People who've acquired a foreign language at an early age tend to do surprisingly badly on big exams, despite often being more fluent, because big exams tend to focus on formal language and grammar, and that isn't how ordinary people speak. They also tend to do surprisingly badly on big exams because people who have had formal education in a language will have been trained to give expanded answers that show off key vocab and key grammar, whereas people who've learnt a language more naturally will be more likely to write exam answers like "Yeah." "Sure." "Bob." instead of answers like "Yes, I do enjoy playing basketball in my free time." "You are welcome to use my handkerchief." or "The person in the paragraph who gave the piece of paper to the foreman was Bob Freeman."
yeah, when i was in 6th grade our english teacher didn't like it if you answered a why question immediately with because + reason. she'd only give full marks if you respond with restatement of why question as a declarative + because + reason.
this is not that early, in US terms this would be 8th grade to 12th grade. Learning english at age of ~12-15 is probably the oldest one can be before having english with a heavy accent. I speak from experience, and because almost everyone I know is an immigrant who learned ESL.
@@grilledflatbread4692 Yeah you still see the pattern in people who acquire more naturally by immersion as opposed to formal education at later ages, it's just not always as common because they're more likely to have had formal foreign language education. And obviously in immigrant dominated communities the trends are going to be very very different.
@@T.xvii.17I mean there is a difference between formal, literary and casual. We should always learn formal and literary, as casual is... well in the sense of the word naturally created
Yeah, if scouring the internet while learning nihongo has taught me anything, it's that these "as a foreign language" tests are HARD if you don't study more erudite vocabulary. And merely living in the language's origin country doesn't help that much, because you mostly pick up the colloquial version passively. The solution is to read. And I mean _read._ Books, novels, papers, anything you find interesting, you read it. Can't be lazy about that.
As an ESL who has took botb TOEIC and IELTS, let me tell you that the test is far easier than other Language exam like TOELF or IELTS. The vocabulary is something you would expect from a drama tv show. Someone like A-Chan for example could get 900+ score easily.
I am quite sure if they have a report one day in the future about the rising English proficiency among young students, some of them will be credited to Vtubers and Hololive.
![Ririka's TOEIC score is not enough to be smug as a returnee. [Eng Sub/Ichijou Ririka]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
