When you get into a community of language learners you will often hear the word "Fluency"
I want to be fluent in French.
I'd like to at least be conversationally fluent.
I can hold a conversation but I wouldn't say I am fluent.
But the word "Fluent" is a very tricky term. What is the difference between conversational fluency and true fluency? Is there a difference?
According to Merriam-Webster, Fluency is (among other things unrelated to language):
: capable of using a language easily and accurately
fluent in Spanish
a fluent writer
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fluent
That seems fairly straight forward, but when we drill down into what the word means as language learners use it, it becomes very sticky.
So here is a question; At what point would you be comfortable saying you are a fluent speaker of a language? Is it when you can communicate your needs? Is it when you can function socially? Is it when you can engage in technical discourse?
The reality, I think, is that Fluency has different levels; it's a spectrum. Am I fluent in French?
Well, I can read signs and menus, I would be able to order food and buy things at a store without difficulty... I can have fulfilling conversation with native speakers providing they are patient with me... So how fluent am I?
My opinion of myself is that I am fluent in the essential French I would need to survive if I woke up on a bench in a park in Avignon tomorrow. However I do not feel I am quite conversationally fluent; almost, but not yet.
There are measures of fluency that we can measure ourselves by; the big one being the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).
https://www.coe.int/en/web/language-policy/home
This framework is divided into three main sections and two sub-sections each. There are also five areas of competency in the framework. I will attach a copy of the overview here so you can see what I am talking about.
This bad boy is the measure by which most language learners measure themselves. This is the scale people use when they want to work in another country. There are associated tests in many languages to attain certification in that language, but let's just look for a minute at these descriptions. Forget your target language for now; let's look at you with your mother tongue.
Look at Listening C2.
“I have no difficulty in understanding any kind of spoken language, whether live or broadcast, even when delivered at fast native speed, provided I have some time to get familiar with the accent.”
Can you honestly say you fulfill that description? For me I can say I do most of the time, but not always. Any kind of spoken language, I live in Florida, and there are sure some folks here who I have a hard time understanding even though I am pretty good at working out accents. Put me in the deep bayous of Louisiana or the Australian bush and I am no longer a C2 level English speaker. I think honestly most native speakers of a language are at the C1 level for sure, and maybe C2 in several areas.
My point with all this is that even as a native speaker fluency is not a term that is set in stone. I might be able to communicate generally with high fluency but put me in a room full of doctors or fighter pilots and my fluency in their specific fields will be lacking.
I don’t actually think much about the word fluency in my language learning because I find things like the chart up there to be a bit depressing. Instead I like to think about functional communication. I like to set goals for my learning based on what I want to do.
I have a French Language meetup group coming up soon. To prepare for that I plan to work on my French vocabulary that deals with introducing myself, talking about food, and engaging in small talk. How’s the weather? How is your wine? Do you like Music?
My longer term goal in French is to master question phrases so that I can access new information without having to revert back into English to get it. This, in my mind, requires not only mastery of question phrases but also some phrases in my repertoire that I call “Vague-isms” These are things like “You know that thing…” and “What’s the word for that…” Phrases that will help me describe objects I forget the name of “What do you call that… you know the thing on the side of a house that birds sometimes fly into?” I think the ability to access new information without the help of my native language is a really important marker of my fluency.
So, what is fluency to you? How fluent do you want to be in your target language?
Do you want to be able to have social conversations? Do you want to be able to debate the legacy of the Western Roman Empire? Do you want to work in a country where your target language is spoken? Do you want to be a UN translator? What kinds of smaller goals can you make to get there? What kinds of words and phrases do you need to learn to get that kind of fluency?
My advice is to break your larger goal into some smaller ones. “I want to be conversationally fluent” is a big overwhelming goal that changes in complexity depending on what kind of conversation you want to have. However “This month I want to learn vocabulary related to ordering food in a restaurant”… That is a more manageable goal that you can measure and build upon. From there you can say “This month I want to learn vocabulary for talking about wine.” Next month I want to learn about vocabulary dealing with finding a hotel or apartment.” Month after month, week after week, you build and build one brick at a time and suddenly you find yourself reading Dante’s Inferno in Italian! Or Les Misérables in French! Or the Poetic Edda in Old Norse!
That may sound crazy to you now, but it can totally happen. By the time I was finished with the Duolingo French tree I found myself translating Voltaire into English on the . Duolingo translation activity that I miss so much, and I had to take a minute to relish the realization. You can do it. I believe in you! So keep up the hard work and don’t let anybody tell you that you cannot do it!