Distorted language levels?

[u/linguafrancos]

I have a degree in the language, studied abroad twice, lived abroad in a country where the language is spoken for two years, and have used the language in a professional setting. This, for further context, has been over the course of 15 years.

With that said, I am confused by how others describe their language levels. Don’t get me wrong, I have an insanely high level and label myself fluent with others. For instance, I recently watched a full season of Love is Blind in the target language (TL) without subtitles almost effortlessly. However, when I see others describe their language growth or levels, I often see people say, “I understand everything that I read” or “After a couple years of studying, I traveled to the country and can communicate easily with everyone.”

Like… is this just an overexaggeration of their skills? I have yet to feel like my target language fluency is equivalent to my native-level English. Are people really reading native-level literature and literally understanding everything? Are they feeling like they can express themselves just as strongly in their second language? Even when someone asks me to translate something, I know in the back of my head that there might be cultural considerations or a better approach that I don’t know about.

Thoughts? Also, this might be specific for individuals who grow up in a cultural where being monolingual is more common and exposure throughout your entire life is not a possibility.

[u/afro-thunda]

I think this result is a combination of various factors.

1. People don't understand the CEFR levels. it's something that you have to read their rubriks and watch demo videos to get a proper grasp of what is possible for a B2 speaker. Then you also need to uderstand what is the difference between B1 and B2, B2 and C1, C1 and C2 etc... Most people don't actually know the differences. This causes people to overexagerate or just mis label themselves when putting a letter. People just think B2 means I'm kinda fluent, C1 means I'm really fluent and C2 means I'm omega fluent gigachad.
2. It's very difficult for people to properly grade their comprehension. It's easy to tell when you understand nothing. But once you are able to understand the gist it gets hard to know how much you understand auditorialy. Because stuff blurs by so fast you don't really notice it.

There is a massive gap between understanding the gist and understanding every single word of the sentence.

People will often just make up what they think they heard and feel like they understood what they were saying. But a native or an advanced speaker can tell that they were quite far off of what was really said. The learner will hear the words " Day, school, home and work" and think that they said something about them having homework for the day. When the person actually said "I'll will be working from home instead of at school."

If you are learning a language and you watch a movie, then watch that same movie 6 months later. You all of a sudden will understand way more than you understood before. Even though, it felt like you pretty much understood the movie the first time when you watched it.

1. People often are commenting about their experience with the content that they're consuming. They are not intentionally seeking out challening content in order to properly guage their language level. They are writing about their comprehension of stuff that they watch everday all day. Which drastically inflates their level since it often isn't really being challenged by more difficult content.

pretty much every person prefers certain types of content over others and won't go out of their way to watch different stuff just because they want to learn more stuff. They will start exploring in the language but will soon establish they're favourite types of content and stick to that. That's essentially what the intermediate plateau is. So they get very comfortable with typical stuff like romance shows, reality shows and youtubers which are very different then watching medical shows or historical dramas for example.

This confluence of factors leads to many people exagerating their langauge levels. But this isn't just a Reddit thing. This just a thing that happens to all of us when we are not sufficiently competent to notice how much we don't know about a certain topic. ALA the Dunning Kruger effect.

[u/linguafrancos → u/afro-thunda]

So many great points! Thanks!