|
 |
Level of fluency | ||
Tags: Fluency | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| bryan90 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5459 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 9 of 34 05 November 2009 at 12:13am | IP Logged | ||
|
Kubelek, fluency has nothing to do with how educated you are. And I mean absolutely nothing. It's really insulting to say that an average person can't speak coherently; the problem isn't that they can't speak, it's that you have trouble understanding their dialect.
...at least for spoken language. Written language is kinda different, and illiteracy is a real problem. But anyway, about foreign language learners and fluency, the best way to find out is to ask native speakers if they think you sound fluent. Because it's really hard for you to tell yourself. Probably the most important thing is your grammar and conversation speed, and your accent is less important, as long as it's not really really heavy. If you hear someone use bad grammar even once, it really sticks out, but if you have a slight accent with every word you say, it's not that bad. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6650 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes  Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 10 of 34 05 November 2009 at 1:57am | IP Logged | ||
|
I was talking about my native language. Dialects have nothing to do with it - they don't really exist in Polish. Neither does my proficiency in foreign languages.
As I said, maybe you don't deal with such people. They can speak, but their command of their native language is so poor that they cannot communicate effectively. You have to guess what they are trying to say and finish their sentences when they stumble on words. Try to guess what all the 'thingies', 'stuff' and other placeholder names stand for. No rocket science involved (or insurance policies in my case). Simple things, really. Edited by Kubelek on 05 November 2009 at 2:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6237 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 11 of 34 05 November 2009 at 3:19am | IP Logged | ||
|
People who can't speak coherently exist, but I wouldn't call them average; most people can speak coherently, I'd say.
Some people can write well but speak poorly; some speak well and are illiterate. How flexible people are to grammatical errors really seems to vary by language; in languages and places where there's more exposure to alternative standards, foreigners get a little more leeway where native variation exists. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bryan90 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5459 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 12 of 34 05 November 2009 at 3:32am | IP Logged | ||
|
The thing is, speaking your native language is not something that takes any skill or effort; it's instinctive. If somebody can't it's because they have some mental problem. I refuse to believe that communities of people exist who can't speak effectively to each other.
Or maybe they're just drunk when you talk to them haha. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pookiebear79 Groupie United States Joined 5828 days ago 76 posts - 142 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Swedish, Italian | Message 13 of 34 05 November 2009 at 4:26am | IP Logged | ||
Whoa. For somebody who just called another poster "insulting," you don't see how your statement might be also construed as insulting? There are many people who may not be able to SPEAK (or just may not be able to speak clearly, though they may still be able to communicate, for example in sign language) in their native language. An example would be people with speech impediments, those who are deaf or mute (as I said above, they can usually *communicate* in other ways, but just not speak), have sustained some sort of damage to the part of their brain which controls language/speech, people who have suffered a stroke, etc. Perhaps you didn't mean to suggest any of the people I mentioned as examples have "mental problems," but that's the way such a sweeping generalization comes across. Although I don't post here as often as I'd like because so many threads devolve into insulting generalizations such as the one you just made, personal attacks, or attacks/assumptions based on one's native language or country of origin (as I was recently on the receiving end of by one snarky individual), I just couldn't "turn the other cheek" here. The post I quoted was such an over-generalization. I've heard/spoken to many people who have neither one of the conditions I mentioned above nor "mental problems," have an education,etc. and yet they still speak their native language in a rather "inarticulate" way. (By which I mean, something a non native speaker may not want to emulate when they say they want to have the same level as a native.) More on topic, I agree with the point that was (I think, somewhere in this thread) being made before the arguing: it's hard to gauge "native fluency" until one decides what level of native speaker they're comparing themselves against. There's such a wide spectrum. As I'm an educated adult in my native language, I wouldn't consider myself fluent until I was on a level comparable to a college educated adult in my target language. But other people have different goals, objectives, etc and as we've seen people have many differing opinions of what constitutes "fluency," native or otherwise. I just don't think there can be a nice tidy "one size fits all" answer here. Many other good points have been made in this thread too, which I won't make this longer by repeating, but I really wish more discussions (even with disagreements) could take place here without all the attitude, name calling, sweeping assumptions and such. Edited by pookiebear79 on 05 November 2009 at 4:28am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| free4eternity Diglot Newbie Australia Joined 5316 days ago 8 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English, Cantonese* Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 14 of 34 05 November 2009 at 4:32am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks all, that's reassuring.
The funny thing is, when my dad's drunk, he would begin to speak in either English or Mandarin, and he is fluent in neither languages...Well, he is actually more fluent (rather, less un-fluent) in both languages when he is drunk. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6650 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 15 of 34 05 November 2009 at 9:37am | IP Logged | ||
|
Why is 'articulate' a compliment in English? Because it's not a standard attribute.
"average speaker" suggests abour 50%, I probably guessed too high. I still believe it's a large portion of our societies. I gave a hospital as an example, because I dealt with this problem daily there during my internships. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachjunge Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6963 days ago 368 posts - 548 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2 Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 16 of 34 05 November 2009 at 12:57pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I actually wanted to disagree with Kubelek, but then realized that he (or she! :) is right. If you have the mental wherewithal to tackle studying a foreign language, you will want to measure fluency against an educated native speaker.
That said, I do think that a distinction should be made between active production and passive understanding. I would argue that your average Joe Blow--in most any language--has a passive understanding of his native tongue far exceeding what most people imagine, and certainly not based upon what he can actively produce. How does this relate to the debate? I think that you are much closer to fluency when you truly understand 99.9999% of what you read and hear*--without effort--and can reasonably produce about 75% of it--without effort. As an example, I also volunteered at a hospital in, well, let's face it, a run-down area, yet was daily surprised that your average person knew what a defibrillator was ("You know, man, that thing, when, uh, yeah, you pump it, like on the shows, "clear!"). Maybe he couldn't spell it, but he could recognize it. How many of us would immediately recognize "defibrillator" in a news broadcast in our target language--without effort? When that happens, without effort, then I think we're a bit closer to this "fluency" we crave. :) *(that percentage is not that exaggerated, by the way: if you count words on a page, you will discover that not understanding one word for every hundred that you read adds up to many more missed words than an average native speaker would circle :). 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
