Fluency vs. Accuracy
O que é mais importante no inglês, fluência ou precisão? A professora convidada Ashley Smith trata deste assunto tão polêmico no aprendizado de idiomas.
Despite the fact that I had spent two years learning Latin and seven learning Spanish when I was growing up, I had never contemplated whether fluency in a language equaled accuracy until I moved to Brazil. It was teaching English that led me to start thinking about this.
I remember in my early days of teaching being confused by some of my intermediate and advanced students’ desires to become “fluent” in English. They were perfectly capable of holding a conversation, and they had no problem understanding me. In my book that meant fluency. However apparently for them fluency meant making no mistakes.
I began to understand this desire as I gained more fluency in Portuguese. I found myself sometimes avoiding conversations not because I was afraid I couldn’t get my point across, but because I would make a mistake. People would compliment me on my Portuguese, I would hear my friends tell others that I was fluent, yet I still hesitated before speaking. I felt like my students, wanting desperately to speak Portuguese accurately; otherwise I couldn’t consider myself fluent.
This begs the question…if fluency in a language equals speaking it accurately, that is, with no mistakes, then is anyone fluent, in any language? I mean, as much as I’d like to think that I, as a native speaker of English and as a teacher of this language, speak English perfectly, do I? In fact, I sometimes feel like I’m just as much a learner as my students are.
What are the ingredients that make up fluency when speaking another language? Do you translate in your mind what a person says as he or she is saying it? Do you find yourself getting lost in a conversation with more than one person? Do people give you a blank stare when you speak to them? If you’ve answered no to these questions, then I would say you’re fluent. In my opinion accuracy is just an optional ingredient of the many that distinguish fluency.
Writing fluently in another language, on the other hand, é outra história completamente. I might have proudly placed myself in the category of speaking Portuguese fluently, but brave enough to write in this language? Maybe an e-mail or two, but certainly not a blog!
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Autora: Ashley Smith (www.meuingles.com) é americana que mora no Brasil desde 2001. Durante os primeiros sete anos aqui ela dava aulas particulares de inglês, e atualmente trabalha como diretora de conteúdo do site www.meuingles.com. Outros textos da autora.
Hi Shirley, great post! Really alleviated me. It’s good to see someone who speaks the language talking about fluency. I study English as much as I can, couse I really like it. And it’s awesome that here on the internet we can get in touch it everything, everywhere and everyone, so we can learn a lot.
Good luck with your portuguese ;D
Nice post, it describes exactly how it feels.
I’m sharpenin’ my english everyday on the internet, but when in a conversation i have this same fears although i can perfectly understand what they are saying… it’s weird.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. Fluency is generally considered (and always measured as) the number of words produced in a specified time period. As such, fluency does not necessarily include accuracy unless the error is so great as to obstruct or alter understanding/meaning. One thing missing however, is the use and choice of vocabulary. Some recent studies in this area show that students who are considered more fluent in either speaking and writing sometimes use fewer words than interlocutors who are less fluent. When this happens it seems to show that fluency can’t be defined or measured solely by word counts. However, the more fluent writer might use less words to express their point but they often use more rare/less frequently occurring words to do so. Simply put, a more fluent writer may write only 100 words compared to a less fluent writer who writes 140 words. The difference lies in words used as the more fluent writer generally uses a greater number of less common words.
Actually, what I really want is just receiving the upcoming comments by email, but when I marked the “Receber próximos comentários” box, it was shown a request to add a comment. So…
tks
Liacassia
Great, Terry! And thank you! I had never thought about “number of words used” being connected to fluency.
[...] analisar a precisao durante uma conversa: ser rápido ou preciso? (veja este post) [...]
in fact, if you practice your english everyday listen musics..and watch movies its a great idea to improve your english
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