to C2, but under my current circumstances this can only be done in an artificial way. When I was a university student (literature), I could speak English with foreign professors, hand in assignments in English, and so on. How can I practice speaking and writing in Spanish? I have to look for opportunities, most probably hire someone who corrects my essays and discusses exam topics with me.
But most people will learn in a somehow artificial environment, and won't be balanced in their practice, for different reasons -- I certainly wasn't / am not. Students can write and speak, but how much will they read or listen? Especially, how much that is related to their studies vs. unrelated stuff will they do? Do most expats really need to write much? Etc., etc.
Most people benefit greatly from skill transfer, though. How much can you improve an active or passive skill without advancing its counterpart too? And we're not discussing Japanese, so how much better can you get at speaking and listening without getting any better at reading and writing too?
Bottom line: being balanced is obviously better, but being unbalanced is probably less severe than it looks.
But I obviously won't do this every day, so the amount of speaking and writing practice will always be smaller. (Comparing this with the acquisition of my native language shows an ever bigger difference.) I think a lot of learners favour reading and listening because these skills are easier to improve as autodidacts.
So, back to practicing speaking and writing with minimal interactions with live people. Well into the twentieth century as we are, technology makes this easy. Choose a prestige model to take after: a writer, a speaker, an actor, a specific character as played by some actor, you name it -- you just need to take someone that will say or write things you are interested in, the way you would like to be able to. Try and predict what this person will write or say, and how exactly. Shadow him or her. If necessary, take notes, wait a bit to forget the details, and recast chunks or the whole thing. Compare, noting the differences with the real stuff, and try to make yourself sound more like that next time, rinse and repeat -- you will improve : )
I'd really like to find a way to complement the italki/skype lessons with useful individual practice. The DELE C2 is just one of my goals, I'd also like to be a competent Spanish speaker. Actually, the latter is much more important for me. Beside working on my own whenever possible, the other important factor for me is time: I'm constantly searching for ways to speed things up. I know that goals for '3 months' and '1 year' are usually surrealistic and can't be taken seriously, but '20 years' seems a little too much.
Leaving aside how much DELE C2 and being a competent Spanish speaker overlap, '20 years' sounds as unrealistic as '3 days' to me. As long as you can avoid being too ambitious, 3 months is a much more reasonable time frame to check whether you are making any advances in the right direction for just about anything that takes some time (losing weight / getting in shape, generally developing a skill?).
1. Teaching is the best learning method?
I've heard this piece of advice several times, and I think I understand the reasoning behind it. You have to understand something to be able to teach it, it has to form a structure in your head, and every occasion for presentation is an occasion for active recall. But teaching a language means something more: repeating the same things on all levels (as long as you teach on all levels) over and over again. My theory is that repeating the content of the different levels multiple times leads to an automatic usage of the most frequent expressions and structures. This is similar to practising all basic situations in an immersion environment, because in coursebooks situations usually don't come back on later levels. You go to a clothes' shop at A1 and never again.
This is debatable. Teaching something should generally mean you really understood it in the first place, if done properly (recommended: check
How to solve it by George Polya ;) so it
is a good way to make you learn (the best? wouldn't be sure) but I don't think it will help you get better past reaching some fluidity and automation, especially if repetition would play a large part on your teaching. Languages are essentially about reusing what you learned -- to express new things.
2. General language skills mean too much at the exam?
In the thread where I've linked my log I've also written about my Goethe C2 sample exam results. My level is not higher than B2, and in the reading comprehension part I've achieved 29 points out of 30. This is ridiculous. One possibility is that the exam itself is very bad at determining your level, the second possibility is that exam skills are the most important, and the third possibility is that the knowledge of general linguistics helps so much that even with less studying, vocabulary or practice of the skill comprehension is almost perfect. I wonder what role these general skills play in language learning and exam success, and if I had a lot of free time, I'd probably experiment with different types of texts in German.
General language skills should speed up learning new languages, but it is debatable how much people develop them: I have been asked to teach "how to summarize Spanish texts" to adults, and some other nonsense. Shouldn't people know how to do all of that, if they can do it in their native language? Well, there's no difference in a foreign one! Assuming good candidates have bothered to really develop these skills in a reusable way, all they need is good enough vocabulary to understand everything and express themselves as desired / required. I have just ended helping a good English C2 candidate get the practice she needed, but I wouldn't say she has "learned" a thing.
Clear enough as the above looks to me, your perspective can certainly be undermined and distorted by bad exam design. A million years ago, it feels, I took a B2 German exam at the local official languages school while a friend took an English B2 one, and we compared them thoroughly afterwards -- they were the same "level" only in name, because of how marks were given. In theory no B2-level learner should be able to score high marks on a well-designed C2 exam generally, but you also need to keep in mind that if the main difference between levels past B2 is vocabulary (didn't we agree on that?), the occasional C2 perfect mark is indeed possible for the right "B2-level" candidate that has matured enough. I would check more sample exams before coming to a conclusion on a particular test.
3. What should a C2 textbook include?
I haven't seen a good book for exam preparation so far, although I think it wouldn't be difficult to write one. (I find it annoying that they don't include sample answers for the essay questions for example.) A lot of people say that C2 is easier than C1 and I tend to agree. The DELE C1 also tests informal language, while C2 is only formal. You just have more information to remember (from the texts you get on a given topic), put in a structure, analyse, compare, draw conclusions from. So the general, academic part is more difficult. The language part is actually easier. I understand that language teachers are not enthusiastic to write materials that develop these skills.
I would say that any perception of C2 being "easier" than C1 stems from it being generally just a harder version of something previously seen, whereas C-level exams may (and often do) encompass activities new to people used to B2 and lower level exams. As regards writing a good book for exam preparation, we could go on all day -- perhaps we could consider making some money while we are at it : p
MrWarper while HTLAL is offline.