How to get past the B2-C1 plateau?

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Re: How to get past the B2-C1 plateau?

Postby guiguixx1 » Mon Jan 30, 2017 5:28 pm

@Vogeltje: I went on exchange programme for 5 months two years ago in Groningen and I used more English than Dutch (being an exchange student, I mostly used English with the others which wasn't helping my Dutch). I only used Dutch for my classes (3 in English, 3 in Dutch, and most papers to write in English). Outside classes, natives used English a lot since I don't have their accent (since I live in Flanders). The Dutch are famous for speaking English to people who are not native speakers, even if you speak it very well. During my stay, I met some Dutch speakers from parts of Flanders, they spoke a dialect and were often spoken to in English because they were considered as non-native...

I already tried watching the news in Dutch, I did that a couple of years ago when I needed to improve my listening comprehension for my studies, but I only do it from time to time now. I guess I should go back to that, it can't hurt can it ;)

I actually try to replace French and English with Dutch, but most Youtube videos are in English for example (and I use Youtube a lot), which isn't helping ^^'
I guess the main thing I can do in Dutch instead of English and French is reading, since I barely watch TV ^^'
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Re: How to get past the B2-C1 plateau?

Postby emk » Mon Jan 30, 2017 5:53 pm

guiguixx1 wrote:@Teango: I've already tried reading more but this doesn't seem to work. I should maybe work more intensively on vocab and read even more. The problem is the reading time: I currently read in French and in English (I'm reading books on personal development which aren't avaliable in Dutch, or so it seems). I would like to read less in those languages and more in Dutch but books in French and English are more interesting for personal development :/

Regarding communication, I already do it, and I'm trying to fill in the gaps, but the information I'm looking for to learn are not always easily accessible on the Internet, I often use a corpus to guess meanings but it's not always working...

My French is relatively decent by the standards that matter the most to me: I can deal with a hospital emergency room, ask a lawyer for legal advice, hire a copywriter, understand an online statistics course for native speakers, and take day-to-day life for granted. But I still sometimes feel like the spare wheel in conversations between natives, and I struggle a surprising amount if I need to verbally summarize why I like a particular work of fiction. In other words, I'm about a million miles off from a true well-read "native" level, and still uncomfortably far from, say, Iversen's level of English.

Could I pass a C1 exam? Probably, with a bit of prep. Could I work in a French-speaking company or attend a French-speaking university? Yes, but the first months would be brutal. But can I use French at anything even approximating the level my wife does as a native? Absolutely not.

I honestly don't know how you can get near that level without sustained immersion. I do know that there's no simple or half-hearted way to get there without putting in a lot of work and a lot of hours (believe me, I've tried). If you do need to reach a "native-like level" of Dutch rapidly, it's probably worth putting away your English and French for a while.
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Re: How to get past the B2-C1 plateau?

Postby tarvos » Mon Jan 30, 2017 6:07 pm

@tarvos: My main problem with what you (and the others) propose with writing, is that I find it difficult to understand the subtle difference(s) in meaning between two or more words which are almost synonyms. The best reference I have is the Grote Van Dale, but looking up the different words and writing the differences in meaning is very time consuming, I've done 30' of that this morning and haven't written more than 10 words, especially when looking at verbs which have many different meanings (it took me a good 5 minutes to get the meaning of "ik vind het niet kunnen" since the dictionary entry is big and I couldn't find any explanation on the internet, I had to guess the meaning using a corpus....).


These differences are poorly explained by dictionaries and are something you need real life experience and context to pick up. Immersion is the best solution for these types of phrases.
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Re: How to get past the B2-C1 plateau?

Postby tarvos » Mon Jan 30, 2017 6:22 pm

vogeltje wrote:I think that Dutch is problematic because it has got so many dialects, and they are impossible to udnerstand for each other, I mean the different ones, and the people speak them, so it's difficult to leanr the standard Dutch.

Can you live in Holland during your studies? In some places in The Neterhlands they speak more standard Dutch than the Flemish, who've got such annoying dialects. not Limburg, of course, but further north?

Watch NL1,2 on the TV and read their newspapers and study in Dutch I mean what you can find, although I can imagine that it's better in English and French.

I will think of more ideas, I 've got to go now.


The best places to hear standard Dutch as it is spoken on television is in the Randstad and western parts of the Netherlands. Anything further south veers into close to Flemish territory quite quickly, I don't even want to talk about Limburg, and what they speak in the northeast are dialects heavily influenced by Low German (in fact they are Low German dialects influenced by Dutch, although most young people in the Netherlands are more reticent to speak dialect nowadays).

The best Dutch is spoken around Haarlem, but you can find good Dutch in any of the western areas - sadly, also the area where the concentration of English speakers is highest, except if you live in one of the suburbs outside the center (and even then many people will be quite capable). One of my friends from the US was an au pair and she got good because she specifically lived outside of the big cities with a family with young children where people came to work at the house who didn't speak much English if at all. That's the same reason my Spanish and Mandarin Chinese comprehension are very good - I spoke them in places where the foreign language was necessary to communicate. It doesn't mean I speak either perfectly - but it's quite clear I speak both of them fairly well, and with a particular degree of fluency.

Keep in mind that you can learn how to speak Dutch well, and there are many foreigners despite the stereotypes and hassles that can and do learn to speak Dutch well. For example, there is a common trend here that Danish football players speak good Dutch - and most of them really spoke Dutch very well. Some of them have played here for years and have become analysts on television, where their accuracy and fluency is a necessary attribute. We even have a native Ukrainian on TV who analyses football in Dutch and no one complains despite his notable accent, because he speaks Dutch well. Some of our most famous actors or talkshow hosts were not Dutch-born, such as Victoria Koblenko or Eva Jinek. The latter was even a newsreader, despite moving to the Netherlands at eleven! But almost all of these have careers in Dutch or have Dutch family/wives and so on. They have been here for years. This kind of immersion is necessary.
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Re: How to get past the B2-C1 plateau?

Postby guiguixx1 » Mon Jan 30, 2017 6:32 pm

@emk: When I talk about native-like level, I mean the level needed to teach the language to teens. My teachers talk about C2, but this doesn't mean I have to have a native accent for example. I "just" need to use the language as correctly and accurately as possible with the correct range of vocab. Although writing an MA dissertation requires much more knowledge and vocab than teaching (I guess).

Talking about immersion, I guess studying the language at university and never using anything else than Dutch during these clases and with the teaching is regarded as immersion, and it's been 5 years I've been doing it. But this only concerns my Dutch classes of course

@Tarvos: It's indeed massive exposure, reading and listening that got me to my level of English without much study (although I did use vocab list when encountering recurring words in books).
The only thing that bothers me as far as reading is concerned, is that I have never fancied Dutch literature (I've had 4 years of dutch literature at university and have never liked it). The only books I could read are those from the university library about linguistics and literature, which I don't fancy that much. Well, I do like linguistics, but not that much alone, I prefer it in a class setting.

I guess I'll finish my French and English books and replace these books by Dutch books.

Any further tips, regarding writing for example? I'm not sure I'd like to hold a diary and have it correctxed, I don't need people to read my life. I could maybe find articles, summarise them, give my opinion and have it corrected on lang-8?
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Re: How to get past the B2-C1 plateau?

Postby Theodisce » Mon Jan 30, 2017 6:42 pm

guiguixx1 wrote:Any further tips, regarding writing for example? I'm not sure I'd like to hold a diary and have it correctxed, I don't need people to read my life. I could maybe find articles, summarise them, give my opinion and have it corrected on lang-8?


The problem with this approach is that it is too artificial. You would probably benefit more from finding a native speaker who would be interesting for you as a person and not merely as a language learning device and by talking to that person on a regular basis.
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Re: How to get past the B2-C1 plateau?

Postby Jar-Ptitsa » Mon Jan 30, 2017 6:43 pm

emk wrote:If you do need to reach a "native-like level" of Dutch rapidly, it's probably worth putting away your English and French for a while.


I agree, you must live in Dutch, I mean TV, reading, writing, and in your thoughts. Block all the other langauges.


tarvos wrote:
Keep in mind that you can learn how to speak Dutch well, and there are many foreigners despite the stereotypes and hassles that can and do learn to speak Dutch well. For example, there is a common trend here that Danish football players speak good Dutch - and most of them really spoke Dutch very well. Some of them have played here for years and have become analysts on television, where their accuracy and fluency is a necessary attribute. We even have a native Ukrainian on TV who analyses football in Dutch and no one complains despite his notable accent, because he speaks Dutch well. Some of our most famous actors or talkshow hosts were not Dutch-born, such as Victoria Koblenko or Eva Jinek. The latter was even a newsreader, despite moving to the Netherlands at eleven! But almost all of these have careers in Dutch or have Dutch family/wives and so on. They have been here for years. This kind of immersion is necessary.


I suppose that guiguixx must have both: the accurate grammar and also pronunciation becuase he wants to be a Ducth and English teacher. I suppose that you want to teach the last years in the secondary school? What a pity that in Groningen they spoke in English with you.

It's weird that the Dutch put subtitles for the Flemish and vice versa, also when they are not speaking in dialect.

How can you judge your own level? Is my Ducth C1, for example? I can udnerstand everything, generally, and say what I want to say like it were in french, but I don't know litterary things, but this is the same in French anyway because I don't know about books, poems etc. But I don't want to be a teacher and I'm not studying a MA like guiguixx, so of course it's different.
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Re: How to get past the B2-C1 plateau?

Postby Jar-Ptitsa » Mon Jan 30, 2017 6:51 pm

guiguixx1 wrote: The Dutch are famous for speaking English to people who are not native speakers, even if you speak it very well. During my stay, I met some Dutch speakers from parts of Flanders, they spoke a dialect and were often spoken to in English because they were considered as non-native...



It's ridiculous!!!

Maybe I was lucky with them, but when I was in Holland they didn't speak to me in English.
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Re: How to get past the B2-C1 plateau?

Postby desitrader » Mon Jan 30, 2017 6:55 pm

You can never be native-like unless you move to the country, AFTER having studied the language seriously for several years.

And you'll always retain a faint accent.

To illustrate: In any English-speaking country you'll encounter thousands of people who have learned English all their student life, and then moved to the country as an adult, being immersed in English from then on.
How many would you mistake for a native speaker?
Answer: Not a single one.

PS. I speak as one such person.
Last edited by desitrader on Mon Jan 30, 2017 7:03 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: How to get past the B2-C1 plateau?

Postby tarvos » Mon Jan 30, 2017 6:58 pm

vogeltje wrote:
guiguixx1 wrote: The Dutch are famous for speaking English to people who are not native speakers, even if you speak it very well. During my stay, I met some Dutch speakers from parts of Flanders, they spoke a dialect and were often spoken to in English because they were considered as non-native...



It's ridiculous!!!

Maybe I was lucky with them, but when I was in Holland they didn't speak to me in English.


It's because that decision is based on how cumbersome they feel communication is, and with you it's not cumbersome to speak Dutch :)
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