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Please, proficiency not fluency | ||
Tags: Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5473 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes  Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 41 of 59 15 August 2010 at 1:19am | IP Logged | ||
I wasn't necessarily talking about the flashcards torture but about how your brain connects things in your foreign language. These associations 'sort of just happen'... I don't remember learning 'fluent' and 'fluid' by consciously making association between them but if you ask me, yes, the association is there. The process is just different from the way you are learning your native language where there are no other referent points to hold for. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6968 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 42 of 59 15 August 2010 at 1:39am | IP Logged | ||
There are at least two kinds of reference points when you are learning your native language, picking up the meaning though immersion and by relying on related words to figure out the meaning. Both types of possibilities are available in L2 as well if you are immersed in it. Regarding the first mode of acquisition, I find that you can often pick up a whole expression from other speakers well enough that you end up using it with confidence in your speech and writing, and yet you may find yourself stumped when asked about the meaning of an individual word inside the expression. This is really not unlike what happens in L1. Given that "(s)he speaks fluent ..." is a set phrase, this is not an unlikely mode of acquisition both for natives and non-natives. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5473 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 43 of 59 15 August 2010 at 3:05am | IP Logged | ||
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and still what you say does not explain the fact that non-natives made an association
that natives did not. that is telling me that there is something else there. it seems to me that in a foreign language acquisition brain tends more to 'learn words through words', to remember them by connecting them to other words that sound or mean (or both) similar, while when you are learning your native language brain tends to connect them more with abstract ideas. simply, when you are learning foreign language you tend to think about the words more then when you are learning your native one. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6968 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 44 of 59 15 August 2010 at 3:42am | IP Logged | ||
What I said to lingoleng earlier, that the natives will know what fluent means because of the association with related words, was not the only possibility for how most natives acquire this word - maybe they figure it out just by hearing it enough times in context, without the need to desipher its meaning through related words. This in turn makes me wonder just how many non-natives will have learned that word for the first time by association. It's not like I remember how I learned its meaning, it could've been just by direct acqusition. Or not. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hypersport Senior Member United States Joined 5906 days ago 216 posts - 307 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 45 of 59 15 August 2010 at 5:00am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't see why there's always so much debate about what fluency is or isn't.
I can only speak for what I've seen here in the U.S. but I would imagine it's the same everywhere else. Let's say a native Spanish speaker is trying to communicate with some Americans here in the States and he's not getting anywhere. One of the Americans calls his friend over who has claimed to be fluent in Spanish. We all know that this means that he's going to be able to understand the Spanish speaker with no problem and he's going to be able to speak back to him the same way that he speaks with us in English. Simple as that. That's what "fluent" means to anyone who hasn't studied another language and should mean to anyone who's attempting to learn one. Now when we see the guy who claimed fluency have problems, we immediately know he's not fluent. Maybe he struggles and gets through the ordeal with some success, but either way we have a different opinion now. He's not bad. Or he knows some Spanish, whatever. Bottom line is we know he's not "fluent" or he would have communicated almost effortlessly. Again, simple as that. And yeah, lots of people can be fluent in their native language and have very little proficiency in the language at the same time. There's plenty of people who are fluent and have a very weak command of the language with limited vocabulary. Other's that can't spell, or read or write. Doesn't mean they aren't fluent, they are. So no, to speak fluently wouldn't require proficiency in a language. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hanni aka cordelia0507 Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5629 days ago 69 posts - 92 votes Speaks: Dutch* | Message 46 of 59 15 August 2010 at 10:02am | IP Logged | ||
You are right. The word fluent is totally misused in the English language. As a result speakers of other languages who know English have started misusing the word in a similar way in their own languages, so the mis-use is spreading. I know people who claim to be fluent in <language x - usually French, German or Dutch> but have later proved to just about be capable of some very limited communication with waiters and shop assistants. This is crazy and irritating, plus a joke to people who really ARE fluent in a foreign language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pineappleboom Groupie United States languageloft-ashley. Joined 5278 days ago 66 posts - 76 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Russian | Message 47 of 59 15 August 2010 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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calm yourself child
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5455 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 48 of 59 16 August 2010 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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The inspiration for starting this thread came from a parallel thread, "How do you know when you are fluent?", that some readers may have looked at. Of course, there were all kinds of responses, but, basically, most people associated fluency with fluidity of speech. I know there has been some discussion here about the etymology of fluency and the connection with the word fluidity. Nonetheless, it seems that for nearly everybody flow of speaking is what first comes to mind. In that sense, this is quite close to the technical usage in linguistics.
The problem, of course, is that it doesn't stop there. Fluency becomes a marker for general mastery of the language. The assumption that in order to be speak fluently, one has to be able to do everything else. There are two issues here. First of all, the reason I believe we should use fluency in its restricted sense is that when talking about fluency we can focus on the specific subject without getting sidetracked by all sorts of tangential questions. A very basic question, for example, is: How does one improve fluency? I'm not going to attempt to answer that question here, but I will say that we should focus on those techniques that help us reduce the pauses, hesitations and stumbling that characterize non-fluent speech and are very irritating to listeners. The other issue is that fluency as a general measure of language proficiency is so vague as to be generally useless outside of the most simplistic discussions. The problem here is that no one term, even "proficiency" can give an accurate overall picture of one's linguistic skills because these skills are so different. Most of us in this forum claim to speak various languages. We may be able to impress certain colleagues, friends and relatives with our language skills, but I am sure that we are all too painfully aware of our inadequacies in certain areas. To master just one foreign language without being exposed to it at a young age is a major accomplishment indeed. The polyglots that I know tend to recognize their limitations and don't make wild claims of native mastery in all their languages. So, how can one generally describe one's proficiency beyond the rather useless terms like "basic fluency" or "intermediate-level speaker"? The obvious solution, as has been pointed out by others, is to use a standardized rating system such as the CEFR model where five skills are rated at six levels. I totally agree; at the same time, I acknowledge that it is a bit cumbersome to have to detail the five skills. The other solution is to generally rate oneself on the scale from A1 to C2 (e.g. "I'm C1 in Spanish"). What would be interesting would be some standardized abbreviation for the five skills so that the ratings could be easily compared (e.g. "In Spanish, I'm C1-B1-B2-C2-B1".) Maybe this does exist. In the Canadian federal government service where many jobs are designated bilingual and candidates are routinely tested, there is such an abbreviation for Reading-Writing-Oral Production with ratings from A to C. Positions are designated with a combination of letters (e.g. "This position requires CBC in French"). Edited by s_allard on 16 August 2010 at 4:13pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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