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Language competence | ||
Tags: CEFR Language Levels | Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6249 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 1 of 80 02 October 2010 at 12:39am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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In response to issues that occasionally come up on this board, I think it might be worthwhile to rehash what is involved in fluency.
Fluency implies: * being able to flowingly engage in spontaneous conversations with individual and groups of native speakers, in depth and for an extended period of time, on most/all topics you can discuss in your native language. This requires understanding the other speakers, as well as expressing your own thoughts in a way understandable to them, even if they don't share any other languages with you. Specifically, this is basic fluency. Advanced fluency also implies very few errors, none of which are systematic. Native fluency requires being routinely mistaken for a native speaker. The following do not imply fluency: * Memorizing a few phrases, regardless of how flowingly or perfectly. * Using a few memorized phrases and grammatical concepts with friends. Even if they praise your progress or ability. * Using google translate. * Being able to passively understand a language. * Having completed a course. * Having memorized grammatical tables. * Having memorized vocabulary items. * Having memorized sound shifts. * Randomly mutating words from related languages. * Thinking or writing in some form of a language which makes sense to you, but which does not make sense to native speakers of a language. "Me speeky gud Inglisch" is not good English, and it is not the fault of English speakers if they have trouble with it; it should be acknowledged that this is a problem on the part of the speaker, not a failure of a native English listener. * Having previously spoken a language fluently, but no longer being able to converse freely in it. * Being able to talk about a simple, limited range of topics with very patient native speakers. * Having a relationship with a native speaker. An interesting middle ground is when someone speaks a language well, and knows enough sound shifts to come up with something native speakers of a related language can understand, as well as being able to understand such speakers. However, most members of this forum would not call that fluency. Edited by Volte on 02 October 2010 at 4:34am 18 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| fireflies Senior Member Joined 4991 days ago 172 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 80 02 October 2010 at 1:16am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I think there must be a few concrete, definable and testable levels of proficiency behind the concept of 'fluency'. There are some native English speakers that would be lost in a college literature class but they are still fluent.
If fluency is being able to speak fluidly there are surely settings where this task would become more or less difficult.
According to that the more educated you are in your native language the more work it would take to be fluent in a 2nd language. 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6249 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 80 02 October 2010 at 1:27am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Sure - ellasevia pointed out the CEFR.
Yes.
Perhaps surprisingly, I disagree. If you want to express yourself with full precision with a fellow specialist, this would raise the bar for your second language. If you want to discuss the topic with someone who doesn't know it well, you can't use the specialist terms anyhow, and a general command of the language goes surprisingly far. I remember a post (I think it was on this forum), by a specialist in a scientific field. He took videos in his target language (I believe it was Spanish), about that field, out from the library. Later, he took out videos from another field, and realized he wouldn't be able to understand them in any language without learning about that field in some depth. He discussed this with a native speaker of his target language (perhaps a brother-in-law? I forget), who questioned why he was taking out the videos in the first place. Furthermore, he had to resort to using generic Spanish to explain what he was watching to his interlocutor, who wasn't a specialist in the field in question. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| kidshomestunner Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6215 days ago 239 posts - 285 votes Speaks: Japanese | Message 4 of 80 02 October 2010 at 1:36am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
When you speak a different language you obtain a different persona. Japanese people wouldn't be able to speak about certain parts of japanese culture with foreigners as they are very difficult to translate. Some of Plato's arguments are encapsulated in Greek and it is said that few oriental and no foreigners grasp mu. I often speak to stuff with my friends which I couldn't speak about with Japanese people. It would be culturally inappropriate I think it is a bad argument. Edited by kidshomestunner on 02 October 2010 at 1:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| fireflies Senior Member Joined 4991 days ago 172 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 80 02 October 2010 at 1:48am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I have decided not to worry about trying to define fluency or judge my own progress towards it. The important thing is to make progress. Edited by fireflies on 02 October 2010 at 8:50pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| kidshomestunner Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6215 days ago 239 posts - 285 votes Speaks: Japanese | Message 6 of 80 02 October 2010 at 2:08am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I couldn't be mistaken for a native speaker of Eskimo even If my Eskimo was perfect as I am not an inuit and do not look like an inuit. It is a bad argument. Stuff like aizuchi and paralinguistic features could also give me away. 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| fireflies Senior Member Joined 4991 days ago 172 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 80 02 October 2010 at 2:20am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I have decided not to worry about trying to define fluency or judge my own progress towards it. The important thing is to make progress. Edited by fireflies on 02 October 2010 at 8:50pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6360 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 8 of 80 02 October 2010 at 2:30am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I agree that a better definition would be nice. But you essentially only covered conversation. While I may be
considered fluent in conversation in Japanese and Mandarin, I'm short of the mark in reading native materials and listening to media. What do you suggest? Oh, and you forgot some things in your "does not apply list". For example, having a relationship with a native speaker. I know it's silly, but I've heard that qualifies one as fluent more than once. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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