reineke wrote:The OP believes in his Spanish skills yet he scored low. You think you scored too high. You've left a fair amount of writing samples on this site. We have native Dutch speakers hanging around here and I think it wouldn't hurt if you contacted someone for an assessment.
Don't think of C2 as the summit of language mastery.
Again, like I said, all I can comment on are the Dutch tests (well, and the English ones but I haven't tried those yet). The more popular languages such as English and Spanish could very well have more reliable tests. I don't know.
As for me possibly being C2 in writing (which I think is ridiculous but that's neither here nor there), I expected people might protest my assessment which is why I focused on things that I knew 100% for sure I wasn't C2 on, like listening. If people think being able to listen to a radio and understand a lot of what's said if the topic is familiar = C2 then either they're not being honest with themselves or the CEFR descriptions are off.
From
https://rm.coe.int/168045bb52C2: I have no difficulty in understanding any kind of spoken language, whether live or broadcast, even when delivered at fast native speed, provided I have some time to get familiar with the accent.
C1: I can understand extended speech even when it is not clearly structured and when relationships are only implied and not signalled explicitly. I can understand television programmes and films without too much effort.
B2: I can understand extended speech and lectures and follow even complex lines of argument provided the topic is reasonably familiar. I can understand most TV news and current affairs programmes. I can understand the majority of films in standard dialect.
B1: I can understand the main points of clear standard speech on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc. I can understand the main point of many radio or TV programmes on current affairs or topics of personal or professional interest when the delivery is relatively slow and clear.
According to this, I'd say I'm somewhere between B1 and B2. Maybe I'm even B2 already, I don't know. By the way, when I said that the listening test was easy, I meant relative to what I'd expect from a C2 test. I still had to work to get through it and make sure to pay close attention and even then I got a few questions wrong.
As for writing, I'm still going to echo my earlier statement that grammar isn't everything. Yes, I can write about a lot of topics when I make use of my two quite extensive vandale dictionary apps. In addition to using my dictionaries fairly regularly, I also occassionally ask native speakers for help (such as asking which preposition to use). When writing without those aids, I make errors more frequently and I'm able to write about a lot fewer topics.
I don't think of C2 as language mastery but if people think of C2 as 'knows the grammar fairly well and thus can write about a lot of stuff clearly when using a dictionary' then I'd like to respectfully disagree.
All comments and corrections welcome.