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!
Comentários (28)
Hi Carlos,
In modern day English we use “beg the question” the same way we do “raise the question” (a perfect example of fluency not equaling accuracy). In my case though, you could argue that I used it in the classic sense because I set out to prove something I already assumed to be false. I don’t believe that fluency equals accuracy, because no one is ever truly accurate in any language. Thanks for the question! Ashley
Hey Carlos,
Bom, in modern colloquial English “beg the question” and “raise the question” are used interchangeably. However, in the case of my blog you could argue that I’ve used it in its classic sense. When you beg the question of a statement made, you are proving something you already understand to be false. As I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to be 100% accurate in any language, I’m proving the statement “Accuracy equals fluency” to be false, and therefore begging the question. Endendi? Thanks for the question!
Can anyone tell me why I see only one comment on the post “fluency versus accuracy”?
No need to answer, guys. All the comments have just appeared, like magic. Thanks anyway.
Ashley, I’m sorry for being so bold in commenting this, but are you sure the verb form HAD SPENT is the appropriate one in the first sentence of your text? You say that the action of “learning Latin” happened WHEN you were growing up. Had I written that sentence, I would’ve used the simple past with the verb ‘spend’, like here: “I MET a friend WHEN I was waiting for the bus.” The past perfect (had spent) is to be used for an action that happened in the past, BEFORE another past action, right? And here it is not the case, is it? Can you say something about it? Thanks in advance. João.
Good observation, João. However, the reason I used the past perfect here is because I was linking the time I had spent learning Latin and Spanish to the time I had “never contemplated” this topic. For me these events all happened at a point in the past (while I was growing up), which occurred before I moved to Brazil. You would certainly not be wrong in using the simple past, but in this case, the past perfect is acceptable as well.
I guess that “the dream fluency” can be reach if we study a little of grammar and practice everyday, but we’re many times don’t want to wrong nothing, because others people talking with perfection. Now you can imagine like is important to writing, if we writing more than speaking (I think this way) the wrong show more easily and new words can stay forever in your mind. The writing’s like a mirror to have a better speaking.
I liked very much your post, unless the last paragraph.
I believe writing is part of your fluency either, and it’s part of the learning process. If you discourage this part, the learner could missing some important knowledge or skills. I’m an English learner, and I started writing a blog in English. Doesn’t matter if I’m not so good writer yet, but the as “common sense” that every teacher gives – “You’ll learn making mistakes”, I’m making my mistakes writing, but I’m learning a lot doing this.
Nevertheless, it was a great post, congratulations. And if you want to contribute with my writing skills, take a look in my blog and feel free to be critic.
hello
great post!!!
i’m 16 and i’ve been learning english for 2 years. In my small road of studying english i realised that you can’t only pay attention “how right” you are talking;you have to be fast too even though you make some mistakes. i always try to be fast when i’m talking in english ‘cuz if we look at our own language we’ll see that when we are talking we don’t say every single word in the right way or in the right collocation.so before we even think of saying everything right we hwve to talk fast. i believe that it’s the secret.
one more time GREAT POST!!
THANKS
Hello everyone!
I feel the need to explain the last paragraph of my blog. I’m not negating the importance of writing. I believe it is an essential part of the learning process. However, the written word is tricky because it can be interpreted in a thousand different ways depending on who’s reading it. And there is no intonation of voice, nor hand gesturing to aid the person who’s communicating. If I’m writing something that has a potencial audience of thousands, I want to be able to get my message across as clearly as possible. As English is my native tongue I have a much better command of it, and therefore feel more comfortable writing in this language. Lógico, desde que eu comecei a trabalhar numa empresa em que eu tenho que escrever muito mais do que nunca em português, eu aprendi bastante. Mas como eu já disse, por enquanto fico com e-mails, só. Talvez um dia eu escreva um blog em portugês! Obrigada todo mundo pelos comentários!!!
Caro leitor,
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