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Language competence | ||
Tags: CEFR Language Levels | Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| fireflies Senior Member Joined 5184 days ago 172 posts - 234 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 9 of 80 02 October 2010 at 3:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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n/a Edited by fireflies on 02 October 2010 at 8:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6442 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 10 of 80 02 October 2010 at 4:37am | IP Logged | |||||
I suggest keeping literacy out of conversations about fluency. It brings up a large host of other issues. Ability to read is relevant to assessing overall language competence, but not fluency in particular, in my opinion.
That is incredibly silly. Added. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5450 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 11 of 80 02 October 2010 at 8:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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This site's definitions for basic and advanced fluency strike me as fairly commonsensical - they provide a decent yardstick for thinking about how well your language skills allow you to interact in the language. That said, I'm increasingly suspicious of the word "fluency" - there's too much tangled up in it. We read about the polyglots of old and fantasize about being able to pass for a native in a dozen countries. Then we meet a guy who thinks he's fluent in a language, but that we would never mistake for a native speaker though he gets by well enough. The first causes us to sell ourselves short when getting to C1 - or even B2 or B1 - in more than a couple languages ain't half bad. The second causes us to sell others short when their linguistic competence is more than adequate to their life purposes and evidence of serious effort with worthy results.
If I had to lay down a rule on the matter, I would say that we should, out of humility, claim fluency only if we fit the site's definition of advanced fluency. Out of charity, we should however hold our tongues if someone meeting the criteria for basic fluency claims it. Embarrassment, be it our own or someone else's, is something we ought to avoid where possible. What is most needed, however, is a conception of linguistic competence somewhere south of fluency that still confers respectability. Language is not an all or nothing game, but we tend to make it that way. As a result, we get into all sorts of tedious discussions about polyglots on Youtube and such and instead of celebrating linguistic achievements that are often pretty darned good, we wind up arguing about whether it is good enough to meet a fairly high standard when we don't have a widely understood and agreed upon vocabulary for recognizing anything less than that high standard. Most of us on this forum are aware of things like the CEFR that do allow more precise estimations of language ability. Yet even here, where we have some sophistication about concepts like fluency, proficiency, what it means to be conversational in a language, etc, we may fall into the false dichotomy of being fluent or doing no more than mucking about with a language and as a result say things that are clearly hyperbole. However, we have the advantage that if words like "fluency" set off alarm bells, we can decide for ourselves how to react. I would say that if someone talks about being fluent in one language or a dozen and he's trying to sell something, by all means be strict about it. But if someone makes a harmless boast - there's no money involved and the exaggerated nature of the claim ought be apparent to those who take interest in these matters - then the matter ought to quietly resolve itself as people of discernment make their own judgments about how seriously to take those claims. 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 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 12 of 80 02 October 2010 at 9:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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It is clear that "fluency" primarily refers to conversational skills, but I'm not going to scrap it in other situations - but then it should be clear that the word is used in a restricted sense.
For instance there is oral fluency, but also fluency in writing - and with certain languages where your chances of hearing the language spoken by native speakers are minimal your skills in writing could surpass those you have in speaking. My Afrikaans belongs in this cathegory (it is very difficult to find spoken sources), and probably also my Latin -in spite of my recent video in that language. And there is also passive fluency, which is the thing I have in Norwegian where I understand more or less everything I hear on TV or see in written form. But I have not yet tried to speak it. So I have advanced passive skills, and I'm at most a beginner in the active oral skill. I would say that my Low German also belongs in this cathegory - I can write it and I have made a video in it, but without conversations I cannot become conversationally fluent. So my passive skills are better than my active skills. In other words, I'm definitely not 'fluent', but nevertheless I do have some skills that shouldn't be shoveled away just because of some restrictions on the general term "fluency". But apart from that I find Volte's checklist both valid and entertaining. Edited by Iversen on 02 October 2010 at 9:22am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| fireflies Senior Member Joined 5184 days ago 172 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* | Message 13 of 80 02 October 2010 at 9:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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n/a Edited by fireflies on 02 October 2010 at 8:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6473 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 14 of 80 02 October 2010 at 10:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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If you have to use Google Translate, you're not even at an intermediate level. They
make so many mistakes it hurts and is often not understandable. For advanced fluency however I'd say that you could speak a language all day without having to resort to a dictionary, and that speaking the language is similarly comfortable/low-effort as speaking your native language. I have reached this level in English, and some native speakers even claim I speak the language better than they do, but I won't call it native fluency unless I manage to eliminate my accent. Btw, a respectable level below fluency could be "conversational", i. e. being able to have basic conversations with native speakers without them trying to find another language to converse in. "advanced" sounds good, too. Not "advanced fluency", but simply "advanced", as in having spent a lot of time on the language and knowing the finer points of grammar etc. Edited by Sprachprofi on 02 October 2010 at 10:42am 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| fireflies Senior Member Joined 5184 days ago 172 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* | Message 15 of 80 02 October 2010 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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n/a Edited by fireflies on 02 October 2010 at 9:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5176 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 16 of 80 02 October 2010 at 6:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
An interesting post. I would only dispute that frequently or routinely being mistaken for a native speaker implies fluency. I know French, German and Italian and have been mistaken for a native speaker in both the first languages, but I certainly could not claim to be. I don't think the individuals concerned were flattering me, and I am almost always recognized as an Englishman when speaking Italian. I do try to mimic native speakers as closely as possible, so maybe this is the explanation 1 person has voted this message useful |
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