From A1 to C2 (and beyond)

Hello. How are you? Are you happy with your English? I don’t know the answer to that question but I suspect that your English is better now than it was in October. Is it true? If that is the case I suppose that you are doing something right. Of course if you find these opening lines a little too simple you have probably passed the B1 level, which is great.

Some people believe that a learner’s command of a foreign language depends on his/her grammar and vocabulary and there is some truth to that. However, I have seen talented students get the upper-intermediate blues. This happens because the more you progress the more you become aware of how much there is to know. In other words, the initial false sense of security starts to fade away. In the B2 classes it is usual for pupils to have the sneaky feeling that they might never get to the advanced level. The pressure soon becomes utterly overwhelming. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Your self-esteem hits an all-time low and you begin to toy with the idea of quitting. You draw the conclusion that it is pointless to do any more fill-in-the-blanks exercises nor is it useful to audit an advanced course because you know full well that one can’t make much headway just by being a fly on the wall.

Furthermore you understand you are prone to expressing yourself in a much less demanding register, which favors the views of those who seek to bolster the contention that a glut of ill-advised C1 graduates on the market is lowering the bar. And then it dawns on you: you’re far more versatile than you thought you’d ever be. All those years of devoted learning are finally starting to pay off. In a moment of clarity you realize what the key to your success is and, consequently, decide not to hold yourself to unreasonable standards, like the perfectionist who shies away from any open debate lest a blunder tarnish their already frazzled self-image. So one day you choose to speak out.

Long gone is the crippling sense of unease, the feeling of being perpetually stricken with self-doubt. You vanquish your worst fears and manage to dazzle headhunters, examiners and professors alike, all of whom feel the irrepressible urge to sing your praises. It is then that your neurons in the pleasure centers of your brain fire off like the fountains in front of the Bellagio. Your speaking skills are, once and for all, off the charts. You’ve reached nerdvana.

B2 and C1

If you are struggling to obtain a B2 certificate you shouldn’t be happy with simple expressions because you want to produce sentences like I wish you hadn’t brought up her name. That is B2. If you don't believe me, check our textbook.

Let’s suppose an English speaker addresses another person by shouting “get down!”. What does she mean by that? It all depends on the context. Is that person up on a fence? Is he standing? Does the English speaker want the other person to avoid being shot or seen? How does she expect the person to get down? All those doubts can be dispelled by her choice of words. There are multiple options, all of which mean “get down”. Here is a selection of them:  Duck down!  Crouch down! On your knees! Climb down! Do you notice the different meanings? Do you get different mental pictures? Of course that’s what the C1 level deals with. Similarly, a B2 student who says "he showed me his ID” doesn’t make it clear if he refers to someone who showed his identity card to a bouncer or if he’s trying to describe a police officer who flashed her badge.

So… What are the defining characteristics of the B2 level? Well, for starters, you get your verb patterns right (I suggest going to the movies). You can handle conditional sentences  without hesitation (If I were you I’d take it). You know your prepositions (the key to your success). You also know some collocations (I stick to my principles) and you are able to use a couple of phrasal verbs (he turned down the job). And that’s about it. Your vocabulary is pretty unspecific but it kind of does the trick.

Then there’s the C1 level, which is all about accuracy, idioms, lots of collocations and the ability to emphasize certain elements of your speech. In short, you are supposed to have range, i.e. a significant number of options whenever you decide to say something and, yes, you sound (sort of) natural.

As for the video below, I agree with 96% of what the speaker says. The C level (C1 and C2) consists of exactly everything she says. The only thing I must disagree with is her estimate regarding the number of hours that an average learn needs to study in order to transition from the B2 level to the C1 level. That, I’m afraid, depends on many, many factors which vary greatly from one student to another.

Practice

-->

Just a reminder. All of you are expected to write an essay:

C1 students: 250 words on homeless people or gun control

B2 students: 150-200 words on any of the topics in Exercise 4C on page 101 of the textbook

And now today's post:

What happened to the Titanic? Yes. I know you know the story (who doesn’t?) but… Could you report it in acceptable English? Just bear in mind that, in order to tell the story successfully, you need to tackle at the very least the three points below:

1. WHAT was the Titanic? You should use any one of these words: boat, ship, vessel, liner…
2. What did she DO? Your options can include phrases such as: she hit an iceberg, she collided with an iceberg, she struck an iceberg…
3. What HAPPENED to her afterward? You may say: she sank, she went down, she foundered…

Clearly those three elements are absolutely key. Okay. Let’s take a gander at an “official” version of the accident. Here are the first lines of the Wikipedia article on the Titanic:

RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early morning hours of 15 April 1912, after it collided with an iceberg during its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City.

Okay. It might not be necessary to mention that it was her maiden voyage but you do get my point, don’t you?

Sometimes we think we can tell a simple story just because the plot seems uncomplicated and straightforward enough but the truth is that even the most basic story demands the use of a limited but specific set of terms. If I say that one particular tale features a “big bad wolf that wants to eat both a little girl and the food she carries in her basket” chances are you know exactly that I’m referring to “Little Red Riding Hood”. So, go and practice. Tell someone a story. Here are some ideas: what happened on August 15, 1947? what happened on September 11, 2001 in New York City? what happened on October 1, 2017 in Catalonia? Can you give an account of the basic elements?

You may find yourselves at a loss for words. It happens. So first make sure you jot down those necessary words before you begin to think about opening your mouth. The rest is practice. Just practice. Seriously, only practice. Some people believe that there is a chromosome makes it possible to excel at story-telling but I think it's all a matter of practice. Just practice. Plain and simple: practice. You know, practice. Remember... practice.

Be reasonable

So it’s International Women’s Day. What’s new? Well, in sociological terms, a lot. The Harvey Weinstein scandal and the subsequent wave of campaigns (#TimesUp, #MeToo, etc.) have sparked off a no-nonsense zero tolerance attitude towards woman abuse at least in Hollywood. Outside of Tinseltown women also have problems (domestic violence, gender pay gap, etc.) which I would love to discuss but, since this humble blog deals mostly with the English language, I’m afraid I should focus on the verbal side of things.

The way I see it, in this era of tolerance and inclusiveness, learners of English such as yourselves should avoid Eurocentric views, condescending phrases, expressions that make women invisible, etc. That said, we ought not to take things to ridiculous extremes that may trivialize or even defeat the original purpose.

Allow me to explain what I mean by that.

Political correctness started to happen in the 1960s and gathered momentum in the 1970s. It was created on the very reasonable premise that certain words favor certain attitudes. Unfortunately some excesses did take place very soon. Some feminists, for instance, felt that the very word “woman” was inherently sexist because it defines a woman in terms of her relationship to a man (wo-man). Therefore they proposed outlandish coinages such as "womban"(womb+woman) or alternative spellings like "womyn" or "wimmin" (to mask the men part in "women"). The problem, of course, is that the etymology of woman (“wif-man”) was not sexist at all. In Old English the word “man” simply meant “person”. Therefore the term "wif-man" was effectively an unusual compound: "female + human being" that had little to do with males. In the 10th century there were two other terms which conveyed the meaning “male human being”. The first one was “were” (we still say "werewolf") and the other one was “guma” (the term "groom" has survived into modern English). Anyhow, misguided efforts aside, the PC movement succeeded in convincing millions of speakers that a number of changes were actually necessary. It is as a result of that activism that we say “immigrant”, “first name”, “disabled person” or “developing countries" without realizing that we no longer feel comfortable with the old terms ("alien", "Christian name", "cripple", "underdeveloped"). With regard to women, the fact is nobody questions the validity of gender-neutral words like “spokesperson” or “flight-attendant”. The unspecific title Ms. is absolutely normal and questions such as “who’s going to chair the meeting?” sound perfectly natural.

So, where are we now? In 2018 the Western world is much more tolerant than it used to be. There are pockets of bigotry (even in high places) and some battles have been taken too far but that is part of the process. As usual, it’s the people (i.e. the speakers) that will pass judgement on what is here to stay and what should be rejected.

As your teacher, however, I feel compelled to let you know my take on the subject, which basically boils down to one simple piece of advice: be reasonable. It’s just not logical to use the word “man” to refer to any human being (as in phrases like "the man in the street "or "the best man for the job") and it is obviously dumb to asume that the masculine gender is the default option as in “someone has left his umbrella in the classroom”. Alternatives are easy to come up with: "the average person", "the best person for the job", "someone has left their umbrella".

I’m not so sure about eliminating lexicalized terms like “manhole” (which some prefer to call “utility hole”) or "virgin" (whose etymology, "virgo", is clearly feminine). I also have my doubts about replacing simple terms with convoluted descriptions. Quite frankly, in nontechnical contexts, I repeat, in nontechnical contexts… do we really need to say “visually impaired” instead of “blind”? And, if you believe that we do, would you say that I am "follicularly challenged" or simply "bald"? Is it necessary to find race-neutral alternatives to "white lie" and "black list"?

I am not a big fan of the kind of PC that is sweeping much of the world these days but I do believe in respect, cultural awareness, empathy and good manners. And I think things are only getting better. When the first astronaut steps onto the surface of planet Mars I'm convinced that she will say something along the lines of "it is a small step for a person but a giant leap for humanity".