u/Tometek

I see that some of the DELE scores are grouped together rather than requiring you to pass every individual section.

For example, in the B2, Listening and Speaking are combined and you need 30/50 between them. So, at least in theory, someone could get 25/25 in Listening and only 5/25 in Speaking and still pass that group, despite doing terribly in Speaking.

Seems kind of insane that you could get the B2 certificate with a 5/25 speaking score lol.

Like, they could talk about basically anything, understand you perfectly, joke around, explain complicated ideas, etc. But their grammar was still pretty shaky and they’d regularly mess up things like gender, verb forms, articles, word order, whatever. But they would just blast by it and keep going without correcting themselves or indicating that they realized they made a mistake.

Did they still feel fluent to you? Did the mistakes stand out a lot, or did you mostly stop noticing after a while?

I’m curious because I feel like people usually talk about fluency and grammatical accuracy as if they automatically go together, but I’m not sure that’s always true.

I can't seem to find anything on the Cervantes website about this...

So for example, after Tarea 1 has played twice and its over, do I have any time to look over my answers or will I immediately hear "Tarea 2 you now have 30 seconds to read the questions" and have to move on?

Also, after the Tarea 5, do I have any time to look over my answers before I hand in my exam?

Thanks.

I've been doing timed DELE B2 mock exams and there's one reading task that I just cannot get my head around: Tarea 3, where six fragments have been removed from a text and you have eight options to put back in the correct gaps.

My strategy so far is to completely ignore Tarea 3 until I've finished the other three tareas. I tend to do much better on those other three and finish them quickly. Typically by the time I have finished those, I have a dedicated 30 minutes for only Tarea 3.

With Tarea 3, I feel like I am basically making educated guesses on all six. I don't feel confident about any of my answers when I do this section. I've done 4 timed DELE reading mocks at this point, and my highest score in this section has been a 2/6.

The frustrating part is that I can read the paragraph and understand what it's saying, and I can understand all eight fragments individually. What I can't reliably understand is why fragment X goes into a specific gap.

For anyone who is good at this task: what is your actual thought process when solving it? When you see a gap, what do you look at first? Do you work gap by gap, eliminate fragments, look for grammatical references, read the whole text first, etc.?

I've been learning Spanish seriously for 2 years now and I'm preparing for the DELE B2. I live in Spain. I have two teachers, one for DELE and one for casual conversation. I meet with each of them once a week for 1 hour.

I've done 3 DELE mock exams. With reading and listening I averaged between 70-80% across all 3, with writing a bit weaker with an average of 60-70%. But all and all, pretty decent. Reading and listening are comfortable passes, writing is a bit shaky but there is room for improvement.

Unfortunately, I failed speaking in all three mocks I took. It feels completely disconnected from the rest of my Spanish.

I feel like every time I open my mouth I have two choices.

Option 1: Keep everything simple and speak at roughly a B1 level. This is what I do in my day to day life and it serves me fine but this is not ambitious enough to pass the DELE B2.

Option 2: Try to use the more complex structures and advanced vocabulary that I know I can use in my writing, but make a truly astronishing amount of tiny errors in my speech.

And by errors, I mean stupid mistakes with gender and agreement, using the wrong preposition, pronouns, the wrong verb conjugation because I lost track of the subject in my sentence, indicative vs. subjunctive, etc. It's like my entire working memory capacity is being used to produce these big boy words/connectors that I can't keep track of the little things simaltaneously so the wheels fall off.

Sometimes I'll give myself an open ended prompt in Spanish and do the speaking to text function on my phone for like 2 minutes, so I can see what I've said written in front of me and I can immediately spot the errors and correct them.

I feel like I've hit a wall. It's like I know the grammar but I simply cannot accurately produce under pressure. I'm supposed to sit for this exam in December, I think I'm cooked.

What do I need to do to improve this?

The answer book I have does not give a reason, it only gives the answer.

Audio Transcript:

"Yo duermo muy poquito. Me acuesto sobre las once o así, leo un poquito y a las tres y media ya estoy levantada. A mí antes me encantaba dormir por la mañana, pero ahora tengo síndrome de piernas inquietas y con eso no se duerme. Luego el día, para mí, es muy largo y me da tiempo a hacer de todo."

Option b) Una enfermedad le impide dormir muchas horas

Option i) Está levantado a las tres y media

To me. both answers look correct, but the book says the answer is B

Something I've noticed in language learning communities is that a lot of people say things like "I'm B1" or "I'm B2," but sometimes it seems like those levels are based more on a general feeling than on actually testing the skills involved.

DISCLAIMER I don't think everyone needs to take an official exam to know where they are. Exams aren't perfect, and self assessment can be accurate. But I do think there is a difference between "I am B2 because I am currently studying B2 material" and "I am B2 because I mastered everything in B2".

I think a lot of the confusion comes from the fact that people use CEFR levels to mean different things. Sometimes "I'm B2" means "I'm currently studying B2." Sometimes it means "I self studied B2 and I understand and can use everything." Sometimes it means "I have passed an offcial certified B2 exam."

To me, these are quite different things.

I'm curious how people here decide their level. Do you go by official exams, self assessment, how you perform in real life, or something else?

I'm curious to know which form of the imperfect subjunctive you find yourself using more often, and if you have a strong personal preference for one over the other.

When I first started learning, I used the ra ending, however after a while, I switched over to using the -se endings.

The reason is a bit silly, but when I was speaking quickly, I would occasionally get tongue-tied. I kept accidentally pronouncing the future tense endings (like saying hablará instead of hablara) because of the similar "-ra" sound at the end. Switching to -se was a way for me to avoid this mistake and to this day I use the -se ending.

Here is the situation: You have to wear a standard, ordinary chain around your neck and never take it off. It can be silver or gold, a small Cuban link, totally normal. It has a standard clasp, and it will never rust or break. If you accept this, the reward is that you receive $1M per year without tax, in weekly installments directly in your bank account for the rest of your life.

But here is the catch: If the clasp ever moves from the back of your neck to the front of your chest and aligns perfectly in the center of your sternum, you die instantly.

You have to follow these rules:

• No tools, tape, or glue: You cannot use tape, glue, strings, or any trick to stick the clasp to your skin, attach it to your clothes, or block the chain. The chain must be completely free around your neck exactly like a normal necklace.

Would you risk it?

I've been hearing this on social media with the beginning of the World Cup.

Personally I've always felt that there is a mismatch between what is sought for an NBA, NFL player vs what is looked at to be a successful soccer player. That's to say, I can't imagine a super athlete like Lebron James being a successful footballer even if he had trained soccer in the best soccer academy on the planet for his entire life because I think his dominant athleticism don't overlap with what makes a great soccer player. But maybe I'm wrong, I'm looking for nuance in this. What do you think?

I’ve been reading up on the history of Al-Andalus, specifically the 10th-century Caliphate, and I came across something that really surprised me.

The descriptions of Caliphs like Abd al-Rahman III and Al-Hakam II make them sound like they looked more like people from northern Spain or the Basque country. I read that they often had blond or reddish hair and blue eyes, and that Abd al-Rahman III even dyed his beard black to look "more Arab."

I was hoping someone could explain how this happened and how it was viewed at the time:

1. Was it common for the Umayyad royalty to primarily have children with women from the northern Christian kingdoms? Was this a specific political thing, or just how the royal household ended up looking over time?
2. How did they reconcile looking like the people from the north with their claim to be the legitimate Arab heirs to the Umayyad line? Did the fact that a Caliph had to dye his beard mean there was a lot of pressure to maintain a certain "look" for the court?
3. Did the average person in Cordoba or the officials in the palace actually care that the Caliph looked "European," or was the father’s lineage the only thing that mattered for their legitimacy?

I'm just really curious how they balanced that "Iberian" physical reality with their "Arab" identity. Thanks!