Fluency In A Language – What Does That Mean Exactly?
How do you define fluency?
A lot of people are under the impression that to be fluent in another language means that you speak it as well as, or almost as well as, your native language.
Many of these folks would define fluency as knowing a language perfectly – lexically, grammatically and even phonetically.
Well if this is the case then I’m not a fluent English speaker. I don’t know every aspect of English grammar and I certainly don’t know every word in the English language.
My definition of language fluency
This is my primary criteria for telling if a person’s fluent in a foreign language or not:
They’re able to use their target language to learn more target language.
What do I mean by that?
If you don’t know the word for tail in your target language for example, but you know how to describe the long body part behind a dog or cat – enough to elicit the word from a native speaker in other words – then you can be categorized as fluent.
That’s it.
There are a lot of words in English that I still don’t know even though I’m a native English speaker, but I have more than enough language to describe what I mean and elicit terms.
I can do the same with my second language, Arabic.
How can this definition of fluency help me learn my target language?
Your goal in the early stages of a new language should be to focus on learning enough language to convey meaning and elicit new language without having to go back to your native language.
As soon as you kick off a new language endeavor aim to learn these things as soon as possible:
- Pronouns and demonstratives.
- Basic, most common nouns. These would include things like house, food, car, family, etc.
- Simple prepositions. There are usually a lot of prepositions but focus on 5-10 basic, common ones.
- Basic, most-used verbs. This would include verbs like walk, talk, go, come, sleep, eat, etc.
- Easy adjectives. All you need are some common, very simple descriptive words like fast, tall, fat, good, etc.
The great thing about adjectives is that you don’t need to memorize the antonyms. All you need is a negative particle (e.g. not) or “opposite of” and apply it to each in conversation, i.e. that man is not/the opposite of fat (skinny). You’ll pick up the antonyms over time as you talk to native speakers.
Likewise you don’t need to memorize thousands of nouns. If you don’t know the word for washing machine for example, you could say “the thing I wash my clothes in”. Thing is a very handy word to know.
Arm yourself with enough basic language that you no longer need to rely on your own native language to communicate with people.
How do you define language fluency?
Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
If you liked this post then you might also like to check these out – How Chunking Speeds Up Your Language Learning | A Quick Tip For Mastering Foreign Vocabulary.
This was written by Donovan Nagel.
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Mary Jane Burton
Scott
@alwaysspanish
Roberto
Mason
Fantastic post!!
As an avid language learner (an 'fluent' Japanese speaker), I'm often asked about the meaning of fluency and I agree completely with you.
I don't claim to be a 'perfect' speaker of japanese (far from it in fact), but as you said in your post, can quit happily speak with natives without reveting to English (my native language).
I also very much agree with your ideas on how to get the most out of your learning endeavours. learning words like 'thing', 'action', 'tool', etc can help to facilitate learning through your target language rather than simply learning your target language much faster!
Regards
Thanks Nick!
as someone who is studying linguistics…. my working definition of 'fluency' is someone who can create new sentences on their own and have them understood by another 'fluent' or 'native' speaker. (no matter the complexity of the sentence)
fluency for me is when you know a language well enough that you can feel it
like when students ask me (in my, lets say, native language) if a messed up sentence is correct
and i need to repeat the sentence to myself with a different word order until i get it
not run to the grammar book to make sure it is ok
if i can think in that language without struggling, then i know i’m there
it’s not really about making (grammatical) mistakes or sounding like a native speaker
they make mistakes too
but mostly about the native speaker not even paying attention to the language i am using but being lost in the content of the conversation
i don’t think being able to translate is an important factor (at all)
in fact there are a few concepts i only know in some languages because i learnt/found out about them thru that language
sometimes they also simply don’t translate in that they are not used/are irrelevant in some cultures/countries
not knowing about them in another language doesn’t reflect my failure in getting fluency in that language
once you get into specialized language/jargon
how many native speakers would even know these concepts?
perfect grammar isn’t necessary, i don’t think
and though a rich vocabulary would be desirable
i don’t think it should define somebody’s fluency either
what is much more important is knowing what is the appropriate thing to say in a given context (and i don’t just mean expressions/idioms/proverbs)
a language lives within a culture and i can’t imagine how i would not come to understand the culture if i speak the language fluently
this doesn’t mean you need to know every dialect/regionalism
who does?
only those testing you would go out of the way to try to prove to you otherwise with a variation of “i knew it!” or “i thought you said you spoke ____?”
but you need to have an excellent grasp of at least one dialect or even better, the standard one
at least one to allow you to prove the validity of what you just said
you ask about fluency but do not specify if writing is a factor
many a people are illiterate but can still speak a few languages as their own
i tend to specify what i speak/read/write/understand fluently
i studied or used my european languages in a university setting
which means that i can write academic papers in them
i ran out of energy to get any of asian languages to reach that stage
and then there is the language i was born into
and the language of the country where i spent my childhood
i could talk your ears off in them
but i couldn’t write a high school level paper in any of them
which takes me back to square one when defining fluency
but i’m also a perfectionist
That's true, but even in your native may have trouble describing something especially when the term is no natural to them(I find this in English, I have to look words up in a dictionary) I perfer to think of as the being able to comunciate comfortably and naturally in the language or at least understanbly in the language part of which involves what you said. I also look at the different spheres where it used social, professional academcic Socially I feel comfortable in Spanish, but academically and professionall I would have to learn the higher order grammar and vocabulary.
I'm proficient in eight languages, four of which I don't speak AT ALL (Latin, Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew.) I speak Russian well enough to teach other languages in it, read it and touch-type in it, but have difficulty understanding spoken Russian unless it's spoken directly to me. I'm fluent in Russian and German but would be a lousy spy because I don't understand well (or at all) what I overhear, but only what is spoken directly to me. And yet Ukrainians sometimes tell me that I speak it better than they do, because I speak the literary Ukrainian rather than street language. (That's flattery. I don't speak as well as they do.)
My personal definition of fluency is being able to respond to the target language without expending effort to "decode" the statement in your head, and responding in a similar manner. I've been trying to reach that with my Italian, but so far it only works with simple sentences. But I'm hopeful!
Anyone know any good Italian news stations in the US?
I think you might be underestimating what it means to be "fluent" in a language. The most important criterion in my opinion is whether you are able to freely speak in that language without doing any on the fly translating. When you would like to express yourself you should be able to do so without thinking about how you would say it in your native language and then translating it on the fly, which is what most people who are not fluent in a language do.
So even if you can describe a word (for example, tail) in that foreign language, if you are not able to do so without this "on the fly" kind of translation then I would say you are not fluent, despite how many words you can describe like this.
Fluent to me is when I can have a complete conversation with a native talking about the movie I saw yesterday in that language, being able to hold an office job that only uses the target language in e-mails, start meetings and presentations alike. It’s not sounding as authentic as a native but being able to live your life in that language without help just like a native. I can proudly say that I can do that in my native Arabic, my second language French which I learned all my life and my third language English that I started studying in high school but gained my fluency after living in the United States for more than 10 years. That is what I consider fluent. I know a lot of Spanish and I can understand a lot but I can’t go watch a movie in Spanish and follow all conversations in it. Oh and one important hung for me to say that I am fluent is being able to listen to stand up comedy and get it!!! I am hard on myself like that
a lot of people that don’t know half the Spanish that I know say that they can speak it.