/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Level C1 and C2: Advanced Fluency

“When we really consider the etymology of the word Hulk, is it at all surprising that he defines himself by the destruction of the objects that surround him?” – the Hulk at C1

I’m combining these levels into one description because they’re shades of fluency. A C1 speaker rarely has to search for a phrase, has full grammatical knowledge, knows idioms, can read technical papers, etc. A C2 speaker has essentially the grammar and vocabulary grasp of a native speaker.

Often at the C levels, learners will dig into a specific topic more, such as legal, scientific or business specific language skills.

Think Christoph Waltz’s English in Inglorious Basterds. Not really native, but super close.

The time it takes to progress through the C levels vary based on what your specific goals are and how you’re working your way there. The Goethe Institut says it takes about 1000 hours of total class time to reach C2, so maybe another 300 hours after you’re done with B2. From scratch, 1000 hours means about 4 years of being in class for an hour every single weekday, plus studying time.

If you did it absolutely full time, in a classroom or with a tutor just about all day, every day, you could probably get to C-level language proficiency from scratch in about a year of constant work.