What do you understand by fluency?
Grammar

What do you understand by fluency?


Recently I've become aware of more and more pseudo-polyglots who claim to be able to learn languages within relatively short time spans. This idea appeals to people of the 21st century where everything must be instant. Some are even stupid enough to pay money to the aforementioned pseudo-polyglots for their precious tips on fast language learning. No, their tips won’t work like some magic pill and you won’t turn into a fluent speaker of a foreign language in a couple of weeks’ time. You want to speak a foreign language fluently? Let me give you my tip… for free! What about you try the old fashioned way and actually make an effort? I don’t understand what happened to good old scepticism and critical thinking ability. Are we humans just becoming increasingly gullible? Copy-paste from Google Translate and a video in which you read out some pre-prepared text in a foreign tongue is not what I understand as the ability to speak a language fluently. Perhaps it’s all about how we define fluency then. The "polyglots" will conveniently use their own definition of the fluency so as to satisfy their need for goal-achieving. The rest of us, however, will know we are fluent when we can sustain a lengthy conversation in our target language. Don't kid yourself; this is more likely to take years rather than months. The younger you are and the more effort you make will hasten the point at which you realise you really are fluent. Good luck.



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