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Becoming fluent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| LpMagilicutty Newbie United States Joined 6189 days ago 24 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog, German, Italian, French | Message 33 of 38 19 February 2010 at 8:05am | IP Logged | ||
The tip on a stock of 100 connecters is brilliant! My whole problem with fluency is I get nervous and go blank and then am too embarrassed to continue. The connectors are just the thing I need. They give one time to think. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 34 of 38 19 February 2010 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Great stuff, hypersport. What you're doing is totally in line with my approach. Just let me point out to some
readers that closed-captions of tv show and subtitles of films are not exactly the same thing. Closed-captions are actual transcriptions of what is being said. They are not always accurate, but they really help to show the words being used. The reason I find this so useful is that in the beginning, and even now, it is not always easy to distinguish the words in the stream of sounds even though I get a gist of what is being said. For example, as I write this I'm still trying to figure out something I heard on Spanish television yesterday and I can't seem to find in a dictionary because I'm not sure how it is spelt. Quite a few times, I've had to ask native speakers to decode things for me because I just couldn't distinguish the words. And this raises an interesting point. Real spontaneous informal spoken speech is often a challenge because it can be quite messy. First of all, we are not dealing with actors or reporters who articulate clearly even as they imitate popular speech. Then, issues of dialect may come into play. Finally, spontaneous spoken language, especially of lesser educated users, is full of all kinds of things such as clipped forms, hesitations, slang, repititions, grammatical shortcuts, etc. I find this really noticeable in tv news reports. I can understand the reporters perfectly but not at all the people being interviewed in the street. I remember one occasion where a reporter on Spanish tv interviewed someone in the midst of a parade during a festival and I literally could not make out a single word the person said. For these kinds of situations, closed-captions are wonderful. As another participant has pointed out, connectors are very useful to keep the conversation going. One variation I would add on the theme is the use of what I call fillers. These are basically words that can be used in various places just to basically fill in a gap while searching for something else. In Spanish it could things like "este" or "digamos", in French "disons", "n'est-ce pas" and "mettons" and in English "you know", "of course", "sort of". Note that these are legitimate forms that can be used for specific purposes. It's just that we can throw them in to keep things going. The other kind of filler in conversations is the little tags that one uses to basically indicate reception of the other person's utterance. The classic examples in English are "gotcha", "right" and "understood". This is very important in telephone conversations where it's oten just a kind of grunt "uhuh" to indicate that we are still listening. What I've always found so amazing is how these little conversations fillers or connectors go such a long way to help things flow. especially when the other person is doing most of the talking. Edited by s_allard on 19 February 2010 at 1:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5868 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 35 of 38 19 February 2010 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | ||
I have found that making text files of closed captions or sub-titles to be a useful albeit time consuming exercise, especially for good quality and interesting material. Captions are often not well synchronised and often appear for very brief periods, whereas a text file is always there and easy to sync. As well, you can correct and improve the transcription if necessary. I have tried to convince the Dutch public broadcaster that it should provide such text transcripts for programs that already have subtitles. By Dutch law, the public broadcaster is required to produce virtually all programming with sub-titles, mainly to assist deaf viewers. Although there has been a lot of progress, there have been a lot of technical problems, and for web-based broadcasts, complicated software add-ons that many people are having problems with. A text transcript solves all of these problems and is an easy low-tech solution. But my suggestions are falling on deaf ears, if you'll excuse the pun. So my contention is that text transcripts are a lot more useful to language learners than closed captions and sub-titles, and I wish broadcasters could provide these transcripts for web-based material. It would be very easy, and very helpful. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vusalgustav Tetraglot Newbie Azerbaijan Joined 6278 days ago 23 posts - 56 votes Speaks: Azerbaijani*, English, Russian, Turkish Studies: German, Spanish | Message 36 of 38 19 February 2010 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me the fluency in the foreign language, is the state when I can understand nearly
everything when I hear and read that language and able to reply to my respondent without any hesitation or any vocabulary searching, even if the word which I use is not the most suitable and expected word by the native speaker. In my experience that level I usually reach at (using Common European Language Framework): Reading:B2 Listening:C1 Writing:B2 Speaking:B2 I think this is more of "practical fluency" rather than "linguistic or bragging fluency". Edited by vusalgustav on 20 February 2010 at 9:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5558 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 37 of 38 20 February 2010 at 7:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) is a great step forward in providing offically recognised proficiency guidelines for language learners and teachers alike. Languages like Irish, Russian and even Sign Language are fast joining the ever-growing community of state-recognised institutions that now employ these guidelines.
In terms of the CEFR, I like to think of fluency more as a wonderful vivid spectrum, each colour merging and flowing into the next as progressive interlinguas or waveforms, but all part of the same one bright white light, a complex yet beautiful symphony of lightwaves. I feel it begins its colourful climb with "basic fluency" around B2, arches widely through "intermediate fluency" during C1, and eventually slides gracefully into "advanced fluency" at C2 and even beyond (the level required by the Großes Deutsches Sprachdiplom for example is sometimes referred to as C2+ or D and considered educated "near-native fluency"). Now there's a pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow I'd like to get my hands on! ;) Edited by Teango on 20 February 2010 at 7:44pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 38 of 38 20 February 2010 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Continuing on a practical note, I would like to discuss some other techniques that I use to enhance my fluency.
But let me first remind readers that I'm talking about Spoken Interaction in the CEFR model, I will not be concerned here about reading or writing. We can take for granted that understanding is always at a higher level than production or social interaction. What is the problem at hand? Basically, it's how do I go up a level or two in the CEFR scale. Now when we speak about social interaction, as part of the learning strategy, we can assume that most everyday interactions are steoreotypical and often relatively predictable. Greetings are the most evident example and are readily learned. That's exactly why those are usually the first and often the only words people learn in a foreign language. But that repetitive and predictable nature of many language interactions holds true for many situations. If I go into a store, in most cases I will get some question along the lines of: Hello, may I help you?, Are you being served?, Is someone looking after you? The answers can be typical as well: I'm looking for.., Do you have..?, No thanks, I'm just looking, etc. The point of all of this is that one can take a sociolinguistic approach and identify model forms and patterns that one can apply to various situations. Initially, this is a form of parroting, but soon one will get a better understanding of the grammar. One of the most important skills to master is how to ask for directions or where to find things. Generally speaking, learning how to ask questions is an extremely important skill. The importance of this approach lies in the answers. We know the question. What we want to know is how to phrase the answer in an authentic way. That's what I want to emulate, So I may make a mental note or even write something down. And then of course I'll repeat it or try to use it as often as I can. A classic example of ritualized interaction is a telephone conversation. All languages have some equivalent of: Hello, Just a minute, May I speak to,. This is ,,, speaking, So and so is not in, Would you like to leave a message, Hold on...,Bye, etc. So the strategy here is as to build a repertory of model phrases that one learns by heart. With time, one assimilates the underlying grammar, but for the time being the most important thing is to get talking as quickly as possible. I make flash cards with phrases and choose a set that I intend to use on a certain day. I then make the point of using the phrase maybe five or six times that day. Just the other day, I heard the Spanish idion "poner toda la carne en el asador" meaning "to hold nothing back". Well I decided that I had to use that expression at least ten times one day. And I did. It was a lot of fun. Underlying this strategy is the basic principle that most learning comes from repetition. We can repeat to ourselves, call it shadowing or languaging, but really it means the same thing. Keep using it until you have it etched in your memory. Edited by s_allard on 20 February 2010 at 10:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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