Difference between levels with speaking and other skills

[cathmom]

Why is there SUCH a gap between what you know and what you actually say when speaking a foreign language? It's really frustrating! I want to do some research about this area and try to figure it out.

 

Sorry if that's not a good thread title - my brain is fried from speaking Spanish all day!

[Ester Maria]

I think it boils down to practice, because you need a lot of practice for something to become your second nature. So, with rather limited practice as most people have with their second languages (limited to certain registers of the language, certain aspects, etc.), the "playing field" where they can be truly comfortable is rather... limited. On the other hand, you do gain a certain passive knowledge along the way, but without being put into situations where you have to practice expression of that type, it remains passive - just think how many native speakers cannot write well in the academic context, even if they can understand it, or cannot improvize good speeches, even if they can understand others doing it. In some cases it is talent, it most cases I think it has more to do with practice than anything else.

 

I am fairly convinced that one can work on it, but that the amount of effort it would take just does not pay off to most people, which is why pretty much the only people whose active language skills are stellar are those that went professionally in it, are constantly in touch with the language and/or have had extended stays in the country where the language is spoken, being forced to function in it on all registers they would have to function in their native language (i.e. not just doing groceries in the language, but actually living it - professionally, socially, education-wise, etc.). Somebody who just learned it well at school and uses it fairly little in their life may function even very well passively, but be limited to B1-ish type of expression when they actually communicate. And then, if one did not learn it very well in the first place or stopped using it, both active and passive skills deteriorate, but it is much more obvious on active skills how much they deteriorated.

 

Overall, I think that people tend to underestimate how much one should use the language for it to stick well. "Use it or lose it" is so very true in this camp.

[regentrude]

I don't know WHY it is - but a similar thing happens in your native language as well: most people have a much larger passive than active vocabulary. We understand complicated words and phrases we read or hear, yet are not using them in our speech and writing. I wonder whether this is a related phenomenon.

[Ester Maria]

I don't know WHY it is - but a similar thing happens in your native language as well: most people have a much larger passive than active vocabulary. We understand complicated words and phrases we read or hear, yet are not using them in our speech and writing. I wonder whether this is a related phenomenon.

It is essentially the same thing, it is "only" that we are speaking about whole different orders of magnitude on which we can observe those things when we speak about a native and foreign languages. If you do not use something, only hear it or come across it, you will not practice that type of expression, even if you retain the ability to understand it... plus, in foreign languages, you have additional obstacles.

[Nan in Mass]

So this is why you keep saying that to be fluent one must be literate?

[Ester Maria]

So this is why you keep saying that to be fluent one must be literate?

To be proficient in a language? Of course, the two go hand in hand.

 

ETA: Fluency is a tricky word. It can either stand for proficiency (colloquially it is used that way), either be taken more literally, as in speaking in a normal 'flow' - to attain that, one can as well be illiterate and dialectal; but if we shoot for proficiency, yes, literacy is a part of the package.

Edited June 24, 2011 by Ester Maria

[Nan in Mass]

I like your suggestion to use proficient. That makes sense. I've heard fluent used multiple ways also. I've heard it used to mean "not having to translate into one's primary language in order to understand". That one leaves a lot of room for error.

[In The Great White North]

Why is there SUCH a gap between what you know and what you actually say when speaking a foreign language?

 

I think it boils down to practice, because you need a lot of practice for something to become your second nature.

 

With the added complication of confidence.

 

A lot of people simply will not say it, even when they know exactly what to say.

[nutella08]

Well, depending on how much you really want to know, google the keywords "linguistic competence performance". There are lots of linguistic research on competence (what you know) vs performance (what you produce). Enjoy!

[cathmom]

LOL - I posted this after a day of immersion Spanish, when I hadn't been speaking Spanish at all in three years, and not on a high conversational level in who-knows-how-long! I was extremely dismayed and frustrated with myself, and the entire next day I had a splitting headache!

 

The second week (we're doing one six-hour day a week for five weeks) went much, much better. I spoke much more fluently, and my only problem was not remembering vocabulary words, but I can usually get around that with what I do remember.

 

My perfectionism rears its ugly head! Of course I should be able to speak Spanish perfectly after not doing it for years! Why wouldn't I be able to???? :lol: