Cefr English Year 4 Answer

[Esam Rosado]

Iam looking to take the Goethe Institut B2 test roughly one year from now. I have studied some German in the past, so I'd say I'm at an A1 level and could probably get to A2 quickly. I have never taken a CEFR-based test before, and my goal is to pass all four sections of the exam.

I do not plan to take in-person or online classes, but I will have a speaking partner and talk to this person at least once per week for an hour. Aside from a speaking partner, is there a specific, well-trod path that you know of for passing the German B2 exam? For example, are there specific books that the Goethe Institut or other testing centers recommend studying? The best answer will provide insight into the test and how to prepare for it.

The Centrum voor Levende Talen (CLT) in Leuven, Belgium offers two types of German language courses: (1) for native speakers of Dutch, Afrikaans, Danish, Norwegian or Swedish and (2) for native speakers of other languages. The first category of learners can follow the "fast track", with 70 (classroom) hours per course, up to level B1. The other category of learners follows the "standard track" with 120 hours per course up to level A2, after which the fast track and the standard track are "merged".

Starting from level A2, you would need to take 520 hours of classes (4 * 70 + 2 * 120) at CLT to reach level B2. Of course, you would also need to study a bit at home to keep up during the semester and to pass the exams at the end of each semester. Let's assume that 1 hour of study per week would be sufficient; this is usually sufficient to pass the tests at CLT though not necessarily sufficient for top marks. Since the year-long courses have 30 weeks (ignoring holidays) and the semester courses have 17 or 18 weeks, you would need to add roughly 100 hours (in total) of private study to the classroom hours. That would result in 620 hours of study to move from A2 to B2.

The Goethe-Institut assumes that you need between 600 and 800 classroom hours (1 classroom hour = 45 minutes) to pass the B2 exam; my estimate based on the CLT courses is within that range. In order to fit this into a single year (365 days), you would need to study at least 80 minutes per day; if you have only nine months left (at the time of writing, the question is three months old), you would need to study roughly 135 minutes per day. Note that this excludes the time you spend on looking for learning materials etc.. Language classes in the target language give you a lot of comprehensible input, i.e. input that is adapted to the level you have. When you are learning on your own, you will need to find that input on your own, which can be time-consuming unless you find a series of books that are appropriate for autonomous study. (Many books for classroom use are not appropriate for autonomous study.) Even if you find good textbooks with CDs, you will still need to find additional audio materials (or get a second series of textbooks) to get enough audio input. You will also need to find someone to practise your oral skills with.

The Goethe Institute's B2 exam is being reworked into a more modular form that will become available in January 2019. This modular exam will consist of four parts: reading (65 minutes), writing (75 minutes), listening (ca. 40 minutes) and speaking (15 minutes). The Goethe Insitute provides some practice materials, both for the new B2 exam and for the current (until end of 2018) exam, but it does not recommend specific textbooks or study materials. However, you can practise your German for free on the website section Kostenlos Deutsch ben.

And this is just a selection from German publishers. There are also similar books by publishers in other countries. The above books contains practice exams and/or tasks similar to those in the Goethe Institute's exams; in other words, they help you become familiar with the exam format but they do are not intended as course books to help you reach level B2. These books don't replace regular textbooks, they are only really useful to learners preparing for this specific language test. These books typically also contain tips on how to tackle the individual tasks that make up each section of the exam.

I must be on a kick today, bringing up sore topics. No, not just that, it is only what is in the old "regular" Duolingo forum this morning. By the way, did anyone notice that yesterday was 22/2/22? It's the last time this century we get that kind of date (I believe - since months are never longer than 31 days).

Okay, so I have reported a lot, and I mean A LOT of errors, mistakes, corrections in the drills. Sometimes maybe not exactly correctly, but I would hope that more often than not, my reports were somewhat, if not entirely fair and justified.

That's not the topic though. We all have reported mistakes - I am certain. Some of us, such as myself, have gotten emails from Duolingo or a Duolingo content creator, thanking me for reporting the error, saying that my answer was added to the system, and sometimes, saying that my answer was not added to the system. Very rarely though.

My estimate is that out of 100 times that I have reported an answer that should be accepted, more that 99 times, I was either ignored or at least not given any feedback that my answer was accepted. I know that it is more a "free" service online that people just use for idle amusement, but why have a report feature if the sysops are not going to pay attention to the reports?

It's my understanding that the courses will still be maintained, but perhaps the forum or sentence discussions will soon lose the urgency to follow up on reports, given the situation. I would still report to help keep the content correct, not just for yourself in practice, but for the new learners who take on the course.

It depends on the course you're doing I guess. While the big ones get a lot of attention, the smaller ones seem to have been abandoned long time ago. No updates, no fixes, no nothing. And things have only gotten worse since the contributor program ended.

The course contribs will be the people who review those reports. Hopefully, the ex-volunteer courses are ramping up for major refurbs (or, at least, the big ones will be). That's got to be a higher priority than reviewing additional wordings for sentences that may not be about much longer, right...?

I know there were a lot of times that I have been so convinced that I had the exact correct answer, and clicked through before I was able to review it. That is why it is great to use the "review" feature after the end of a lesson. That's how I found out that I was making these tiny, little mistakes that made a correct answer into an incorrect one.

I think, if on our Duolingo user control panel, there could have been a page that brings up a screen of all the reports to the content creators that were entered; which gave us the ability to edit, remove, or approve them, it would be a boon. We could then delete all the frivolous reports that we made unintentionally.

After having completed the Russian course, I did the reverse tree, in my case the German course for Russian speakers. I was surprised about the frequency of (sometimes quite basic) mistakes in the course , and I have suggested quite a few synonyms that were correct but not accepted. A few errors were fixed with the help of a friendly moderator, but by and large, my impression is that user feedback is not very important to Duolingo. This is precisely why I have stopped caring about Duo's mistakes. If they don't care, why should I?

In English, "kids" is not even formally accepted, colloquially, "children" is the normal answer, alternatively "offspring" or "progeny" are other options, before anyone would say "kids." The connotations of the term "kids" is not too respectful - it is taken from the word that refers to baby goats. Traditionally it was used by people who had unwanted children or unruly children. Children is the best term. You were correct to suggest it.

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