“I know Hebrew.”
“Oh cool! Are you fluent?” comes the inevitable response.
Fluency is the holy grail of language learning. But what is it exactly? By what standard is someone considered fluent in a language?
Is it when you achieve “complete mastery” of the target language? If we define “complete mastery” as knowing every word or grammatical rule in a language, I wouldn’t be fluent in English. I consistently have to look up words, phrases, and idioms in my native tongue. My mastery of the language is not “complete” in this sense – but I’d still consider myself fluent.
If “complete mastery” is an unfit definition of fluency for my first language, it’s unfit for a second language. On top of this, it’s a completely overwhelming (indeed impossible) goal to set in front of new language learners. And it’s vague. What content needs to be “mastered” exactly? Do I need to know all the grammar concepts in the language? Have a complete linguistic analysis?
The goal of language learning is not to reach some arbitrary threshold of knowledge about the language. What we want is to learn how to communicate – both productively and receptively – in the target language, not just talk about it in our native language. This brings us to our definition of fluency.
Defining Fluency
Fluency is knowing a language so well that you don’t have to consciously think about using it: the ease and automaticity with which you speak, write, read, and listen. Pausing between words to recall vocab or verb forms means a learner is not yet fluent, because manual recall occupies too many mental resources.
Fluency is when you know a language so well that you don’t have to consciously think about using it. It’s the ease with which you can use your target language – how automatically you can use it in actual speaking, writing, reading, and listening.
If you have to spend a few seconds between each word recalling vocab or how to construct the appropriate verb form or sentence, you aren’t fluent. This is to be expected when you first learn a new concept in the language, but it shouldn’t persist. You want to get beyond this stage. Manual recall occupies too many mental resources for your brain to efficiently carry out the tasks of formation and recognition.
The skills of formation, recognition and syntactical arrangement can be made automatic via a very simple two step process.
How to Develop Fluency
Fluency develops through a two-step process that linguist Paul Nation calls “fluency development”: practice easy material, and go fast. Easy material lets learners internalize what they already know, going fast builds automaticity, and fluency must still be concerned with accuracy and meaning, not only correct forms.
1. Practice easy material
2. Go fast
This process is what linguist Paul Nation calls “fluency development.”1 Practicing easy material is essential because it allows you to internalize what you already know. Going fast allows you to develop automaticity.
It is probably necessary to mention here that fluency has to be concerned with accuracy and meaning in addition to the mechanics of language formation. It cannot just refer to correct forms but also to the appropriateness of the words in a given context.
Measuring Fluency
Language fluency is hard to measure, but speed, effort, and endurance are helpful metrics. Speed is the “north star” metric: going faster means the language is easier, easier means you can do more, speed is easiest to quantify, and it is almost synonymous with fluency in second language acquisition research.
Measuring language fluency is difficult because it includes a lot of internal mental processes that are hard to track. But I think speed, effort, and endurance can be helpful metrics.
If you can increase your speed when using the language, you are either thinking more quickly, or you aren’t having to think through each decision you make. This is a sure sign that the language processes are becoming more automatic.
Endurance can be another helpful metric because it means you are able to cover more material without exhausting mental resources as quickly.
Effort is also a useful rubric. Very simply: if it feels like it’s getting easier, then it probably is.2
Speed is the “north star” metric. If you are going faster, that means it is easier. And if it’s easier, you can do more (endurance). Plus speed is easiest to quantify. Speed is almost synonymous with fluency in second language acquisition research.
Practical tips for developing fluency in Greek and Hebrew.
To build reading fluency in Greek or Hebrew, pick a text whose vocab you fully know, such as a simplified story or a Bible chapter, read it once for understanding, then reread it 15 seconds quicker until you can’t get any faster. A five-minute timer also works, but meaning should never be sacrificed for speed.
Here are a couple of tangible ways to practice increasing your (reading) fluency.3
Pick a Greek or Hebrew text. If you are earlier in your learning journey, you can use a simplified text (we have lots of simplified stories in Biblingo). If you are more advanced, you can pick a chapter of the Bible. The key here is that you need to know all the vocab in the text. If you don’t know all the vocab, learn it before doing this exercise.
Step 1 – Read the text once, making sure you understand everything.
Step 2 – Now do the same thing, but try to go 15 seconds quicker this time.
Step 3 – Keep doing this until you can’t get any faster.
You can also set a timer for 5 minutes and see how much of the chapter you can read in those 5 minutes. Then, next time you read, set the alarm for another 5 minutes, but push yourself to make it further in the reading.
These gradual steps will help increase your speed. Keep in mind though: the focus should always be on the meaning of the text. Don’t sacrifice meaning on the altar of speed.
Conclusion
Fluency is a prerequisite for comprehension in real-time: a reader who cannot read fast enough is translating, not reading. Greater fluency also lets learners take in larger chunks of text, gaining more exposure and intuition, in a virtuous cycle that leads to deeper engagement with the text of Scripture.
Why is it so important to develop fluency? So what if it takes a little more time to get through a text as long as we understand the meaning in the end?
While it doesn’t hurt to take your time reading – and sometimes it’s necessary – fluency is a prerequisite for comprehension in real-time. If you can’t read fast enough, you simply can’t comprehend the text as a text. Yes, you might decipher the meaning eventually. But you aren’t understanding it in real-time – you aren’t reading, you’re translating.
In addition, fluency is the gift that keeps on giving. When your fluency increases, you can take in larger and larger chunks of the text. When you can read more text, you get more natural exposure to the language. That continued exposure allows you to gain more intuitions about the language as you encounter it, which in turn makes you more fluent. Fluency development is a virtuous cycle that leads to deeper and deeper engagement with the text of Scripture.
Further Resources
To dive deeper into this topic, check out Kevin Grasso’s deep dive into the four strands of language learning and listen to his interview with Paul Nation.
Notes
- I feel it necessary to reiterate that fluency development should not include any new vocab or grammar construction. It should only include material already learned. ↩
- The advantage to the first two is that you can objectively measure your speed and the amount of material you cover with by using a timer, counting words/paragraphs/minutes, setting alarms. The last one is largely subjective. It isn’t a bad metric, but it won’t be consistent enough for you to rely on. We all have “on” days and “off” days. ↩
- You can adapt similar exercises to develop fluency in the other language skills (speaking, writing, and listening), as well. ↩