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Prohairesis
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Re: German group

Postby Prohairesis » Wed May 10, 2017 3:31 am

schlaraffenland wrote:Before my C2 prep class, I had never seen so many intelligent, capable adults reduced to tears in a public setting. Some classmates had lived in the German-speaking world for decades. Some had bachelor's or even master's degrees in German.[...]After a couple of weeks of this, I began to feel like I was an unwitting character in somebody's Absurdist play. That resigned approached actually helped me to embrace the notion that this exam was actually willkürlich -- random, arbitrary, almost cruel -- and that a lot of it would really come down to utter chance on the exam day.

In other words, the C2 exam doesn't ask, "Are you fluent?" Instead, it asks, "Just how fluent are you?" Fluency is not being tested here in a Y/N way, but rather, with an eye to the degree of fluency.[...]In this way, the C2 doesn't test whether you're fluent. It assumes you've approached the exam only after having acquired a comfortable degree of fluency. Then it attempts to blow huge shotgun holes in your conception of your own level of fluency.


Yes, nicely put ! I remember when I was preparing my DALF C2, it was about one month after I had graduated from my Bachelor's programme in French literature. At that point in time, I felt like I was at the top of my game - that was, until I started preparing for the C2.

I remember listening to a 15-minute debate and having to note all the key points down. The whole time, I was under immense pressure to note everything down and to not miss an important point while the audio clip continued to play. The key points would then feed into a 30-minute presentation I would have to subsequently prepare for in 1 hour. The whole time, I was thinking whether I was actually being tested for my language skills, or for my note-taking and summarizing skills. Part of the criteria on which the oral presentation was based was the candidate's ability to convince and defend him/herself against the examiner's questions and doubts. So in a way, you're being graded not so much on your fluency (as that is the minimum requirement at this level), but on your rhetorical and discursive techniques.

The only difference I would note between schlaraffenland's and my personal experience preparing for the C2 exam is that I was doing it on my own, which meant I didn't know where to situate myself in relation to others and the expected quality at this level. And I remember very distinctly breaking down in the middle of practice and throwing my exam-prep book half way across the room. I suppose that's what the C2 level entails, after all...
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Re: German group

Postby Cavesa » Wed May 10, 2017 10:13 am

Prohairesis wrote:Yes, nicely put ! I remember when I was preparing my DALF C2, it was about one month after I had graduated from my Bachelor's programme in French literature. At that point in time, I felt like I was at the top of my game - that was, until I started preparing for the C2.

I remember listening to a 15-minute debate and having to note all the key points down. The whole time, I was under immense pressure to note everything down and to not miss an important point while the audio clip continued to play. The key points would then feed into a 30-minute presentation I would have to subsequently prepare for in 1 hour. The whole time, I was thinking whether I was actually being tested for my language skills, or for my note-taking and summarizing skills. Part of the criteria on which the oral presentation was based was the candidate's ability to convince and defend him/herself against the examiner's questions and doubts. So in a way, you're being graded not so much on your fluency (as that is the minimum requirement at this level), but on your rhetorical and discursive techniques.

Interesting. This was actually the easiest part of the DALF C2 exam for me!
I found the audio easy, as I had been really well prepared by more difficult stuff (tv series), talking about it was not problem at and it was quite fun (the audio was very enjoyable too), all the work with the audio (like note taking or the "discursing techniques") was much less demanding then my university classes and exams (everything seems easier than for example pathology). My main trouble in the speaking part were two or three very stupid mistakes, and one time during which I don't know whether they thought I didn't understand the question due to langauge skills, while I simply misunderstood it like some questions during a normal university exam, but the difference may not matter. And my accent could have been a problem. But still, 42/50 points was not a bad result at all.

But the writing was a real hell. The balance between "not getting too far from the topic as presented in the dossier" and "not copying too much from the dossier" was really challenging. Even if I put aside mistakes I surely made in the text, the overall task of composing such a text within the time limit was very hard for me. The quality and form of the last quarter or so really suffered. Being up to the level native lycéens are trained to achieve during several years of text analysing and recomposing, while vast majority of C2 writing resources supposed it was just a problem of the language (while the whole style is simply different from highschool writing in the Czech Republic, in the UK, or another individual country. A friend of mine has personal experience with these three education systems and found these difference to be one of the biggest challenges), that was difficult even with the help of a tutor. I got 16 or so points, definitely not a stellar result, and I was glad.

I think there is a major discrepancy between the assignment samples in the preparatory books, and the real ones. Not in terms of content, the same subjects get regurgitated over and over again, at least in the science version. But rather in the form of the assignment.

I feel partially relieved I am highly unlikely to EVER try a C2 German exam, reading this thread! :-D
B2 will be a huge enough challenge for me.
The only difference I would note between schlaraffenland's and my personal experience preparing for the C2 exam is that I was doing it on my own, which meant I didn't know where to situate myself in relation to others and the expected quality at this level. And I remember very distinctly breaking down in the middle of practice and throwing my exam-prep book half way across the room. I suppose that's what the C2 level entails, after all...
Well, I'd say English and German are the only languages with wildly accessible preparatory classes, and from I heard from their past candidates, they are still not worth it. The comparation to others is a tricky thing and I don't consider it that useful in the end. You know you did that speaking exercise worse than John did, but who knows what grade would John get for such an achievement, perhaps he'd get full points and you just a few points less. Or you would both fail, with John being a point bellow the limit and you deep bellow. And you don't need to know how others did a multiple choice exercise, as you know 40% is pretty bad no matter the other results :-D . I actually wonder, whether the language exams tend to have some sort of correction factor, like crossing out a question almost noone got right. I don't think so.

It can damage one's confidence at the exam and that's the last thing you need. I found out too late I was the first DALF C2 candidate my tutor had been preparing, so while it was good he suggested I tried the C2 exam (I think it was actually another student of his that I met, who said it first), the overall praise of the speaking level was a bit deceiving (I wrote about this elsewhere already). And he was still one of the very few available more or less suitable tutors in Prague. I don't know whether there is anyone in Prague, who has prepared dozens of C2 candidates, as there are very few showing up for each one. (it is quite realistic to guess there are five per year, three of which live mostly abroad. Than the tutor would have gather all the rest for more than a decade in order to get a large amount of experience). The writing assessment was quite realistic, I suppose, he was comparing me to a DALF C1 student of his, who was writing better than me, but unfortunately didn't show me examples. In general, I had quite a good confidence before the exam, my nervousness quota being filled up by university exams. But then I entered the classroom, where the written exam was being taken. My first comparation to other real candidates. We were three. One had studied in France for several years. The other had been married to a native and living abroad for a decade or more. And than there was me. :-D My confidence dropped to the floor level for a moment.

I wasn't throwing DALF preparatory books around, all the suitable places in my room had already been covered with previously thrown microbiology textbooks and notes :-D Perhaps, it was very beneficial to have something else to channel the stress to than the DALF :-D
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Re: German group

Postby schlaraffenland » Wed May 10, 2017 7:04 pm

Cavesa wrote:Well, I'd say English and German are the only languages with wildly accessible preparatory classes, and from I heard from their past candidates, they are still not worth it. The comparation to others is a tricky thing and I don't consider it that useful in the end. You know you did that speaking exercise worse than John did, but who knows what grade would John get for such an achievement, perhaps he'd get full points and you just a few points less. Or you would both fail, with John being a point bellow the limit and you deep bellow. And you don't need to know how others did a multiple choice exercise, as you know 40% is pretty bad no matter the other results :-D . I actually wonder, whether the language exams tend to have some sort of correction factor, like crossing out a question almost noone got right. I don't think so.


My experience here was different. I'm eternally grateful for the C2 prep class I took and found it was enormously beneficial. I can't point to hard figures about score improvement -- I didn't sit a C2 both before and after the class to see how my score would have improved, in theory -- but I know that the exhaustive review of tricky points and the in-class feedback were both really helpful. I came out of the C2 with a cumulative 95% on my Zertifikat, and on one section (Lesen), I scored 100%. Even if I had just done all the practice books on the market by myself, I wouldn't have honed the oral and written sections to the extent that I was able to do in the prep class. And those of us in the class still left standing in the final couple of weeks built a nice support network amongst ourselves and practiced together out of class as well, when time allowed.

It probably makes a big difference whether one can attend a prep class led by a teacher who is professionally close to the exam in question. I did the prep class at the Goethe-Institut, and it was conducted by teachers who had also administered and graded the C2 for years. Every bit of feedback they gave was right on the mark and commensurate with how they had graded real exams. I don't know how it would be if one took such a class at a private language institute or the Volkshochschule or some such (if prep courses at that level are even offered at such institutes; I never checked!). And I think a prep course would be a bad investment of time/money if a person merely wanted to find out if they were at the level the exam demands (for that, an exercise book or two would definitely be better). When it comes to making a concentrated sprint toward what could be such an important certificate in somebody's life, though, I think it's quite worth it.
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Re: German group

Postby Cavesa » Wed May 10, 2017 9:02 pm

schlaraffenland wrote: I came out of the C2 with a cumulative 95% on my Zertifikat, and on one section (Lesen), I scored 100%. Even if I had just done all the practice books on the market by myself, I wouldn't have honed the oral and written sections to the extent that I was able to do in the prep class.

Wow! Awesome results! It is true I don't strive to get 100% in exams usually.

And those of us in the class still left standing in the final couple of weeks built a nice support network amongst ourselves and practiced together out of class as well, when time allowed.

It probably makes a big difference whether one can attend a prep class led by a teacher who is professionally close to the exam in question. I did the prep class at the Goethe-Institut, and it was conducted by teachers who had also administered and graded the C2 for years. Every bit of feedback they gave was right on the mark and commensurate with how they had graded real exams.


Yes, in such a case, I totally believe it was useful. As I said in the recent thread about tutors, I don't believe all the tutors are useless. It's just the fact that the good ones for advanced learners, and for the exam preparation, are really rare. And you had a motivating group, that is partially luck too.

I think this is a huge advantage of German, and your Goethe Institut in particular, that there are many learners aiming for the C2 exam. Was it in Germany? The large amount of candidates creates groups that can actually be useful (I wish all those people telling me about their CPE preparatory classes had such a good experience, it's quite the opposite). The large amount creates experienced examiners and teachers. A Goethe Institut employee in Berli, for example,has surely an opportunity to work with many more C2 learners, than a GI employee in Prague, and even more than an Institut Français (name of this particular AF) in Prague.

I would be curious to know, how many candidates do each of the exams, the levels, and the results. There surely must be some statistics, I just doubt they're publicly available.
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Re: German group

Postby Prohairesis » Thu May 11, 2017 1:41 am

schlaraffenland wrote: I came out of the C2 with a cumulative 95% on my Zertifikat, and on one section (Lesen), I scored 100%. Even if I had just done all the practice books on the market by myself, I wouldn't have honed the oral and written sections to the extent that I was able to do in the prep class.

Cavesa wrote:As I said in the recent thread about tutors, I don't believe all the tutors are useless. It's just the fact that the good ones for advanced learners, and for the exam preparation, are really rare. And you had a motivating group, that is partially luck too.


I completely agree with schlaraffenland about the need for an experienced teacher/examiner to give you the right pointers for the spoken and written components. I generally find textbooks and exam-preparation books to be more useful for comprehension strategies, mainly because you can assimilate those skills through practice. It gets a little trickier with speaking and writing because they are more cognitively-demanding tasks, especially at the more advanced levels. Speaking and writing require much personal investment, and a big part of it comes from the regurgitation of things you have read and listened to. They are therefore skills that develop much more gradually. So I definitely agree with you that an intuitive and experienced teacher would be a valuable return on your investment.

A Goethe Institut employee in Berlin, for example, has surely an opportunity to work with many more C2 learners, than a GI employee in Prague, and even more than an Institut Français (name of this particular AF) in Prague [...] I would be curious to know, how many candidates do each of the exams, the levels, and the results. There surely must be some statistics, I just doubt they're publicly available.


I second that ! The same goes for the Alliance Française in Bangkok, where - according to the exam coordinator - only 7 candidates, including myself, have taken the DALF C2 since it has been made available in 2007. Of the seven, only 4 candidates have passed the exam. Fortunately, I was one of the four. In comparison, about 70 to 80 people have taken the DALF C1 with varying degrees of success.

Generally, I would agree most AFs and Goethe-Institut branches located within their respective countries would have more experience evaluating high-level candidates. But one criticism I've heard from the exam coordinator in Bangkok is that the Alliances françaises in France tend to be more lenient with their scoring. There are many more people who fly in to France from all over the world to take classes and then the exams, so to maintain a relatively high pass rate, they need to be less demanding.

I was actually quite surprised to hear this as I would have expected the contrary. The Goethe-Instituts in Germany, for instance, are of a much higher calibre and the teachers I had at the G-I in Freiburg were brilliant and dedicated people.
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Re: German group

Postby Prohairesis » Thu May 11, 2017 2:02 am

Cavesa wrote:I think there is a major discrepancy between the assignment samples in the preparatory books, and the real ones. Not in terms of content, the same subjects get regurgitated over and over again, at least in the science version. But rather in the form of the assignment.


I completely agree with this. For the compréhension et production orales part of the DALF C2, somehow the audio clip I had to summarize and base my arguments on seemed artificial and policé. The general pace was just a notch slower and my notes were surprisingly very complete !

The production écrite part of my exam was more challenging though. The theme was "Des vertus de la paresse", for which I had to write a piece about how work can be a personally-enriching experience but at the same time prohibitive and that we all need to put our work and professional duties into perspective by committing ourselves to socially-beneficial activities.
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Re: German group

Postby AlOlaf » Thu May 11, 2017 2:30 am

My experience with the GDS is atypical and most likely not very pertinent for many of the readers here, but I thought someone might get something out of it.

Some background: I had four semesters of German in college, left school without graduating, and did virtually nothing with the language the next 28 years. In 2007 I unexpectedly got the chance to visit Germany for the first time. A desperate last-minute effort to revive my German with FSI did little to prepare me for what I encountered in the Black Forest. After an exhilarating, but exhausting 10-day stay, I returned home with the knowledge that my German skills were woefully inadequate and began studying on my own. A trip to Austria and Bavaria in 2010 confirmed that I was making progress.

In 2012, at the age of 54, I travelled to the Goethe Institute in Frankfurt to take a two-week super-intensive C2 class. It was my vacation, and my only aim was to learn as much German as possible. I had no intention of attempting the GDS, because I had read about the exam and come to the conclusion that I had no chance of passing it. Halfway through the class, though, one of my instructors asked me if I was planning on taking it. She said she thought I had a chance of passing, so I signed up.

By this time, the class had dwindled down to two students: a young woman from Luxembourg and me. It turned out that she had also signed up for the GDS, so it was decided that the second week of the class be entirely devoted to concentrated preparation for the exam.

Never in my life have I absorbed so much information in such a short time. My fellow student was the owner of her own translation firm in Luxembourg, and her flawless command of German had initially fooled the Goethe office staff into thinking she was a native speaker. Having her as a prep partner raised the bar into the stratosphere, and I had to push myself to the limit to keep up. I'd never previously thought of chocolate as a study tool, but it ended up played an important role in our preparation. When my partner and I began to tire and lose our ability to concentrate, our instructor would run upstairs to the vending machine and return with an assortment of Ritter bars, whose rejuvenative properties made it possible for us to keep going.

The exam itself didn't go as I'd hoped. The reading segment contained the most complicated German I'd ever seen. Towards the end of the allotted time, I thought I was almost finished when I suddenly realized there were two more pages I'd overlooked. I tried feverishly to get through them, but there was no way. I couldn't finish.

As expected, I was informed that I hadn't passed the reading section. But the director said that, since the answers I had given were correct and the closest location in the US where I could retake the exam was 600 miles from my home, I would be permitted to take the reading section again the next day.

I passed the second time, but just barely (63%). Cocksure from having taken it once and hellbent on getting it done in time, I didn't read the instructions carefully enough and ended up having to backtrack and change a bunch of answers once I realized I was doing it wrong. Duh. I passed the other three sections of the exam with somewhat better scores, my best being 85% in speaking.

I feel guilty about having received a second chance because I know others didn't get one, and I feel like maybe there should be an asterisk on my certificate. Still, for someone like me, an extreme language learning latecomer and non-academic geezer, it's not a bad achievement.
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Re: German group

Postby schlaraffenland » Thu May 11, 2017 6:46 am

AlOlaf wrote:My experience with the GDS is atypical and most likely not very pertinent for many of the readers here, but I thought someone might get something out of it.

...

I feel guilty about having received a second chance because I know others didn't get one, and I feel like maybe there should be an asterisk on my certificate. Still, for someone like me, an extreme language learning latecomer and non-academic geezer, it's not a bad achievement.


I think that's a formidable accomplishment, and something to be very proud of. I know for a fact I never could've performed like that, nor improved in such a short time, to the extent that you describe here.

Yay for the Frankfurt G-I, too :D
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Re: German group

Postby schlaraffenland » Thu May 11, 2017 6:54 am

Cavesa wrote:I think this is a huge advantage of German, and your Goethe Institut in particular, that there are many learners aiming for the C2 exam. Was it in Germany? The large amount of candidates creates groups that can actually be useful (I wish all those people telling me about their CPE preparatory classes had such a good experience, it's quite the opposite). The large amount creates experienced examiners and teachers. A Goethe Institut employee in Berli, for example,has surely an opportunity to work with many more C2 learners, than a GI employee in Prague, and even more than an Institut Français (name of this particular AF) in Prague.


Thanks for the kind comment; for a person who failed her way throughout her school and university years, it was kind of neat to see how it is for the people who do not fail. :lol:

Yes, I prepared and took it in Frankfurt. I also took a portion a few months later in the U.S. I was surprised by how many candidates were at the U.S. sitting, at least for part of the exam. It was as many as 10 at one point, and some had flown in from out of state. But it's definitely not the same as in Germany itself. I imagine Berlin, Frankfurt, and the other big centers must be like a factory with a conveyor belt, producing (I hope) several freshly minted C2-Zertifikat holders each month. (I think there were maybe 20 people spread between two rooms taking the test during my month in Frankfurt.)

Cavesa wrote:I would be curious to know, how many candidates do each of the exams, the levels, and the results. There surely must be some statistics, I just doubt they're publicly available.


Those statistics would be really interesting to me, too. I have absolutely no clue what's typical, except for anecdotal asides from my teachers in Germany here and there, very much based on gut feeling.
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Re: German group

Postby AlOlaf » Thu May 11, 2017 3:19 pm

schlaraffenland wrote:I think that's a formidable accomplishment, and something to be very proud of. I know for a fact I never could've performed like that, nor improved in such a short time, to the extent that you describe here.

Thank you for the supportive words, but I somehow find that second sentence hard to believe.
schlaraffenland wrote:Yay for the Frankfurt G-I, too :D

Amen.
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