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Does fluency involve an "epiphany moment" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Liface Triglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Lif Joined 5856 days ago 150 posts - 237 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Dutch, French | Message 41 of 47 25 November 2008 at 9:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think this is false. I know a lot of people, myself included, who dreamt in a foreign language long before they were fluent. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| wharrgarbl Newbie United States Joined 5842 days ago 27 posts - 36 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 42 of 47 25 November 2008 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm sure it's different for everyone. But I don't know, I haven't gotten to that point in any language yet. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hypersport Senior Member United States Joined 5879 days ago 216 posts - 307 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 43 of 47 25 November 2008 at 10:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think there are moments along the way that really show you you're getting it. I wouldn't say there's one moment where all of a sudden you realize you're fluent.
I think when you get to the point that you can casually talk to a stranger about a number of different subjects with minimal effort, maybe you'll start to think of yourself as fluent, even though you know that you still have a long way to go. Fluency can have very different meanings for a lot of different people. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 44 of 47 26 November 2008 at 3:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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Maybe there is a difference between step-by-step learners and holistic learners. If you learn step by step then there are always a certain number of things you can say, and the circle just widens and widens without any noticeable breaks. With holistic learners who takes their input from all over the language, the result may not be useable for a long time, but at some point there are so many bits and pieces in the collection that the whole process of decoding or encoding suddenly runs smoothly, and that's felt as an an epiphany moment.
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| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6083 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 45 of 47 26 November 2008 at 9:30am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm still waiting! Actually I only have one foreign language that I'm really good at. I don't remember having any such moment. I suppose because I'm completely immersed in it. I don't remember what it's like not to be fluent, although I remember feeling frustrated because there were soooo many gaps! Now I have good days and bad days. In some conversations with friends everything works: accent is good, metaphors are right on target, quick to respond, etc. I guess that would be "epiphany". Unfortunately there are also those days when speech fails me. So for every moment of revelation that I have there's always a dozen brain lapses that are bound to follow! Edited by Sunja on 26 November 2008 at 9:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ruan Diglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6179 days ago 95 posts - 101 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English | Message 46 of 47 29 November 2008 at 6:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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Language is a mess of meaningless noises. We don't learn content, we learn structure.
And, until you assemble all of it, it won't make any sense. After my epiphany happened, people say I'm not the same person anymore. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6270 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 47 of 47 05 December 2008 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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One epiphany for me with German was about halfway through my stay in the country when I was at university. I found, fairly suddenly, that I could understand TV sitcoms. Before that, I could really only understand the TV news.
With Turkish, I started to be able to talk directly to Turkish speakers, rather than look around for an English speaker to translate. Epiphany is perhaps putting it too strongly but I suddenly stopped being dependent on a translator to communicate. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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