[Analysis] Is LingQ Intermediate 1 equivalent to CEFR B1 comprehension? A case study in Italian

Open Forum
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I tend to agree and think that 4-6 hours per day is a chunk of time. The FSI reckons even difficult languages you should get to “competence” within 2,200 hours. 5 hours a day at 365 days in a year is 1,825 hours. That’s pretty close to 2,200 hours.

The devil is in the details though. If you spent those 1,825 hours doing the type of crap they do in high schools you’d still only be able to pass tests and understand nothing and not be able to speak.

If you only read i.e. just read on lingQ and do no listening or attempts to practice speaking you’d like be able to read almost anything at the end. Assuming of course you laddered up from the easiest material and gradually made your way through the next more difficult and the next. Doing material that is too difficult for you won’t work.

If you only listened then you’d probably understand almost everything (same caveat on laddering up).

Speaking is the wierd one: some languages have features in them that make them hard to speak unless you put effort into identifying exactly what the difficulty is and then focusing on it. Examples are Russian and Mandarin.
Russian has certain phonemes that are not found in English so although you can kind of ignore them when listening, the same is not true when speaking. If you munge two similar sounding (but totally different) phonemes together in Russian, you might not be understood. Russian also has grammatical features that you can kind of ignore and get the jist if you are listening but will kill you if you ignore them when speaking. I’m talking about cases.

Mandarin is worse in some aspects. It has phonemes that are radically different (many more than Russian does) and it has tones. Like Russian you can probably ignore the tones and different phonemes and you will be able to understand spoken speech but no way will you be able to speak without paying specific attention to the differences and making sure you get them right.

Likely Arabic is like this too, but with additional complications.

So it depends on the method. There are crappy inefficient methods that are time sinks and there are relatively good, relatively efficient methods.

But if you’re using one of the relatively efficient methods, 4-6 hours a day should get you very close to functional. Way beyond basic conversation. Unless what you mean by “conversational” is “can hold a conversation on ANY topic”.

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“CEFR is a standardized test. […] if all you did was consume practice tests in Italian on Lingq, then you would do better and reach that level. […] This happened a lot in my high school for spanish. Kids would just study a test, and not the actual language. They did better than even the native speakers sometimes”

So are you saying that because CEFR is a standardised test (and people can just game it, as in your example with Spanish) it’s useless? If I told you that this was the first and only language proficiency test I took and looked up, would that mean much?

“So it’s nearly impossible to asses YOUR level in Italian because I don’t know what kind of Italian content you listen to.”

Do you think that correctly identifying, in my case 3,227 out of 4,998, high-frequency vocabulary that it does nothing to assess my level in Italian?

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If you passed the test then your level is what the test says and that’s what the OP was asking: is it equivalent? And it appears to be in your case.

As far as what others say? meh.

Folks (including me) tend to give their opinions on here so take other opinions with a pinch of salt.

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No its not useless. Companies, govts, and schools need a way to standardize the levels of people attending or working for them. When I wanted to go to german college, they told me I needed to pass a test. But if I just want to watch tv shows and converse with germans, a test isn’t necessary(unless you just want to do one for fun). One gets tested every time they speak with a native, assuming they get corrected.

The frequency vocabulary is a better way of gauging your progress with Italian in general as its directly based on common speech. But depending on the level of the test, as in the higher you are testing for, the less those frequency lists matter because questions are encouraged to test all sorts of topics with varying difficulty.

I’m just not a fan of language tests lol. But I still appreciate the case study. It’s cool to see others progressing. Especially in a language like italian which I hear is one of the more difficult romance languages.

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I agree. So much of the “time it takes to learn x language” is highly conflated with what I think is just bad study habits. Too many exercises, grammar, and boring content. I’m so grateful to be alive during the time of this website which is basically automating what I was originally doing of making flashcards and looking at the dictionary for every new word I encountered. It’s seamless.

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Yeah, the people who wrote the language test also wouldn’t say it is 100% accurate at representing what they were meant to be trying to test (the descriptions of the CEFR). Whether the test represents those descriptions (and whether those descriptions are a model that’re worth supporting) are different things. But, as @xxdb mentioned, one definition of B1 would be successfully passing the B1 test, which in this case study, was a yes. Another definition is directly from descriptions in the CEFR model, which also, comparing, was a yes. The number of hours was just a test to see if there were no red flags (eg. to reach B1 in 10 hours is just simply unreasonable). While the recognised head words measure tested if I had a vocabulary similiar to what you would expect for a lower intermediate (and/or B1 which the research paper I linked was looking at).

So I think three things from this: (1) I’m at a level of CEFR B1 (by both the descriptor and test definitions), (2) As I’m also at LingQ Intermediate 1, this appears to agree with our hypothesis of it being similar to CEFR 1 , (3) Based on my subjective feeling and the amount of high-frequency vocabulary I have, I could be considered lower intermediate also by the general public’s idea of what a lower intermediate would be.

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I see the tests as like martial arts.
The original martial arts didn’t have belts.
They found that when they came to the US originally most folks quit after a few months because they couldn’t figure out their progress.
So the colored belt system was invented:
“I’m a green belt” etc

Tests are like that in my opinion.

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Hi nfera,

The app is doing that wierd thing where I can’t reply any more to your responses. So I’m replying here:

nfera: “I was just stating that it is indeed possible, depending on the language, method, etc. But for some languages, for sure, it will definitely be challenging and require a lot of time.”
100%. Here on the forum we get a lot of broad statements that can be quibbled with.
Guys like Benny Lewis have built careers on the broad statement “you can learn any language to fluency in six months”. Benny is right if he’s talking about close-to-english-for-english-speakers. It doesn’t work for distant languages. The FSI is closer to the truth. So yeah, I agree with you. That said, I think you can get to low intermediate listening comprehension in any language in six months if you drop reading, speaking and writing. IMO. And I’m basing it only on Russian, French and Spanish. So I might be wrong; there might be other languages that are so complicated my method doesnt work.

nfera: “With regard to taking a “laddering up” approach, I think at times it can very much contradict with what lots of people like to say about reading/listening/studying what you enjoy and avoid “boring content.””
Well yes. You’re completely correct. Motivation is a large part of it. No point in reading children’s books if it bores you to tears and you quit. Absolutely.
Let me rephrase it: In an ideal world, where you can maintain consistent motivation (HA!) the most rapid way to get to “fluency” (whatever that means) is to gradually increase the level of difficulty a step at a time in a ladder up approach.

nfera: “For most people, who are not disciplined, long-term language learners, I understand this advice. However, for people who have successfully learned several languages, who are not at a high risk of quitting, perhaps this advice doesn’t equally apply - that indeed we need to focus on “laddering up” as opposed to “following your passions/interests.” For instance, at my current level I could benefit much more from conversations and interviews than from reading a non-fiction book.”
You’re right. I myself bang the drum about doing things in a time-efficient way even though I’m not taking my own medicine. I have segwayed into “interesting” stuff which is a bit above my level to keep me interested and I can’t tell if it has helped because the end-goal “understand perfectly the TV show better than us” is STILL above my level.
That said, in defense of taking a meandering path - I went back at re-watched an episode of a blogger varlamov that a year ago I could only get one word from and it otherwise sounded like an undifferentiated stream of gibberish. That same episode I can now understand most of it. Not quite all - it’s just at the edge of comprehension but I can hear every single word and I know that I know them, but my brain is struggling to keep up. If I watched a few times, I’d likely get it.
So TLDR; there is something to be said with going off the path and doing something fun.

In fact… about 10 months ago at the one year mark I came to the conclusion that while I have a SOLID method for getting to intermediate listening comprehension in any language (I believe), I had no idea how to get from intermediate to advanced.
I think I know, now. The answer is exactly what Master Steve said: you need to engage with the language. So segwaying off into your interests is definitely the key.
But, as you said, you need the grit to keep going even if it slows you down in the long run in the goal towards “fluency”.

Anyhow, good conversation; thanks.

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“In an ideal world, where you can maintain consistent motivation (HA!) the most rapid way to get to “fluency” (whatever that means) is to gradually increase the level of difficulty a step at a time in a ladder up approach. […] I have segwayed into “interesting” stuff which is a bit above my level to keep me interested”

Yeah, exactly. even though the laddering approach is the most efficient, sometimes, we get the thought that at a particular point in time, efficiency isn’t the main goal, but rather the effectiveness (that is, keeping with it). So with this awareness, you switch from the most efficient approach to that which ensures you don’t rage quit. I think switching between the two approaches - (1) main goal being maintaining motivation and long-term commitment, and (2) high efficiency in learning - allows you to achieve your language learning goal in the best way.

“the end-goal “understand perfectly the TV show better than us” is STILL above my level. That said, in defense of taking a meandering path - I went back at re-watched an episode of a blogger varlamov that a year ago I could only get one word from and it otherwise sounded like an undifferentiated stream of gibberish. That same episode I can now understand most of it. Not quite all - it’s just at the edge of comprehension but I can hear every single word and I know that I know them, but my brain is struggling to keep up. If I watched a few times, I’d likely get it. So TLDR; there is something to be said with going off the path and doing something fun.”

It’s not that using interest-based material isn’t helping, it’s just that it’s not the most efficient material to be using. In the end, you’ll get there. This is why I imagine Steve recommends this. It’s to protect against the worst thing which can happen in your language learning - rage quitting. But even with this approach, you will get there in the end (to a B2 comprehension level, which is Steve’s goal).

“In fact… about 10 months ago at the one year mark I came to the conclusion that while I have a SOLID method for getting to intermediate listening comprehension in any language (I believe), I had no idea how to get from intermediate to advanced.
I think I know, now. The answer is exactly what Master Steve said: you need to engage with the language. So segwaying off into your interests is definitely the key.
But, as you said, you need the grit to keep going even if it slows you down in the long run in the goal towards “fluency”.”

My opinion is it’s the opposite. To reach C1, C2, the advanced levels, you have to move away from the follow-your-interests approach. You’ve gotta move more into deliberate study. More into topics and books and literature, which you aren’t interested in. You’ve already learnt all the vocabulary and structures from the topics, which interest you. You need to learn the vocabulary from the areas, which DON’T interest you. If in your follow-you-interests approach never encountered maths/biology/make-up/social activism etc. terms, you will never encounter those words following the follow-your-interests approach. If you don’t care about make-up, the only way you are going to learn that vocabulary (such as the words you already have in English, eg. ‘foundation’, ‘blush’, ‘eye shadow’, ‘eye liner’, ‘lip gloss’, ‘fake tan’, etc.) is by choosing topics from all areas of life, not just the subset, which interest you. This is the change in strategy, which has to happen to go from B2 to C1. And then from C1 to C2, you’ve gotta read a lot of books and some literature, while continuing to expand into topics and subjects, which a native speaker would have encountered but you have never encountered yet. Not to say that I’ve done such a thing, but from my understanding, that’s how it has to change for the upper levels.

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We don’t completely disagree because I was making two separate points. Steve says you need to engage with the language: what you are describing IS engaging with the language, even though it’s engaging with parts of the language that aren’t specifically within your sphere of interest.

I’m not going to disagree with you on the piece about doing formal study etc (honestly it makes sense - you don’t get to university level of english without going to university) but I’ll say: let’s wait and see. I have no personal evidence.

I think for example, my Spanish (which is my best one) is likely high B2 low C1. I didn’t do anything formal as such. Hmmm that’s not actually true. I made a conscious effort to imbibe the grammar. But other than that I basically engaged with the community and watched a ton of TV.

What I’m interested in finding out, is how to get to at least B2 (legit) without having to take formal grammar classes or engage with the community. I’m not sure it’s possible tbh but I’d prefer if at all possible to keep it in my spare time. Anyhow we’ll see.

Great conversation.

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“What I’m interested in finding out, is how to get to at least B2 (legit) without having to take formal grammar classes or engage with the community. I’m not sure it’s possible tbh but I’d prefer if at all possible to keep it in my spare time. Anyhow we’ll see.”

Possible for sure. And you could do it (get to a solid B2) by the follow-your-interests approach. It’s at B2 where people seem to plateau. Even living in country. They just have the same conversations day-in-day-out at work, at the shop, etc. and then remain in their expat cliques. These people don’t get past this level because they don’t break out of their everyday routines and expose themselves to other parts of the language. I’m not saying you have to do formal study, but by delierate study I meant, deliberating attempting to improve the language - in this case the deliberate choice is to expose yourself to all aspects of the language - if you want to become highly advanced. But to get to B2, this isn’t an issue. Use the follow-your-interests approach all the way.

27

xxdb,

You wrote above: ‘Guys like Benny Lewis have built careers on the broad statement “you can learn any language to fluency in six months”’

Actually, Benny Lewis said 3 months not 6 months.

His website is called Fluent in 3 months :wink:

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LOL yeah you’re right. He did say 3 months.

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An update:

I just passed a B2 comprehension test. 20/20 for listening and 17/20 for reading. I wasn’t super confident in all my answers, but I still passed.

https://eclexam.eu/sample-test-italian/

My statistics:
Known Words 13,224
LingQs 32,989
LingQs Learnt 7,496
Hours Listened 474
Words Read 1.527M
Hours Speaking 22

Plus the small amount of Anki I did back in the day. I haven’t touched Anki since.

Some of these listening and reading has been from TV shows with subtitles. When I used subtitles, I imported them into LingQ and added the Known Words.

Also, I record speaking as half or two thirds of a conversation.

The new level for Intermediate 2 in Italian is 17,280 Known Words. By the time I get to this, I suspect, I’ll have a solid B2 level, as opposed to my early B2 level.

EDIT: I think I estimate this to be about 700 hours in total.

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Slow clap my friend. That’s a solid win. Pleased for you.

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Just a side question, did you sit for these exams online? In my opinion, official exams have a different testing environment when you have to listen to recordings while nearby students are coughing in a testing room. And you are writing answers to your questions all the while listening to the recordings. The same goes for reading under timed conditions. and they test formal language which has a greater word density in reading texts than say reading subtitles.

Nonetheless, congrats for achieving B2 level with mere 1.5 million words read. Still, you can not beat that guy who achieved C2 in German with 1,5 million words. :slight_smile:

Ich bin Dummkopf :wink: LOL

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Congrats, nfera!

Then the guess “ca. 2 - 2.5 or even 3 million words read / listened to for reaching a B2-C1 level in reading and listening comprehenion for closer L2s” seems to be ok.

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@asad100101

I linked to the test I took above. It’s just two PDFs and one mp3 file. I set the timer and followed the exam instructions. But I didn’t do it in a loud cafe. I was coughing myself. Does that count? :slight_smile: Also, I think you can take online language exams these days, since the pandemic. At least I’ve seen some. I agree that there’s a skill in taking exams. Half of the writing part was some weird matching pairs thing. If you hadn’t taken silly exams before, you would honestly be very confused.

If you really want, you could add up to 100k extra words perhaps. But it’s probably less. There are just random stuff, which aren’t easily recorded, such as a friend texting you. A real benefit of actually setting your phone to Italian and going through an Italian VPN though is that your search engine results sometimes get returned in Italian. So sometimes the first result is the Wikipedia page in Italian. And laziness usually wins. :wink:

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@PeterBormann

Yeah, low B2 is still pretty inadequate though. A solid to upper B2 level would be better. Or even C1. And in that case, you want the numbers you are saying. From passing the B1 test to passing the B2 one, it was actually double the words read and triple the hours listened.

B1 vs B2
words read: 755k vs. 1.5M
hours listened: 157 vs. 474

(I consider my time watching TV series with Italian subtitles to not be super efficient, as I mentioned in another thread, because there’s no ability to look up unknown words. Furthermore, some of the TV series I watched were half in dialect.)

That being said, to get to a C1 level, if we double what I currently have, would be 3M words read.

I think the key is, as you already know, the selection of material. Material must slowly increase in difficulty and ideally focus on high- and mid-frequency words (such as those used in spoken language, i.e. podcasts and YouTube videos). Also, the read, then read-while-listening x2, then relisten to material many times over works quite well. At the current level, I skip the first read-only through, as it’s only necessary for material with 15%+ New Words.

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Thanks for the update! It’s super encouraging to see you making such progress.