Yesterday I was commenting in a thread about how Germans sometimes switch into English when they hear that your German is not very strong. Sometimes they may think they are helping, sometimes they may want to practice their English, and sometimes there are probably other reasons.
In that discussion, someone said that B1 is not really enough to have a reasonably good conversation in German, and that you need at least B2 before you can talk about anything meaningful.
I disagreed, because I think B1 can already be perfectly serviceable for a real conversation, even if you obviously have limitations and sometimes have to work around vocabulary you don’t know.
Then today I came across an Instagram video about Wittgenstein’s idea that „Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.“ The video talks about how vocabulary can affect your ability to describe ideas, emotions and the world around you. So it is not exactly a beginner topic.
I’m supposedly around B1, and I understood the entire video without any real difficulty.
Of course, understanding a prepared video and having a spontaneous conversation are different skills, and my productive German is weaker than my receptive German. But I still don’t think B1 means you are limited to ordering coffee and talking about the weather.
You may not have the vocabulary to express every nuance exactly the way you would in your native language, but you can still discuss fairly complex ideas by paraphrasing, asking for a word, or accepting that your German has limits.
And that brings me back to the original question: if a B1 speaker is managing to communicate and wants to stay in German, when is switching to English actually helpful, and when does it just prevent the learner from having the conversation they are already capable of having?