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nico

on fluency
slightly better organized version of the same old rant. comments welcome. =0)

Judging from my classmates, I think a lot of people don't know what the word "fluent" means, they misuse it so much. According to my Random House American English Dictionary, to be fluent in a language means being able to express oneself well and easily. I find that a bit too short and nonspecific, so allow me to discuss my own idea of fluency:

• being able to express yourself effortlessly and well requires several things: a decent working knowledge of grammar,etc.; a reasonably large vocabulary; reasonably good pronunciation. If you have all this, I think you should be able to read/hear and understand the language reasonably well also. Regardless, I often hear my fellow students claiming that they are "fluent" in one language or another, yet admitting that they can't read books or new articles, or watch films in that language.
  
  
• being able to think in that language without translating in your head. This might be the most important part, in fact, though it ties in with everything else.
  
  
• ability to paraphrase sentences, recognize ambiguous phrases and restate them, recognize metaphor, etc.
  
  
• ability to recognize correct and incorrect sentence structure
  

Moreover, I don't think anything remotely similar to fluency can be achieved by going to a class a few days a week and not using it all at in one's spare time. One can learn grammar rules and some vocabulary in a classroom, but I think one acquires language outside of the classroom, which is more permanent and less conscious.