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Varying degrees of fluency | ||
Tags: Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Shchuka Newbie Finland Joined 4206 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Studies: Russian | Message 9 of 19 21 May 2013 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Is she fluent?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nePGelK0g5E 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Haksaeng Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6199 days ago 166 posts - 250 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 10 of 19 21 May 2013 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah, she sure is.
Some time ago, somebody posted on this board a link to clips from actual speaking proficiency exams. You could see the difference between B1 and B2 for example. There were examples for each level. It was very interesting to see the obvious differences between each level. A2 was painful, B2 still shaky. I have no idea where that link is, unfortunately. Edited by Haksaeng on 21 May 2013 at 1:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Γρηγόρη Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4456 days ago 55 posts - 154 votes Speaks: English*, Greek, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: German, French, Russian | Message 11 of 19 21 May 2013 at 4:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
Can you post a link to that message? I'd be interested to know how you went about estimating your vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6973 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 12 of 19 21 May 2013 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've reached this point in French and German, and agree that the average person I meet on the street and chit-chat with in these languages generally seems impressed by the illusion of fluency, based on reasonable accurate albeit simple grammar, a good accent, the ability to speak without hesitation, and the occasional obscure or very precise vocabulary word tossed into the mix. However, most of these conversations tend to revolve around personal backgrounds, professions, travel plans, impressions of various cities, sights or restaurants, or other non-specialized topics. I would consider this to be intermediate level based on this forum's standard, since I cannot talk about "any" topic in the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 13 of 19 21 May 2013 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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With regards to this forum levels, I take basic fluency as B2/C1 and advanced as C1/C2
but there are several points worth considering in my opinion. Fluent, by the definition of the word, means that the conversation flows without stumbling due to huge mistakes of any kind. So, if you can make yourself understood about the common conversation topics (which might include politics but isn't likely to include for example nuclear physics. at least not with most people :-) ) without being too much of a burden for the native speaker, you are fluent in my opinion. Some people can get to this point even when using quite basic vocab and making mistakes in grammar. And while having most skills around B1 cefr level. Some shy people can't get fluent even when all their other skills are C2 and they have no trouble thinking in the language. They just let the first mistake make them nervous enough to make too many more or they make huge gaps in between pieces of speaking in fear of making a mistake. But despite fluency being taken as the holy graal by so many learning products makers, and secondarily learners, it is not the only quality one should strive for. There is accuracy, there is freedom of changing subjects of conversation to anything you want to talk about, there is cultivated writen expression, proper understanding and use of the non verbal part of the language (including the tone, the cultural context in between the lines, the various scales of language from the most formal to the most familiar etc.) and so on. Fluency is not the same as being totally awesome at the language in my opinion. Much more is required for that. And fluency by itself isn't even a good goal for a learner, no matter how many choose it. It is such a vague term that anyone can understand a bit differently. We have already proven that in at least a dozen threads. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 19 22 May 2013 at 7:52am | IP Logged | |||||
This one? http://www.webcef.eu/?q=node/22 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 19 22 May 2013 at 7:55am | IP Logged | |||||
Some of them are here: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=12983&PN=1&TPN=365 (I just searched for Iversen passive estimate) 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 16 of 19 23 May 2013 at 2:00am | IP Logged | |||||
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I actually have done word counts in three periods.
The first round was not very well organized and happened in 1986 for Romanian and a couple of other languages (I haven't cared to keep the records). The main effect of this was that I noticed that just writing words down from a dictionary had a positive effect on my vocabulary, and this actually made me become interested in wordlists. The second round was much more comprehensive and took place in March-April 2009 and included all my languages. There is a summary here, and I have discussed the principles on the preceding pages. And finally the link given by Jeff_lindquist refers to the third round, where I only counted a limited number of languages, but with an improved technique insofar that I included a group for words I weren't really sure I had seen before and knew, but which I somehow could guess (or knew vaguely). Or in other words: I divided all words on a number of random pages into the categories known - guessable - unknown and calculated how large in numbers and percents each group would be if the procedure was scaled up to a whole dictionary (and I used several dictionaries for each language to get a feeling for the effect of dictionary size). All these word counts were of course only concerned with passive vocabulary. I have however also once made an attempt at an estimate of my active vocabulary in English: I simply took everything I had written here at HTLAL for three months or so and ended up with a score of around 2500 items (defined as a cross between dictionary headwords and word families), which gives a lower level for the number of English words I actually used in that period. Somewhere between this number and my passive vocabulary you find the size of my active vocabulary in English - but it is very hard to say where it lies. And no, fluency isn't the same as having a large or small vocabulary. You can't read certain kinds of texts with a small vocabulary, but you can survive as a tourist or foreign worker in a country with a small vocabulary. And if you can formulate yourself without pauses and breakdowns all the time then it would not be wrong to call you fluent (in the narrow sense). Edited by Iversen on 23 May 2013 at 12:01pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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