BASELANG DELE, A SPANISH C2 EXAM REVIEW 2019

Going from Spanish level zero to taking the DELE C2 exam in 1.5 years using just BaseLang.

I just finished taking the DELE C2 exam at the University of EAFIT in Medellin, Colombia on May 24–25, 2019. As there isn’t a lot of information online about the logistics of the exam, I decided to write this review. I won’t get my results until about 3 months from now.

The C2 exam is the highest level of Spanish certification available and is good for life. It costs about $200 in Colombia and is only offered twice a year (May/November).

I also wanted to use this time to review BaseLang, the company I used to study for the C2 exam.

Registering for the exam:

Make sure that you do not miss the registration deadline for the C2 exam as it is only offered twice a year, once in May and once in November.

You have to create an account on the DELE website to register for the exam. However, only people taking the exam in Spain can complete their registration online through the DELE site. If you are taking the test anywhere outside of Spain, you have to go into the DELE site with your DELE account and then find the email address of the testing center of the country where you want to take the test. Then you register directly with the individual testing centers through email correspondence, not through the DELE website. In other words, you will not finish your registration on the DELE website if you are not taking the exam in Spain.

So I emailed the testing center at EAFIT University. They then sent me an application to fill out for the exam. I also had to pay for the C2 exam (roughly $200 and you buy it through another entity) and scan a picture of my passport. So I emailed EAFIT: 1) my application, 2) a receipt that I paid for the exam, and 3) a picture of my passport. They then sent me an email confirming receipt of the items and that I was registered for the exam. A week before the exam, they sent me the time and dates of the exam. The oral presentation was at 4:20pm on Friday May 24, 2019 and the writing and listening/reading exams were at 8:00am-1:30pm on Saturday May 25, 2019.

My Level of Spanish:

I learned Spanish for a year over the internet through a company called BaseLang that offered unlimited individual lessons for $150 a month. The program is incredible as my Spanish level was zero when I started it and by the end of the year I was speaking at a B2/C1 level. I then went to BaseLang’s physical school in Laureles, Medellin to prepare for the C2 exam. The BaseLang Medellin DELE program costs $700 (for unlimited one on one classes). I was there for 6 weeks where I studied Spanish for 8 hours a day until the day of the exam.

I knew I was overreaching, but I was really determined to see how far I could push the program so I signed up for the C2 exam. Generally, people who take the C2 exam have lived and worked in a Spanish speaking country for years. I’m from Hawaii where practically no one speaks Spanish. I also have not lived or worked in a Spanish speaking country at all, but I really wanted to see how much I could improve if I worked hard!

Exam Preparation and Materials:

You have to study for the C2 exam. The exam is just as much about test strategy as it is about being able to speak Spanish. Therefore, it is crucial that you have the correct practice test materials that you can use to prepare for the exam. You also have to practice taking the practice exams under timed conditions.

I highly recommend a book called the Cronometro (2014). It’s about $30. It comes in digital format or in physical format. I bought the digital version off their website and it was awesome. It has 4 practice exams, with a lot of additional exercises, testing strategies, and information about the test. It comes with audios in digital format and answers and a very intuitive interface. I could access everything easily through my iPad and it was great to use! It replicated the exam really well (other than a few issues which are listed further below).

There’s also a book called Edelsa. You can only buy it in physical form. However, you have to buy the answers separately which makes no sense. I was able to see a preview of the book on Scribd, but overall it was too inconvenient for me to use. I didn’t have a CD player so even if I got my hands on a physical copy, it would not have worked out for me. I would definitely go with the Cronometro.

YOU NEED A TEACHER

You need a Spanish teacher to listen to your Spanish oral presentations, ask you questions, converse with, and who will correct your writing exams or you will not survive the C2 exam.

You can take DELE C2 prep classes. But they are really expensive. For example, private classes at the University of EAFIT in Medellin would be $1200 and for a class with 3–8 students the cost is still around $420. These classes are not unlimited.

However, Baselang DELE with unlimited private classes at their Laureles, Medellin school is $599/month and you get to choose so many different teachers! This is the cheapest option I have found and all the teachers were incredible.

As of June 3, 2019: BaseLang has decided to integrate their Real World and DELE programs into the one subscription for both online and in Medellin. That means that future students who sign up to Real World, will also receive access to DELE without needing to upgrade. In other words, the DELE curriculum will be a natural progression for anyone who completes the Real World material and wants to study more advanced materials. Just to confirm, the cost for the Real World program is $599/month at the Medellin school and $149/month online.

The majority of the teachers at BaseLang have all graduated from the University of Antioquia, which is one of the most prestigious universities in Colombia. They all speak wonderful English (although all my classes were in only Spanish at this point). The teachers are so kind, patient, and professional! Since there are a lot of teachers, even if you take 8 hours of classes straight (which you probably shouldn’t as you should be enjoying the nice weather of Medellin), because you can constantly rotate teachers, you don’t get teacher/student fatigue.

The school is also located in Laureles, a very safe and calm neighborhood, with a lot of shopping malls and restaurants nearby. The school provides free water and coffee all day and has fast, free WiFi.

There is also a wonderful dance studio within walking distance called Euforia Escuela de Baile. It’s an amazing dance school where you can take individual or group classes to learn salsa, bachata, and merengue for a great price! It is a great way to work off stress after studying Spanish all day.

Exam Day:

No one takes the C2 exam. On test day, it was just me and a girl who was an exchange student from China who were candidates for C2. She was majoring in Spanish and had studied it for 5 years. She was really nice! The rest of the candidates were B2/B1 and a couple of C1s.

Overall Test Logistics:

The test consists of 3 parts. Tape this picture on your study materials. You need to memorize what the test consists of and how much time you have for each section. Generally, there is a 25 minute break between reading/listening exam and the writing exam. The oral presentation is usually on a different day.

Test 1 — Reading Comprehension and Listening

This part of the test is split into 2 parts. Reading comprehension and listening comprehension (both sections are further split into 3 parts).

Unfortunately, BaseLang did not prepare me well for this section. This is NOT a fault of the teachers. It is more that the BaseLang materials for this section were way too easy, so I was really underprepared for this part of the exam. For example, BaseLang uses way less vocabulary and they focus more on picking the correct verb conjugation (which is way too easy at C2 level). They also did not paraphrase their answer options so you could pick the right answers just using key words (so I would get lazy and “keyword” my way to right answers). Whereas the actual DELE exam forces you to completely understand the questions/speakers because the answers are all paraphrased using completely different vocabulary.

The other thing BaseLang needs to change in regards to its materials is the formatting. Their study materials were like 90+ pages long because they would put less text on each page (because bigger text is easier to see for people taking online classes, which is understandable). However, an actual DELE exam is only 3 pages. For example, on a real exam the answers to the vocabulary section would be all on 1 page. But BaseLang would put them on 10 different pages. The real exam’s text would be 2 pages. BaseLang would have 30 pages of text. So if you were to try to print the BaseLang PowerPoint exam to do it in class, it would be near impossible. They need to create a PDF format for people at the Medellin school which is much shorter and actually looks like the actual exam!

Here’s an example of current BaseLang DELE C2 material below:

As you can see above, the BaseLang materials answer options have things that the DELE C2 exam does not test on such as prepositions (por, con, para), nor verb conjugations (abrirte, ábrete, abriré). Furthermore, volar, correr, and leer are way too easy vocabulary words for C2.

Reading Comprehension (6o minutes for all 3 parts, 26 questions total)

• Overall notes: You are NOT allowed to write on the exam materials. You are also not allowed to detach pages from the exam to place the questions and answers side by side. However, you are given scratch paper to take notes on. Keep this in mind as you’ll have to keep flipping back and forth during the exam to look at the questions and then the answers. This whole section is a time crunch.
• Part 1 — Vocabulary - 12 questions.
• This section is straight vocabulary. You have to understand that every answer option is a complex vocabulary word. Sometimes the words are synonyms, therefore, you have to know what preposition the vocabulary words pair with. Does the word come with the preposition “a”, “de”, or “con” or no preposition?
• Vocabulary is the most important part of the entire exam. You have to know your vocabulary, as all the answers throughout the exam are littered with complex vocabulary and all the answers are paraphrased! If you don’t know your vocabulary, you won’t be able to understand the answers to any section. If you can’t understand the answers, you won’t be able to answer any of the questions correctly.
• You also have to understand that all the answers throughout the whole exam are paraphrased. For example, during the listening section, the audio of the speaker will say: “Cars should not be driven early in the morning on freeways because they cause traffic.” The correct answer will say something like: “At dawn, vehicles should not be utilized on highways as they lead to congestion.” If you don’t know what the words “vehicles,” “dawn,” “congestion” or “utilized” mean, even if you understood the speaker, you would not be able to pick the right answer!
• Look at the answer options below for part 1 of a DELE C2 exam. It’s just straight vocabulary! STUDY VOCABULARY.

• Part 2- Filling in the blanks - 6 questions
• For this part, you need to know your vocabulary and your transitions, but also look for words that match between the paragraph and the fragments. This picture explains how to do this much better. If you have questions just buy the Cronometro.

• Part 3 - Matching fragments (8 questions)
• Just keep in mind that the answers are going to be paraphrased, so you have to really understand what the original text means.
• Some of the fragments are so ambiguous they could match more than one text. So you have to look for all the keywords and match them.

Listening Comprehension (45 minutes for 3 parts with 26 questions)

• BaseLang’s materials were different from the actual exam. For part 1, BaseLang makes you organize the answers, the answer options are also all out of order in their PowerPoint, so keeping track of the answers while following the order is really difficult. Which is a problem because in the actual exam you do not need to organize the answers. Furthermore, in Part 2, they only have 1 long conversation instead of 2 shorter conversations. But the one thing that stands out is that the answers in the BaseLang materials are generally word for word with the audios so it’s too easy to pick the right answer.
• Overall notes: During the actual exam, you get to read the questions for a minute before the audio plays. The audio is then played twice. You then have 1 minute to answer the questions. Even in Part 3, you are given time to read over the answers before the audio plays (this is a change from what is stated in the Cronometro, that time is not provided to read the answers in part 3 before the audio plays). Overall, I found that it’s too hard to take notes during this section. You just have to focus hard on the audios. The speakers speak so fast! Two of the speakers had accents from Spain. The other speakers had Latin American accents.
• DO NOT MAKE INFERENCES. If they do not say it in the audio, it’s not a correct answer. What I mean is, even if an answer makes sense, if a speaker has not said it, then it is NOT correct. It’s a trick answer.
• In the exam THEY HAD MUSIC PLAYING OVER THE AUDIO in some of the audios to throw you off. So practice listening to audios with music in them.
• The audio during the exam is played through speakers (not headphones).
• Part 1 - Listening to a speech then picking answers (5 questions)
• This part of the exam changed! You do NOT have to organize the answers. You just have to pick 5 correct answers and mark them down on the answer sheet. This is important because sometimes even if you pick 4 correct answers, if one answer is wrong, it could push all the other 4 out of order and you would get all the answers wrong! Now, even if one answer is wrong, you won’t get penalized even if the other answers are all out of order. All that matters is that you have picked the right answers.
• On the answer sheet, the options A-L are in order and follow the audio. So as you listen to the audio you can tick off what’s right or wrong as the audio progresses.
• This is what the answer sheet looked like for this section on the actual exam. Which shows that the organization of the answers does not matter. You just get points for selecting the correct answers.

• Part 2 - Conversation Between a Man and a Woman (15 questions)
• This part is split into 2 conversations (8 questions and 7 questions). Both conversations have different themes. You get to read the questions to conversation 1 before the audio plays twice. Then you get to read the questions to conversation 2 before it plays twice.
• All the answers are paraphrased.
• Part 3 - Interview (6 questions)
• You hear an interview and you have to answer the questions.
• All the answers are paraphrased.

Test 2 - Writing Test (150 minutes for 3 parts)

• Overall: Just practicing writing a summary of 450 words, correcting bad Spanish writing, and writing about interpreting charts. You are given 4 pages for Part 1, two pages for Part 2, and two pages for Part 3 in which you must write your essays. So you can’t write double spaced as you’ll run out of space. Thus, you need to practice writing single spaced. The texts must also be written in pen. You are allowed to take notes on scratch paper, but you cannot write on the actual exam. THE EXAM MUST BE WRITTEN BY HAND as no computers are allowed.
• In general, 5–6 paragraphs is about 450 words. 3 paragraphs is about 250 words. So practice writing these out by hand, then type them into a word document to see how many words there are. This will help you figure out how much you need to write for the exam.
• You will listen to the audio for Part 1 twice at the beginning of this part of the exam. But you can work on the different parts of the exam in whatever order you wish. Personally, I just write out Part 1 first because it’s so darn long. I then do the other two in order.
• Having a teacher is crucial here, because they can really help you improve your writing. The BaseLang teachers were absolutely top notch. 10/10.
• Part 1 - Writing a 400–450 essay summary
• You just have to summarize an audio and two texts. You need to practice writing between 400–450 words. I just generally go in order, with an intro, a paragraph for the audio, 3 paragraphs for the 2 texts, and a conclusion. I use transitions to make that order make sense.
• The important thing is that you practice writing out these essay summaries and go over them with a teacher who can make corrections with you.
• Part 2 - Correcting a writing and rewriting it
• In this section, you will have to rewrite a transcript of an interview or notes. The transcripts of an interview are much, much harder than notes because the transcripts of a person speaking usually have a lot of repetitions and colloquial words. See below:

• Part 3 - Write an essay analyzing 2 graphs
• Just practicing writing about numbers and comparing them. The number was highest when… The number was lowest when… In general the number is going down.

Test 3 - Oral Presentation (30 minutes to prepare, 20 minutes for everything: the oral presentation (6 to 8 minutes), questions (6 to 8 minutes), and conversation about titles)

• BaseLang prepared me extremely well for the oral presentations. As I was able to give a ton of practice presentations to my teachers and they would correct all of my errors. They would also ask tough questions and we would have great conversations. What really helped was recording the audio of my presentation, then going over the audio with my teacher and then we could catch every single mistake. 10/10.
• The interviewer is probably going to be from the country and region where you are taking the exam. Therefore, take the exam where you studied so you get an interviewer with an accent you are familiar with. My interviewer was a Colombian and I was familiar with the Colombian accent so I could understand everything she said.
• Overall: You are given 3 options for your presentation. You are allowed to read the titles (not the contents) before you choose the topic on which you will present. I was given the options of “Searching for Work in the Digital Era,” “Sustainability,” and “the Emancipation of Youth.” I picked Searching for Work in the Digital Era. None of my test materials said that I would get an option here! This makes this section of the test so much easier!
• YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO TAKE THE EXAM WITH YOU INTO THE INTERVIEW, ONLY YOUR NOTES. So take good notes. When the 30 minute prep time is over, the exam proctor will take away your exam.

• The interviewer is not taking notes and is watching you the whole time, so eye contact is important. The guy taking notes is behind you and you can’t see him at all.
• In my opinion you need to be able to talk about work, the economy, poverty, tourism, technology, health, youth, education, sustainability, and the environment (pollution/global warming). Actually, the economy, education, and environment/sustainability are probably the most important themes you must know as everything comes back to them. For example, almost any issue will improve or hurt the economy. Education is always usually the most generic answer for resolving any problem (climate change, unsustainable tourism, poverty, etc). And everything usually affects the environment. For example, tourism is affected by the environment/weather, pollution affects the environment, etc.
• When using the graph, just pick two numbers (the highest and lowest number on the graph) as they are generally the most important numbers and make the biggest impact and use them to highlight the main points of your presentation. “Did you know 75% of people today look for work on the internet?” “However, only 25 percent got hired!”
• Don’t get stuck just talking about numbers as it’s boring and you’re more likely to forget the numbers and will have to refer to your notes a lot. Just speak in generalities about the graph after that. “In general, between 1990 and 2000, the number of employment stayed constant/began decreasing due to advances in technology...” Don’t say what the number was for each year. This keeps your presentation from being choppy and shows that you understand the main points of the data and can draw your own conclusions.
• Just take the main points from each text, and just add information from your experiences/make stuff up (as long as the inferences you are making make sense, are drawn from the text, and do not go off topic no one will care). The important thing is that you are speaking fluidly without looking at your notes.

• Frame the conversation to WHAT YOU KNOW. If you keep having to refer to your notes to get numbers, no matter how good your Spanish is, it will be choppy and make you look like you do not have a command over the language. You also won’t be making eye contact so your presentation has less effect.
• You don’t get to look at the “titles” for Part 3 until right after questioning section in Part 2 ends. However, the interviewer will give you time to read over the titles. In my case, the interviewer made me pick 2 titles and read them, then we had a conversation about them.
• Understand that Part 1 and Part 2, the parts regarding your oral presentation are formal talk and that you should use formal words. However, part 3 is more of an informal conversation.

Overall:

• I think while I did well on the oral presentation and writing section, I had a really difficult time on the listening and reading comprehension section. The problem was that I didn’t get the Cronometro until a week before the exam so I never really got to prepare well for the reading/listening part of the exam. I never realized how vocabulary heavy the exam was or that all the answers would be paraphrased.
• The BaseLang materials I was using for this section (reading/listening) were way, way too easy, so I was severely under prepared for this part of the exam. Teachers can’t really help you with the reading/listening section, you really only improve by reading and listening more. I only realized it when I took a practice exam and got almost every answer wrong. So I had to go find better study materials (and I found the Cronometro).
• If I could do it again, I would take an old practice exam early on in my studying. I would also start right off the bat with the Cronometro materials. I would then use the BaseLang materials to supplement the Cronometro materials.
• If I don’t pass the exam, I probably will retake the exam in November. I will definitely restudy at BaseLang again, however, as they have the best professors!
• I think with the C2 exam, I was overreaching beyond my Spanish level. But because I studied so hard to make up for my lack of skill, my Spanish improved tremendously in less than two months. Regardless of the results, I am very happy and satisfied with my Spanish now.
• The exam results usually come out 3 months after the exam.