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Please, proficiency not fluency | ||
Tags: Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7128 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 49 of 59 16 August 2010 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | ||
It's possible to use the "Global Scale" table within the CEF and (as they put it) "Such a simple ‘global’ representation will make it easier to communicate the system to non-specialist users". The reason I avoided mentioning it was to highlight that (contrary to what some appear to believe), the CEF doesn't solely concentrate on speaking ability. Here's the C1 definition, for example: Can understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts, and recognise implicit meaning. Can express him/herself fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. Can use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes. Can produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, showing controlled use of organisational patterns, connectors and cohesive devices. ...of course, the dreaded word "fluently" does appear :-) Edited by Andy E on 16 August 2010 at 3:20pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6036 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 50 of 59 16 August 2010 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | ||
The question is whether this was intended, or was just assumed because most of the panel putting it together came from a first-language background where the equivalent word is better understood. IE. Did they know that they were using a word that the average English speaker doesn't understand the same as them? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6728 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 51 of 59 16 August 2010 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | ||
Actually the CEF is more than the one single scale. The scale that is quoted everywhere is part of a system of several scales for different things, and writing ability is one of them. The system is described in a series of parallel books, and I have read the Danish version. But even though writing is mantioned briefly it is not seen as anything fundamental, and the way all the scales are formulated are just variations of each other - with the ability to have conversations as the skill that is taken as the paragon for all the rest. Apart from that I think that "fluency" in the 'fluid' sense can be applied to all skills, including the passive ones and those that are based on writing. And so can proficiency, but I think it is a lost battle to force ordinary language users to use this term - they use "fluency" instead. Edited by Iversen on 16 August 2010 at 7:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7128 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 52 of 59 16 August 2010 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes. I'm well aware of that fact - hence my post further up this thread. The single scale is the one that (unfortunately) gets quoted everywhere to the exclusion of everything else. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7128 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 53 of 59 16 August 2010 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | ||
Bearing in mind the quote I lifted ("Such a simple ‘global’ representation will make it easier to communicate the system to non-specialist users"), I'm assuming the language chosen was intentional. 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 54 of 59 16 August 2010 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | ||
Just to finalize my understanding of this, does the level of ambiguity go down in a phrase as compared to the word "fluency" in isolation? When reading the following statement: Can express him/herself fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. (1) What would an average speaker of English think this statement means? (2) What would a committee member think this statement means? Edited by frenkeld on 16 August 2010 at 10:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6643 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 55 of 59 17 August 2010 at 4:11am | IP Logged | ||
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S-Allard, I know what the problem is, and changing the term "fluent" to "proficient" isn't going to solve it.
The problem is that the majority of Americans and native English speakers haven't really learned a foreign language up to a high level of proficiency or fluency and therefore don't really understand what is involved in becoming fluent. That then enables show-offs and language salesmen to shift the goalposts to get profit/attention for themselves. Rosetta Stone, with their mega expensive software, claim in their advertisements that anybody can "become fluent" by buying their big yellow boxes and learning "the easy way." Onto the show-off artists; how many times have you heard someone claim "I speak Korean better than 90 percent of the other foreigners"? We all know how ridiculous that kind of claim sounds. It's almost like an American claiming to speak English better than 90 percent of the Koreans. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| str0be Senior Member Korea, South Joined 5629 days ago 103 posts - 148 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, Korean | Message 56 of 59 17 August 2010 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||
What are you talking about? It isn't anything like that at all. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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