[ekidd]

> Reaching a B2-C1 level of proficiency. That's certainly conversational, but far from fluent. Consider that for Russian, the passive vocabulary of someone with a C2 proficiency is about twice that of someone with a C1.

C1 is good enough for a first-year undergraduate student to be admitted into some of the most competitive universities in the world. (Graduate students, notoriously, can get admitted with less.) Even my French DELF B2 exam certificate would be enough for most French universities, though my first year would have been miserable.

To give you a more concrete example, my DELF B2 oral exam required me to draw a presentation topic from a bowl. My topic was "Should Paris institute congestion charges to improve traffic in the city?" I was given ~20 minutes to prepare, with no dictionary and no other resources.

I then had to give a 10-minute presentation, with no outline allowed, presenting my opinion and defending it. Afterwards, the examiners spent another 10 minutes asking me questions like, "Yes, your plan would be good for the environment. But wouldn't it hurt the poor?"

Obviously, neither my presentation nor my responses were brilliant at B2, but I could do it. (And yes, the DELF B2 may be harder than some other B2 exams.)

I think that worrying about "near-native fluency" is a waste of time for most language learners. Nearly everybody would be better served by trying to reach a level where they can socialize agreeably and work professionally. The very highest levels of proficiency normally require years of immersion at school or work. But if all you want to do is hang out with friends, or sign up for a gym, or get a job, or read books for fun, C1 is great. It's just a matter of putting in the hours.

[BjoernKW]

> I think that worrying about acheiving "near-native fluency" is a waste of time for most language learners.

Learning a language can be about much more than mere pragmatic considerations like "Will I be able to get my point across to my peers.". Language also is about culture and aesthetics.

So, while native proficiency might be a waste of time if you simply want to use a language as a communication tool it becomes a worthwhile endeavour if you see a foreign language as something that in a broader sense helps you to grow as a person.

Most non-native speakers probably will never reach that level of proficiency but to quote a French philosopher: "La lutte elle-même vers les sommets suffit à remplir un coeur d'homme." ("The struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart.")

[ekidd]

> So, while native proficiency might be a waste of time if you simply want to use a language as a communication tool it becomes a worthwhile endeavour if you see a foreign language as something that in a broader sense helps you to grow as a person.

If a language is your only tool for communicating with other human beings, then it's worth almost any investment. Especially if you're ambitious and educated and eager to fit in.

And of course, part of the reason that educated native speakers are so impressive is exactly that: they might have 17 years of schooling, 100 million words of reading, 25,000 hours of socializing, and so on.

In comparison, a C1 student might have 1,500 hours total. It's more than enough to function quite adequately, but it's not even in the same league as an educated native.

If you learn a language to help you "grow as a person", then there will often come a point where the price is just too high to go further. I've spoken French for 6 years at home and read millions of words for fun. And it's hard for me to justify the price of further improvement. (So I'm having fun with Spanish instead, where 300 hours should be enough to carry on basic conversations.)