A question about A level language conversation

[mauvish]

I'm interested to hear from people who've done an A level in a MFL recently, or whose children are doing one or have recently done one, or from teachers of MFL.

How fluent are you/they in conversation at A level standard?

I am not fluent but I'm reasonably proficient in Spanish, but I want to keep in practice so I've signed up for evening conversation classes at a local school. The remit was that it's strictly for people who are post A level, and will be entirely in Spanish.

And I'm quite surprised by how poor some of my classmate's conversation skills are. Very limited vocabulary, poor grammar and for one person in particular, no attempts at all at a spanish acent of any type. (eg "garden" is spanish is "jardin" - pron. "har-deen" with a soft D -- he kept saying "jar-dun", ie just like an Yorkshire garden with a J instead of G).

But I can't remember how well I could speak after A level, it was a long time ago and I've covered a lot of other ground then. I do recall our A level teacher telling us not to imagine ourselves fluent, that even the best of us had a lot more learning to do! So I'm wondering if this level is actually what I should have expected, and I've pitched too low; or if maybe some of my classmates have overestimated their abilities.

Any ideas?

Even after GCSE I could hold a basic conversation with an attempt at an accent, I would expect near fluency by A Level.

You could scrape though A Level languages at my school without being great at it, especially the grammar aspect. Even in my first year of a degree course in languages there were plenty of people who wouldn't have been able to gold a good conversation.

Post-A-level doesn’t seem useful as a label when you don’t know how long ago it was and with what grade they passed. You can compensate for poor speaking with higher scores in the other skills, too. I definitely had moments of fluency at GSCE and more at A-level. It took 4–5 years post degree for people to not notice that I was not a native speaker in an extended conversation, though. Fluency is a range in itself. Your classmates are probably not good enough to realise how bad they are.