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Being precise about fluency? | ||
Tags: Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 17 of 48 26 November 2012 at 1:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have read through the thread, and I am more determined than ever to continue to use the term fluency -
when I think it applies. In my book you are fluent when you can say anything you want with a clear and good pronunciation. Not many mistakes, no heavy accent. And that is all that I am going to say in the matter. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 26 November 2012 at 1:52am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 18 of 48 26 November 2012 at 2:25am | IP Logged | |||||
I think @Splog did an excellent job of explaining the different meanings of fluency. If it's good enough for @Splog, it's good for me. I'm with him. That doesn't prevent people from using fluency as they wish. As I said, most people could care less. As for recommendations for me to improve my English, I am open to improvement but considering this particular source, I think it's a case of the the pot calling the kettle black. In other words, I don't give a friar's tuck. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 19 of 48 26 November 2012 at 3:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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This was tongue-in-cheek...
And you failed to mention any specific discussions that suffered from this. Some might have suffered from your complaints that we're not using the professional term, though. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 20 of 48 26 November 2012 at 3:55am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't see a problem with this position. It is quite clear. I also intend to use the term fluency when I think it applies. As for Solfrid Cristin's definition of what it is to be fluent, it is quite clear for her. That's fine. The problem is that when you want to operationalize this definition, we have to deal with messy issues like just what to you mean exactly by "say anything", "clear and good pronunciation", "not many mistakes" and "no heavy accent." Can there be degrees of fluency? In Solfrid's book, are you either fluent or non-fluent? This of course is what the CEFR is all about. Why were millions of euros spent on the development of the CEFR? Why did all the linguists and specialists carefully choose a certain terminology? The idea behind the CEFR is to have a system of assessment that is objective (as can be) and universal so that the results are comparable. It's a simple as that. Here at HTLAL we don't have to deal with things like fixing language criteria for university admissions or job applicants. We can use words as we like and define them like we feel. That's fine, but it also means that there is a vagueness when we try to pinpoint what things like "advanced fluency" mean. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 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 21 of 48 26 November 2012 at 9:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have already stated my position: the word "fluency" alone refers to fluidity of language production, but as soon as you start to qualifify it you will inevitably have to refer to degrees of correctness (or proficiency).
The interesting thing is when fluidity/fluency in the narrow sense stops being a problem. I have implicitely set the limit at the dividing line between intermediate and (basic) fluency in the terminology of HTLAL, - it would presumably somewhere around B2/C1 in the other scale. The interesting thing is that there are native speakers who aren't fluent by this definition. They may know an insane amount of words and idioms, and they may have a perfect sense of what grammatically correct sentences are - but they have problems producing one. You can have a speech defect and still be fluent, but a severe case of stuttering may lead to a situation where the person simply can't produce a coherent sentence. And even without stuttering there are native speakers whose speech is an opaque mixture of false starts and ahem's. And then some might balk and say STOP, a native speaker must always be better than any second language learner. But no, not if fluent production of language is the criterion. And then I think of the week I spent with my sister and mother in the Loire Valley a few years ago. My sister may not always follow the rules of the French language, but she is a virtuouso in fluent production of sentences and in giving herself opportunities to show it. When we visited one of those famous chateaux she would always be a room or two behind the rest of us because she had found someone to chat to, for instance a custodian or another guest. I would also claim my French is fluent, but I use it more sparingly even when I travel by myself. Edited by Iversen on 26 November 2012 at 9:57am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 22 of 48 26 November 2012 at 11:00am | IP Logged | |||||
I would imagine that my definition falls somewhere between B2 and C1, depending on how good you are at producing rapid coherent speech. But you could see for yourself how I apply those criteria to myself in the chat with Richard Simcott (separate thread in the polyglot room). According to my definition of fluent I am fluent in English, Spanish and French whereas I merely "speak" Italian and German (I used to consider myself fluent in Italian, but have lost it due to disuse, and I have never reached fluency in German. ) I am not sure how to qualify my Swedish as it goes fast enough, but I am unable to judge how many mistakes I make. Any Swede out there that cares to give me an evaluation? :-) And for me there are not various levels of fluency, but I would not oppose others referring to different levels. I am a tad hesitant to speaking about fluency at A2 level though. It could qualify as far as fluidity goes, but would fall short of the"say anything you want" bit. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 23 of 48 26 November 2012 at 11:05am | IP Logged | |||||
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I am sure you are considered fluent in Swedish by virtue of it being Norwego-Swedish.
Perhaps you won't write Swedish, though, that may be another matter entirely but in speech it shouldn't be a problem. It'd be like me saying I am fluent in Afrikaans. I'm not, I speak Dutch, but that doesn't stop Afrikaners from knowing what I'm talking about or me reading material in Afrikaans. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 24 of 48 26 November 2012 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
I know @Iversen means well and is trying to reconcile both positions. Fluency by itself is one thing but basic fluency and advanced fluency are other things. This is dancing around the issue. It is so much simpler if we speak of proficiency and fluency as two separate concepts and recognize that fluency is a component of proficiency. This discussion of what it is to be fluent in a language is just another version of the debate over what it means to speak a language. Everybody here has been asked. 'How many languages do you speak?' Some people will state the number in their HTLAL profile. Many people here speak four, five languages or more. Do people speak all these languages equally well? Now things start to get more complicated. What do we mean by speak? I won't go all the nuances of what it means to speak a language, but I do remember getting into a fight here with an HTLAL member who adamantly argued that speaking a language meant exactly that and did not mean understanding the language. Some people will remember that infamous video in which Ziad Fazah, then Guiness record holder for languages spoken, could not understand some basic phrases in various languages. Ziad Fazah But he still spoke all those languages fluently. In fact, by the criteria of most people here, Ziad is fluent in 58 languages. By my definition, I don't think that Ziad is proficient in 58 languages, but I have no doubt that he could be fluent in all of them. Edited by s_allard on 26 November 2012 at 3:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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