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Why do people lie about being fluent? | ||
Tags: Fake Reviews | Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 25 of 88 28 April 2011 at 12:45am | IP Logged | ||
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I enjoyed Judane 1's eloquent description of a person whose claimed fluency has been savagely shot down. However some of the excuses could be true - there are people who test the skills of others by asking them absurdly difficult questions, or who rate their skills at bottom level if they as much as hesitate before giving an answer. Cutting people down like that is also a way of boosting your own self confidence, just as pretending to know more than you actually do is.
S_allard asks why we don't all just take the official tests, including those that follow the CEFR system. Well, for me tests are something you take either because you have to - for instance you might need them to prove your level to possible employers. Or you take them for fun, just as some people count their marathon runs or work on getting their golf handicap down. Personally I don't have those obligations, and I am not terribly interested in covering my walls with diplomas. Just listening to a TV program or trying to remember the names for peanuts in different languages will tell me where my limits are, I don't need a formal test to tell me that. But that ironically puts me in the same situation as the braggart, who of course will avoid at any cost to do a test that would puncture his or her claims about fluency. My personal opinion is that the opportunity to unveil a number of false pretenders isn't reason enough for imposing the use of formal testing on hobby polyglots like me. I would prefer having a number of false pretenders running around and making fools of themselves. Edited by Iversen on 28 April 2011 at 1:06am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5454 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 26 of 88 28 April 2011 at 12:58am | IP Logged | ||
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The CEFR system can be used without doing any tests. It is made for self-assessment in addition to certification and
diplomas. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 27 of 88 28 April 2011 at 1:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I have read the descriptions, but if you just read them and then try to assess your own level, you can delude yourself just as efficiently as you could without those level descriptions. And those who want to believe (or actually do believe) that they are fluent in a certain language will also be able to twitch the interpretation of the descriptions in their own favor. Without competent and experienced examinators and censors (or whatever you call them) the CEFR system isn't more dependable than the four steps of this forum.
6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 28 of 88 28 April 2011 at 3:06am | IP Logged | ||
I agree that the CEFR system has its limitations if one does not go through the system of examinations for reasons usually related to academic or professional advancement. But that is besides the point. The real value of the system for us here is that it is a standard frame of reference. It's not more dependable than the four steps of our forum. It is simply a six-step rating system that is structured around a series of can-do statements. For example, being able of order a beer in a bar is not part of the CEFR system. So, it doesn't really mean much to me. Here is the definition of what a person at the A1 level can do: "Can understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a concrete type. Can introduce him/herself and others and can ask and answer questions about personal details such as where he/she lives, people he/she knows and things he/she has. Can interact in a simple way provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help." There is room here for interpretation and, of course, the implementation of this statement in a test is another matter. But the point here is that if I say I'm an A1 in Spanish, this is what I'm referring to, whether I have been tested or not. Some people would call this something like "beginning fluency". But again, why use a vague terminology, when the CEFR is quite clear and logical? At the other end of the scale, here is what the C2 refers to: "Can understand with ease virtually everything heard or read. Can summarise information from different spoken and written sources, reconstructing arguments and accounts in a coherent presentation. Can express him/herself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in the most complex situations." Again, there is certainly room for interpretation, but the main point is that when we talk about C2, we are all reading from the same page. We do not have to try to define fluency, or, as I prefer, proficiency. It has been done. Let's move on. The CEFR is one of many rating systems and is becoming a sort of de facto world standard. However, there are other systems out there, including the one use here at HTLAL. Although I prefer the CEFR, like Iversen, I can live with the HTLAL rating system as long as we agree to refer to it and not try to continuously reinvent the wheel. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 29 of 88 28 April 2011 at 6:05am | IP Logged | ||
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The problem is not the value of the statements, but that self-assessment is inherently faulty. As well as the skills themselves, our idea of them fluctuate with our current mood. Different people have different strategies they use to counter such fluctuation and be able to plan how they will tackle a task and communicate it.
I myself regularly experience bouts of self-doubt when I look at the CEFR statements because I consistently see myself about 2 levels higher in my passive skills than in my active skills, and I know that the framework itself is supposed to take into account natural lag in the acquisition of active skills. One of the hopes I had before going to Spain was that if concentrated on interaction with other people was that I might improve my acitve skills sooner that way. It didn't work out. By the way, I just had another surge of doubt thinking that maybe I just grossly overestimate my comprehension. I then tried out a level 4 lesson in Spanish on gloss. It's taxing; I lack vocabulary - and I answered the comprehension questions correctly and could have explained why. But I doubt I would pass the spoken and written parts of a B1 exam. On here, there are people like Cainntear who several times wrote that he can understand only the things he can say. I honestly cannot comprehend that statement, but it tells me that he probably doesn't experience the same discrepancy between active and passive skills I do. Maybe it's only me, but I like to read threads like this to get a vague idea about how the different members on this forum talk about self-assessment and their own skill levels, so that I get additional reference points when I try to understand their other postings and decide whether I should follow a certain bit of advice, or try out a certain strategy. Edited by Bao on 28 April 2011 at 6:07am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 30 of 88 28 April 2011 at 6:43am | IP Logged | ||
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I know I keep harping on this matter of fluency vs proficiency, but here is why I think it is important. The CEFR measures proficiency and only makes an oblique reference to fluency in the statement "Can express him/herself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely" in C2. There are three concepts here: spontaneity, fluency and accuracy. These can be measured or assessed to some extent. To say that someone is fluent, in my opinion, sets any discussion off to a bad start. Urgh. The whole thing irritates me to no end.
But putting aside my irritation, the reason this is important is that there are learning strategies that focus on these specific aspects of proficiency. You can work on fluency, you can work on spontaneity, you can work on grammatical accuracy. By isolating the skill, you can home in on improving it. Otherwise, we are always floundering trying to become "more fluent." Just this very evening I attended a French-English language meetup in Montreal. This consists most of the time of non-natives speaking French or English to one another. This is fine of course. What some people also find interesting is to observe two native speakers interacting naturally. This is a far cry from non-natives speaking to each other. When you observe natives speaking among themselves, you really see what spontaneity, fluency and accuracy mean. And more importantly, you see how the language is actually used in all its complexity and not in a simplified manner often used when talking to foreigners. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 31 of 88 28 April 2011 at 7:34am | IP Logged | ||
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So when someone says they're fluent in a language I'll assume it to be true and be happy to find another language enthusiast. If someone claimed to be fluent in Swedish I'd ask them in English if they'd prefer to have the conversation in Swedish. If they talked to me in the language and someone later asks me whether they're fluent I'd answer in the affirmative unless their level was pretty much non-existant. If someone does get put on the spot by a native speaker I'll feel for them and I'll probably think the native speaker in question is kind of a jerk.
I know how hard it is to study languages and how it can sometimes be difficult to do pop quiz oral tests. I know of the ruthless "Don't be proud of yourself and don't think you know anything" attitude that prevails when it comes to language learning. So if A claims fluency and is proven wrong by B, I'll usually consider A the victim and B a douchebag. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6273 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 32 of 88 28 April 2011 at 12:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sometimes malice can come into it. I visited Cuba in the 1990s, and mentioned that I could speak some Spanish, which was and is the case. I had some difficulty communicating with Cubans, partly because Cuban Spanish was not like any I had encountered before, and an Englishwoman said triumphantly, "Ha! You said you could speak Spanish!" She was quite an unpleasant person but there are such people about, unfortunately. You may find that people never claimed fluency to start with, merely a lesser level of knowledge, but malicious people assumed they did with a view to taking them down a peg.
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