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Chatcast - more about fluency in languages
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January 18, 2008 01:30 PM PST

Buenos dias, bom dia,hallo, bonjour, jo napot,ni hao, Guten Tag!
So many languages. But of course, as usual, I am speaking in uhm, English my mother tongue and today, I wanted to speak a little about fluency, but today I'm trying to do this as a "chatcast" - and my way of doing chatcasts now is to just...chat without a text.
So, I will produce a text for the "PODOMATIC" site so that you can read what I've said, but I won't do that until after I've finished speaking.

So today, "fluency". What does it mean? In fact what made me think about it was, I was speaking with a friend at work today and we were discussing..uhm..language learning because he said that he would like to learn French and I was giving him some tips and hints and we were discussing what fluency was. He said he would like to have a conversation with people (in French) and he considered that would be fluency. And my opinion is, that fluency changes the more you learn a language, or your idea, should I say, about fluency.

Because the more you learn about a language, the more you think you need to learn. But my point of view is, that we should be able to be fluent... at any level.

To explain what I mean, if you're having a very simple conversation - someone says, "how are you?" and you say, "I'm fine thanks and how (are) is your family? how are your children?" You say, "my children are well, my family is well"

You are still speaking a language in a fluent way, because I think fluency means you can speak the language quite easily. But of course as the language level rises and the complexity of the sentences you're saying in your conversation becomes more difficult, then it affects the level of fluency. So my advice is try to stay in the level that you have and try and enjoy speaking at that level whilst trying to develop more language skills - and that way you develop your fluency.

So, what I'm trying to explain from my point of view is that anyone can have a "level of fluency" that allows them to speak the language and uhm, I think it's worth thinking about because many many people will say to themselves, " I'm not very fluent, I'm not as fluent as I'd like to be". So, take your time, enjoy the conversations that you have in the language you're learning and if it is English, then practice it and say to yourself, "I'm fluent, I just need MORE fluency as I speak about more complex subjects".

So that's my chatcast for Friday evening and I'll hopefully make a new "Weekend words" over the weekend. But, we have my son's girlfriend with us today so, (we) we've got a visitor here. Maybe I will have time but hopefully you'll have a nice weekend. Take care and we'll speak again soon...BYE.