Bulats Vocabulary List B2 Level Pdf 80
Calvin Beauchamps
CEFR English levels are used by all modern English language books and English language schools. It is recommended to use CEFR levels in job resumes (curriculum vitae, CV, Europass CV) and other English level references. We list here the CEFR descriptors for language proficiency level, their meaning, and approximate equivalent to other global English evaluation schemes- Cambridge ESOL, Canadian Language Benchmarks / Canadian English Language Proficiency Index Program (CLB/CELPIP), Canadian Academic English Language Assessment (CAEL), BULATS, IELTS, and TOEFL.
Can understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a concrete type. Can introduce themselves and others and can ask and answer questions about personal details such as where someone lives, people they know and things they have. Can interact in a simple way provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help.
Can understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of most immediate relevance (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment). Can communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and routine matters. Can describe in simple terms aspects of their background, immediate environment and matters in areas of immediate need.
Can understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc. Can deal with most situations likely to arise whilst travelling in an area where the language is spoken. Can produce simple connected text on topics, which are familiar, or of personal interest. Can describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes & ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans.
Can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in their field of specialisation. Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party. Can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.
Can understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts, and recognise implicit meaning. Can express themself fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. Can use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes. Can produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, showing controlled use of organisational patterns, connectors and cohesive devices.
Can understand with ease virtually everything heard or read. Can summarise information from different spoken and written sources, reconstructing arguments and accounts in a coherent presentation. Can express themself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in more complex situations.
By trade, Mr. Wyner is an opera singer and needed to know a few romance languages to perform. This is where his language learning journey began. Most opera singers would just learn the basics and pronunciation, only what they needed to sing the music. Mr. Wyner found himself wanting to push further.
To kick off his language learning for his singing career, he attended an immersive program for 14 weeks at Middlebury Language School. Within that time, he fell in love with the process of language learning and became fluent in the equivalent of one school semester. Unwilling to lose his momentum or take a break from his new found passion, Wyner moved to study Italian in Perugia, Italy.
GW: You sign a contract that says that if you speak one word that isn't German you get kicked out. Everyone there had to sign the same contract, they had the same priorities. Those are the rules and you just follow the rules and if you don't want to then you shouldn't be there. And so, you wake up probably around 8:00 in the morning, you go to breakfast around 8:30. Breakfast is only with German speakers.
Although, I think actually for breakfast time they combine two languages, so you might have German speakers in one area of the cafeteria and then French in another area, but you're segregated. Then you go to classes, or up to lunchtime and those are exclusively in German. There's no English used during those classes. I was in the beginning level, and so we had really good teachers for that
And you go from nothing [in terms of language knowledge] and speak. So we had classes where we'd be in class for a couple of hours then, and then we would have lunch exclusively with the German school, then another couple of hours of classes and then all extracurricular activities.
Like the German frisbee team and the German hacky sack team and the German literature club. You were encouraged to do as many of those as you possibly could, and then you had four hours of homework every night.
And in terms of how rapidly I progressed during the program, I would say it's not that different from all the other students. I think there's not much more you can do in terms of your language getting better from day to day to day than being in the language all day. You can't get more content than that. Like all the time is all the time you have.
Our next topic of discussion was Anki, a spaced repetition based flashcards application. Both Mr. Wyner and I are big fans of using Anki to learn how to remember Japanese words and wouldn't start a new venture without them.
GW: Sure. I did the German program twice, then I did six weeks in Italy and then... And all that, it was good [practice] doing classes. In 2010, I wanted to do a French immersion. I cheated on the placement test. Basically, I cheated too well on the placement test for this immersion program. Got stuck at the intermediate level, when I shouldn't have been at the intermediate level. And so I panicked, and I started looking online for tools, and I found Anki at that point.
So I added in comprehension parts, meaning that If I had one part that I needed to fill in the blank with a preposition, I would have another part that just had the preposition with nothing else on it, and my job would be to generate any sentence or have some idea what is the preposition. Same thing for all of my words, there would always be a comprehension part where I would have just the word and have to think, "What does this mean?" I would see a word for dog and I'd be like, "Oh, that's that picture of a dog." And so that fixed Russian.
We discuss Anki a lot in this interview since both Mr. Wyner and I use it heavily to learn vocabulary. Anki is a version of the highly efficient spaced repetition learning theory. Instead of running through vocabulary flash cards at random, these systems show cards based on your understanding.
S1: I'm a heavy Anki user myself. Something I have found is that Anki is very strong for the beginning stages of language learning. I think that at the beginning stages, you're kind of bootstrapping your knowledge of the language. You need to know the basic grammar, basic words. If you don't have this knowledge, you're not gonna go anywhere. But then once you start reaching the intermediate level, you can start doing more. You can start talking a little bit, you can start enjoying some native materials in a limited capacity, once you learn how to remember Japanese words. Have you had this experience of using Anki more at the intermediate or advanced level? And how does your usage compare for these stages of language learning?
GW: Good question. At the intermediate level, things get more frustrating. I think that's what's common for a lot of people, where they feel all this progress at the beginning. Like, "Oh my god, I'm learning this language, I'm learning how to remember Japanese words," then I get to this point where I can almost, I can speak. I can have a conversation. And then things suddenly get real slow.
In terms of my Anki usage, one of the things that I found that's been very, very powerful for Spanish, and I'm going to add it into Japanese as soon as I go back to Japanese at the end of this year, are these definition flashcards. It's looking at a definition in Spanish or in Japanese that you need to identify what word by talking about it. And I'm using those in conjunction with having already learned that word.
So I'll have one flash card where I need to fill in the correct word, I'll have another flash card where I just see the word, comprehension card where I have a sense of what this word means. In Japanese, I'll have like four more flashcards testing different aspects of Kanji.
But then there is this additional flash card with like a sentence asking, "What other words do you know? This is the definition of this word in Japanese or in Spanish. Tell me what this means, and... Or what the word is." And those cards have been very, very powerful for sort of networking all the words I know.
So, I've found that those have been really, really nice for intermediate levels and it's... I don't know, it feels like almost a relief to start seeing them and start being able to use them, because instead just having sort of separate memories, it's like, "Yes, I know something about dogs, and I know something about animals" the definition cards seem to bring all of them together.
GW: I have flash card models that will spit out all these target words. The ones I'm using for Spanish will generally spit out using something that's like a verb and also its conjugation. I think they'll spit out five flash cards at a time. And the Japanese ones, those are spitting out like five to 10 flashcards at a time.
I'm fascinated by the culture, I'm fascinated by the language, it sounds cool, and I love Japanese food a lot. [laughter] So that's been always there. The Russian school had breakfast with the Chinese students.
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