How fluent is fluent?

How fluent is fluent? When do you speak a language?

 

When is it time to say you speak a language as opposed to saying that you are learning it?
That is a question that is not as simple to answer as it seems as this implies that at some point, for whatever reason, you stop learning.

This, however, is not the case. Even in my native language I still learn every day, but it’s not as if I would tell anybody that I am “learning” Dutch.
So when do you say that you speak a language. Is it when you are able to sustain a conversation? Literally be able to speak the language? When you are able to read literature with no problems whatsoever? When you are able to write a coherent text?

The competences of knowing a language are rather vague. One might say that you speak a language fluently when you have all of these, others might think one is more important than the other.

“Fluent” is a rather vague term anyway. What is fluent? Being able to make a coherent text with no pause, perhaps? Maybe speaking a language without any accent? But then again, natives have accents too. Here again, some people think this and some people think the other.

Some of you may have heard of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, commonly known as the CEFR.
It is a noble attempt to define fluency.

The common references are:

A Basic User

A1 Breakthrough or beginner

A2 Waystage or elementary

B Independent User

B1 Threshold or intermediate

B2 Vantage or upper intermediate

C Proficient User

C1 Effective Operational Proficiency or advanced

C2 Mastery or proficiency

 

Each of these references comes with a range of competences a learner will have when they reach this stage in their study. This gives you a way of giving someone else an idea of how well you know a language. But at the same time it also puts a stop to gradation. It is as if you stop learning when you get to C2, where in fact you never actually stop learning a language.

At some point language learning becomes different though. It is no longer about studying vocabulary or grammar and applying this in your dialogues. When you know the grammar rules and making a dialogue with no hesitation at all the learning becomes more passive and slower. In fact, you might not even know you are learning.

Maybe this stage is where we can speak of fluency?

With all that said, I think the most important thing is that to say that you speak a language has much more to do with confidence than competence.

When you say you are learning a language, you are telling someone that you have knowledge of some sort but they can expect you to make mistakes in this language. It’s almost as if you excuse yourself for the mistakes you are about to make. Or excuse yourself for not knowing some things when asked.

When you say you speak a language, however, you are saying that your knowledge is beyond a learner’s and you should have no trouble at all communicating in this language.

When you say you speak a language, it usually means you are comfortable with using it. Whereas when you say you are learning one, it usually means you feel a little awkward using it.

I’m not saying, however, that there is no standard. Of course there is a standard.
Communication with natives is key here. The best judges of fluency are those who have reached this fluency, of course. In my opinion, the only competence that is required to be able to say you speak a language, is communication with natives. They are the standard you ought to live up to after all.
So I guess, if someone asked me when I would say I speak a language, I would say that would be about the time I would be able to easily communicate with natives, understand them and express my own thoughts.

 

Studying vocabulary?

I was going to write something about studying vocabulary the old fashion way, as in how to tackle a list of words that you probably will forget in a day or two.
Then I realized it wasn’t helpful, because, you can learn a list of 2000 words, but in my experience, it won’t get you very far. You’ll know a whole bunch of words but never have seen them in their context and you will be forever unsure about whether or not you are using them in the right contexts.
Ok, granted, this may not be the case for words such as school or table. They pretty much mean exactly what they mean and are pretty see-through. But there are a lot of words that are more ambiguous than that.

When it comes to vocabulary, I have to admit that I myself have never been good at memorizing a list of words. And when I did manage to memorize them they were gone in no time. And so along the way I discovered that learning vocabulary does not come down to endless lists of words to just memorize.
What I noticed is that a lot of people split up learning a language into two things, vocabulary on one side and grammar on the other. And while there is some truth to that, I rarely see these two parts of a language come together until the learner is trying to make a conversation. It is at that moment they realize that they have a lot of vocabulary and know the grammar but they just can’t seem to put two and two together, and so they struggle to say something.

Once I overcame my fear of speaking a language that I was learning from day one, I found that it was much easier to combine learning grammar and vocabulary rather than to see them as two separate things. On top of that, I also changed my ways of studying from academic to casual.   

Instead of sitting behind my desk trying to get 2000 words of Finnish in my head I just spoke to native speaker. I admit, at first I was just sitting there with a dictionary looking up every word they said. But that’s ok, you’ve got to start somewhere. I noticed I was learning vocabulary quickly without even trying. I was picking up words from conversations as I go. And I was picking up grammar and figuring it out myself as well. Think about it, the people that have Finnish as a native language aren’t constantly reflecting what case they have to use. They apply grammar without even thinking about it, in fact, they probably don’t even know they are doing it and when you ask them they won’t even know exactly why it is what it is.

I learned Portuguese as a second native language, and when I went to university I noticed that I knew zip about the grammar, but somehow, I instinctively knew how to apply it even though the rules we were being given were immensely complex. I realized right there and then that learning a language was much more about communicating than actually studying.

A lot of people don’t actually speak a language when they are learning it. They see learning and speaking as two different processes, first you learn, then you speak. However, this is not the case. In order to learn you have to speak. And when you speak, you will pick up vocabulary more quickly because you have a context to tie it to.

It’s also important to realize that you’re never starting from zero, a lot of words are very international and resemble words in the language you are learning. Without realizing it, you already have thousands of words in your passive knowledge of whatever foreign language you are learning. By communicating in this language you can change your passive knowledge into active knowledge and acquire more passive knowledge to in its turn be turned into active knowledge as well.

This all is way more effective than learning a list of words you will inevitably forget in a day or so.

A youtube channel to follow!

I stumbled upon this youtube channel called “School of language”. The most usefull thing they have is I think this mini webseries that comes in various languages (English, French, Spanish and German). Each episode is about 20 minutes long and very easy to follow. Worth checking out!