Just the other day I was revisiting my resume for the first time in almost three years. As you can probably imagine, it’s due for a good bit of updating and editing. I wanted to include some level of Spanish competency in the skills section but I wasn’t sure what to write, which got me thinking, how do you define fluency in a foreign language?
Even after a year and a half of living in Mexico City I wouldn’t say that I’m fluent in Spanish. Instead, I’m probably at about an intermediate level. At least intermediate was where I ended up after six weeks of Spanish classes this past spring and I haven’t put in a whole lot of extra effort since then. According to the ACTFL assessments my speaking abilities fall somewhere in between Intermediate Mid and Intermediate High.
These days, I spend a lot of my time in Mexico hanging around native speakers and I’m constantly comparing myself to them, which can be frustrating given that they speak with a level of fluency that I may never completely achieve. When I’m around friends I’m comfortable and generally able to speak well enough to carry on normal conversations, but when I’m speaking to someone for the first time I often get nervous and speaking becomes more difficult. Lately it seems, I’ve lost some of my motivation and reached a bit of a plateau in my learning — which I’m now trying to move beyond.
I often hear people say that they’re some odd percentage fluent — for example I’ll meet someone who will tell me they’re 75 or 80 percent fluent in Spanish — but what does that really mean? The dictionary defines fluent as “capable of using a language easily and accurately.” It doesn’t say anything about speaking perfectly without making mistakes, speaking without an accent or sounding exactly like a native speaker, which are all characteristics that I had originally attributed to achieving fluency.
To expand on that definition, Benny of Fluent in 3 Months defines fluency in a foreign language as;
“something along the lines of not hesitating when speaking, getting your point across with very few mistakes and understanding when spoken to, without slowing down the conversation when with a group of otherwise native speakers”
And he goes on to add that being able to speak fluently means being able to;
“speak without hesitating (no ums and uhs; this is actually closer to the core meaning of the word “fluent” as in flowing), making very few mistakes (maybe a couple every minute of consistent talking), being very easy to understand for others (still with an accent, but not a strong one) and understanding the majority of what is said to me in normal and casual contexts.”
It’s possible that I’ve been putting too much pressure on myself. After all, my Spanish is a lot better today than it was back when I first arrived in Mexico and most of what I’ve learned so far is from day to day life in Mexico City. Of course that doesn’t mean that I’ll be adding Spanish fluency to my resume right away, but at least the overall concept of achieving fluency no longer seems quite so intimidating.
Keeping that in mind, I’ve set a goal for myself of achieving fluency by the end of this year. I’ll be keeping a notebook with me and jotting down all of the situations and topics that I still have trouble handling entirely in Spanish. That way I can focus on the vocabulary and types of conversations that are still challenging. It’ll also mean brushing up on vocabulary and verb tenses — especially the subjunctive tenses — watching television in Spanish to work on correcting my accent and a whole lot of conversation practice and learning from my mistakes (hopefully). Wish me luck! 
When it comes to speaking a foreign language, how do you define fluency? Share your thoughts and language learning tips in the comments.
Photo: via flickr
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
I am terrible at languages and am in awe of anyone who can speak another language at all let alone live in another country speaking their language. I can also understand how you can reach a hump in your learning. You sound like you are approaching it in a very structured way. Good luck and good for you, I say.
Thanks Alison! It’s definitely a challenge, but rewarding as well!
“speak without hesitating (no ums and uhs)” With this defintion, a lot of native english speakers are not fluent!
Fluency in a foreign language can be really hard to define because we always tend to be hard on ourselves.
I thought about that too. Maybe the trick is learning to “um and uh” in the new language. I can’t imagine speaking without any sort of pause in either language!
I think we all get nervous speaking around native language speakers, because they’ll notice the mistakes, as well as speaking around non-native speakers, because we might compare ourselves to where they’re at in their “fluency”. Native English speaking people have terrible grammar and I’m guessing it could be the same in other countries. Just get out there and immerse yourself as much as possible. =)
I think that’s exactly it. Great advice!
Hello!
I just found your blog through Overyonderlust.com. I love what I’ve seen so far and I’ll definitely be following along.
I’m really excited to find a vegetarian living in Mexico City as my wife and I are vegan. We’ve very recently decided we’d like to come down to Mexico this fall/winter and maybe even longer.
We’re traveling slowly, so we will probably be staying places for a month or more at a time and your blog looks like a great place to learn about Mexico. So glad I found you!
I’m glad you found me too! I actually had the pleasure of meeting up with Shaun & Erica when they passed through D.F. not too long ago. They’re a lot of fun! Fall/winter is a great time to visit, rainy season will have ended and the weather’s beautiful around that time of year (although it can get a little chilly in the evenings). I’ll try to hunt down some more vegan-friendly spots for you guys!
I’ve always wondered about defining fluency. I would love to classify myself as intermediate, but I haven’t really practiced in such a long time I’m probably back at beginner status.
Don’t let the name fool you, I would just love to make sense to my listener and stop mixing romance languages within the SAME sentence. :-/
I hate when people ask my how fluent I am in Spanish. Yes, I can get around just fine, but would I define myself as fluent? Fluency means different things for different people, so it’s an almost impossible question to answer. Someone who knows no other language might hear me and assume I’m fluent, but a native Spanish speaker probably wouldn’t.
Someone once told me, “You make mistakes all the time in your native language, so don’t expect yourself to be flawless in your second language.”
That’s a great point. I’m not fond of the question either and it’s one that I get asked a lot, especially when I’m back in the States visiting with friends and family. I always, always have a hard time answering it.
Fluency truly means VERY different things to different people. It’s really about semantics I think so has a HUGE range depending on each person’s perception.
We’re monolinguals raising a trilingual/triliterate child so the question about fluency comes up for us a lot. Our goal is to get our child as fluent as a native in reading, writing and speaking as we can in her Spanish, Mandarin and English.
It takes a lot of time and work to get to that level of proficiency, but not everyone wants or needs that. She speaks bits in several other languages, but having these 3 VERY fluent, means she can easily add other related languages later with much less effort. ( ie going to French, Italian, Portuguese etc from fluent as a native Spanish is much easier than going from English).
I recently wrote a series on raising a multilingual child and answered the question what is fluent and said ( amongst other things) :
“There is a myth that says a child who is proficient in speaking a language is fluent, but this is just not so as there are different levels to being “fluent” in a language. Proficiency in face-to-face communication doesn’t imply proficiency in more complex academic language needed in a classroom or in life.”
http://www.soultravelers3.com/2011/06/how-to-raise-a-bilingual-or-multi-lingual-child-3.html
We want our child fluent enough to go to University or work in all 3 languages, so certainly a much higher standard than someone who just wants to be able to speak with locals on a vacation.
I suppose fluency is in the eye of the beholder. To someone who knows no Spanish, my husband looks “fluent” and fits Benny’s definition. But to his parents who are native Spanish speakers who only spoke it for the first 6 years of their lives ( and only speak English in their daily lives) they say he doesn’t speak Spanish and would laugh hysterically if any one called him fluent in Spanish. ( As would all of our native Spanish speaking friends).
He is certainly a much better Spanish speaker than I am and I got straight A’s in Spanish in school and he managed to help raise our daughter as a trilingual from birth by always speaking his limited Spanish to her for the first few years.
On the other hand, ALL Spanish speakers call my daughter fluent as a native. I observe a HUGE difference between their levels of Spanish.
So what is fluent depends on who you are asking.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment and sharing your story. I agree that there are different levels to being fluent and I think that even then it’s still tough to pin down. Defining your long-term goals in learning the language is key, and if or when you add reading and writing into the mix that’s a whole other set of skills and challenges. Apparently fluency really is, as you said, in the eyes of the beholder and much more so than I had originally thought!
To springboard off of what others have said…and then there is the issue of dialects. I grew up in Los Angeles and wouldn’t have called myself fluent but I took four years of high school Spanish and did well in my college Spanish course. But then I moved to the East Coast where it was a completely different dialect than I was used to hearing/speaking! Heck, even the English dialect was different (and I’m sure Alison can speak to the differences between British and American English).
You sound like you’ve got a plan…you’ll be fluent in no time!
Let’s hope so!
There must be a word that means “not quite fluent, but I can communicate.” If not, let’s make one up!
Sounds good to me!
Great post, Laura! To Kristi’s comment: As non-native speaker of Spanish, I always tell people that I am “functional” in Spanish, not “fluent” … “functional” meaning that I understand most of what is said to me and can respond accordingly, in a way that other people understand me, albeit not always with perfect grammar or the wittiest slang. I won’t consider myself truly fluent in Spanish until it’s as good as my English. Perhaps my standards are too high?
Perhaps, I think mine might be a bit high as well. Sometimes it’s hard to feel like you’re making progress when your standards are set too high, but then again there’s nothing wrong with wanting your second language to be as good as your first. That’s my goal as well. Either way, functional is a great term to use until we can feel comfortable calling ourselves fluent.
Great post! I’ve started to take up Spanish language classes and although I’m nowhere near conversational yet – I enjoyed reading other’s expectations of what fluency is. I’ve seen people list languages on their resume as (basic, conversational, etc).
It’s definitely interesting to hear everyone’s different definitions of fluency. Thanks for sharing this post with your readers!
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