How Fluent does Duolingo say You Are?

[wendyroo]

The little shield on my Duolingo profile says that I am 47% fluent in Spanish.  All things considered, I think that is a fairly decent loose estimate.  But where does it come from, and does it ever change?

 

I'm currently approaching a year long streak, and that fluency percentage has barely budged during that time.  When I first got on the site, a couple years ago, I swept through and gilded the Spanish tree over the course of a couple weeks.  (Obviously, I had studied Spanish previously.)  Then I got bored and took a year off.  Last year, I came back and re-gilded it over the course of a couple weeks.  Since then, I have done a couple practices a day, and kept the tree ~75% gilded.  I could have it completely gold in a matter of hours if I wanted to; I can knock out a practice in any skill fairly quickly and easily.

 

Since Duolingo only teaches a very finite amount of Spanish, how could it possibly judge how fluent you are once you have gotten beyond that threshold?

 

Wendy

 

[gardenmom5]

The little shield on my Duolingo profile says that I am 47% fluent in Spanish.  All things considered, I think that is a fairly decent loose estimate.  But where does it come from, and does it ever change?

 

I'm currently approaching a year long streak, and that fluency percentage has barely budged during that time.  When I first got on the site, a couple years ago, I swept through and gilded the Spanish tree over the course of a couple weeks.  (Obviously, I had studied Spanish previously.)  Then I got bored and took a year off.  Last year, I came back and re-gilded it over the course of a couple weeks.  Since then, I have done a couple practices a day, and kept the tree ~75% gilded.  I could have it completely gold in a matter of hours if I wanted to; I can knock out a practice in any skill fairly quickly and easily.

 

Since Duolingo only teaches a very finite amount of Spanish, how could it possibly judge how fluent you are once you have gotten beyond that threshold?

 

Wendy

 

currently I'm at 28% for german.   I recently got back to doing it, so I finally caught up to where I had been previously.

 

duolingo claims to get you to 40 - 50% fluency.  probably based on ability to follow a medium conversation and ask simple questions.

 

yes - it can change.  are you totally done with all lessons?  do you keep your "strength bars" up?  have you done the Spanish tiny cards that go alone  with the duolingo lessons?  - their vocab.  you can choose cards- and turn off ones of which you are very secure so it doesn't make you continue to repeat them.

 

tiny cards had duolingo flash cards in most languages they offer - but there are others who've done tiny cards in french, spanish, german, and others.

 

https://tinycards.duolingo.com/

 

I've even been doing tiny cards for atomic notation . . . there's a ton of stuff.

[gardenmom5]

at least for those studying french and spanish - you can get almost any dvd and listen to it on that language track. . . .

 

I plan on starting dudeling on french this summer - so I'll do it with him.  both of my girls did 6/7 years of french.  I think 2dd had more experience speaking it as she had a swiss roommate - and they'd watch movies in french.

[Mergath]

I don't think you can judge fluency based on how much vocabulary and grammar you've memorized. Fluency is being able to understand and converse with native speakers of the language, and there's a lot more to it than vocab. I wouldn't put much stock in the percentage thing.

[rebbyribs]

Duolingo thinks I am 41% fluent in Spanish and 40% fluent in German.  I took Spanish all through high school and 2 semesters in college. I completed the Spanish tree in Duolingo (fairly easily since I'd learned most of it before), and then came back a year later and re-gilded it.  I think I know most of the Duo vocabulary and the basic verb tenses, but I'm shaky on some of the less common verb tenses.  German, on the other hand, I have learned only through Duolingo. I am about 1/3 of the way through the tree.  I don't remember which articles go with most of the nouns, and I often use the wrong forms of words.  I think the 41% fluent in Spanish might be a reasonable number, but my German is nowhere near that level.

[luuknam]

It's been a while since I've touched Duolingo, and I never really did much with it, so I'm not sure how relevant this is, but I took the Dutch placement test (which is my native language - I lived in NL for a total of 19 out of my first 20 years in life; the one year off being a year in Thailand as an exchange student right after I graduated from high school), and it placed me fairly low... I apparently really suck at translating, and kept translating indefinite articles as definite articles and vice versa (seriously, when in real life do you have to translate "the girl" or "a girl" just by themselves? - of course I know the difference between "the girl" and "a girl", but my brain just goes "girl" and doesn't care about the article when it's not actually referring to *any* girl), and by the time I finally quit doing that, I translated a saying ("knowledge is power") with the wrong word for "power", which was not technically wrong, though their translation was better, but anyway... IIRC I actually placed higher on the Spanish placement test, and I can assure you that my Dutch is better than my Spanish (but, at least with the Spanish test I had the advantage of trying to make really sure to use the correct articles). 

[gardenmom5]

Duolingo thinks I am 41% fluent in Spanish and 40% fluent in German.  I took Spanish all through high school and 2 semesters in college. I completed the Spanish tree in Duolingo (fairly easily since I'd learned most of it before), and then came back a year later and re-gilded it.  I think I know most of the Duo vocabulary and the basic verb tenses, but I'm shaky on some of the less common verb tenses.  German, on the other hand, I have learned only through Duolingo. I am about 1/3 of the way through the tree.  I don't remember which articles go with most of the nouns, and I often use the wrong forms of words.  I think the 41% fluent in Spanish might be a reasonable number, but my German is nowhere near that level.

I did german in high school - and a continuing ed class by a woman working on her phd.  (I"m so sorry I tossed my papers from her.  she had the rules for E.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g.  she'd argue about german grammar with her german friends, and she'd show them why she was correct and they weren't.)

 

memorize the genders for the german nouns.  can't stress it enough.  it affects so many things.

for articles - this will help things make more sense so it's less guess work.  they change depending up nominative, accusative, dative.  (I hate dative . . . . )

http://blog.artofmemory.com/files/2012/04/german-definite-articles-chart.png 

here's a  chart for preps

https://ellieoreilly.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/preposition.jpg

 

 

duolingo does have some good pages of info - but some of them you have to go into the lesson to access it - and I'd rather it was easier to just go look for it.

 

 

It's been a while since I've touched Duolingo, and I never really did much with it, so I'm not sure how relevant this is, but I took the Dutch placement test (which is my native language - I lived in NL for a total of 19 out of my first 20 years in life; the one year off being a year in Thailand as an exchange student right after I graduated from high school), and it placed me fairly low... I apparently really suck at translating, and kept translating indefinite articles as definite articles and vice versa (seriously, when in real life do you have to translate "the girl" or "a girl" just by themselves? - of course I know the difference between "the girl" and "a girl", but my brain just goes "girl" and doesn't care about the article when it's not actually referring to *any* girl), and by the time I finally quit doing that, I translated a saying ("knowledge is power") with the wrong word for "power", which was not technically wrong, though their translation was better, but anyway... IIRC I actually placed higher on the Spanish placement test, and I can assure you that my Dutch is better than my Spanish (but, at least with the Spanish test I had the advantage of trying to make really sure to use the correct articles). 

 

some of the sentences they come up with . . . I wonder if they were tossing darts at a dart board . . . 

report some of the issues with translations to duolingo - that's one of the things that happened with the german.  people would say "this is a correct english translation" . . . because they were being so . . . rigid . . . . so, they now allow far more leeway about what is correct.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

This is my best guess for those fluency numbers on Duolingo, based on reading from the book Fluent Forever, which I read a couple years ago.  

 

Supposedly, if you get yourself to a 5000 word vocabulary (of high frequency words), you are about 80% fluent in a language.   Obviously fluency is more than academic recall, you'd need to be able to understand and use those words, and a person can read fluently without being able to write and speak fluently... but in general terms, at 5000 words, you can understand about 80% of what you come across.  

 

Duolingo has different vocabulary sizes for different languages, though they are roughly similar.  German claims to teach about 2300 words.  If they are high frequency words, then this would get you a bit past 40% fluency, since obviously as you move down a high frequency list, each word actually brings you slightly less fluency acquisition because its frequency would diminish, so the first half of the 5000 most common words would be "worth more" fluency than the second half, and learning words 5001-10,000 would be significanty less bang-for-buck than the first 5000.  

 

And this is where fluency becomes such a tangle.  This is why the more you learn of a language, the farther you feel you have left to go!  Getting the first 5000 words is quite an achievement and will give you a solid base for communicating on most common subjects.  Getting the next 5000 words (10,000 working vocab words is about what you'd expect in terms of fluency of a "non-native" long-term resident of a country not speaking that person's mother tongue) is significantly harder and probably can only occur with immersion- this is where fluency is generally considered acquired.  And getting from the 10,000 words of a "fluent" non-native, long-term resident in a country of non-maternal language to the approximate 25,000 word vocabulary of a native speaker is virtually impossible.  

 

So anyway, back to duolingo.  I'm guessing it puts the fluency mark somewhere around that 10,000 word point and bases its numbers accordingly.  It has no way of taking into account just how active that vocabulary is, vs passive understanding, so of course any number needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

 

- sincerely, an extremely fluent French speaker who is reminded daily that she is not as fluent in French as she'd like to be.  :-) 

[SarahW]

I think Monica is right.

 

That is my #1 exasperation with Mounce for learning Greek. He has (or had, I haven't seen the most recent edition) a "% of Greek NT you can read now" number at the end of each chapter. So after the first chapter, where you learned "and" and "estin" and a few other high frequency words, he told students that they now "knew" something like 15% of the NT. Uh, if you mean you can recognize them on the page, sure. But it doesn't mean that you can read and understand 15% of the NT. I think Mounce thought the number would be encouraging, but I found it to be rather dishonest.

 

So in Dutch I don't get a percentage # in Duolingo.  :(  Oh, well!

 

But it would be interesting to see where people place on a1/a2/b1/b2/c1/c2 exams after completing a tree in a particular language. Lots of people here are using Duolingo, so maybe we could run our own informal investigation?  

 

 

[Nan in Mass]

This is my best guess for those fluency numbers on Duolingo, based on reading from the book Fluent Forever, which I read a couple years ago.

 

Supposedly, if you get yourself to a 5000 word vocabulary (of high frequency words), you are about 80% fluent in a language. Obviously fluency is more than academic recall, you'd need to be able to understand and use those words, and a person can read fluently without being able to write and speak fluently... but in general terms, at 5000 words, you can understand about 80% of what you come across.

 

Duolingo has different vocabulary sizes for different languages, though they are roughly similar. German claims to teach about 2300 words. If they are high frequency words, then this would get you a bit past 40% fluency, since obviously as you move down a high frequency list, each word actually brings you slightly less fluency acquisition because its frequency would diminish, so the first half of the 5000 most common words would be "worth more" fluency than the second half, and learning words 5001-10,000 would be significanty less bang-for-buck than the first 5000.

 

And this is where fluency becomes such a tangle. This is why the more you learn of a language, the farther you feel you have left to go! Getting the first 5000 words is quite an achievement and will give you a solid base for communicating on most common subjects. Getting the next 5000 words (10,000 working vocab words is about what you'd expect in terms of fluency of a "non-native" long-term resident of a country not speaking that person's mother tongue) is significantly harder and probably can only occur with immersion- this is where fluency is generally considered acquired. And getting from the 10,000 words of a "fluent" non-native, long-term resident in a country of non-maternal language to the approximate 25,000 word vocabulary of a native speaker is virtually impossible.

 

So anyway, back to duolingo. I'm guessing it puts the fluency mark somewhere around that 10,000 word point and bases its numbers accordingly. It has no way of taking into account just how active that vocabulary is, vs passive understanding, so of course any number needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

 

- sincerely, an extremely fluent French speaker who is reminded daily that she is not as fluent in French as she'd like to be. :-)

That is fascinating! Thanks for typing it all out!

[Carrie12345]

I wish there were a history I could look up.  I know I've gotten into the 50s in French. I don't know if I got any higher than that.  It's currently at 21% for me, and I haven't used it in ages.  I do remember there was a point when it gave me a percentage and I absolutely disagreed that I was anywhere near that fluent. But I do realize I read a lot more than I can understand aloud, and my writing and speaking abilities are miles apart.  

 

I haven't done Duolingo for Spanish, but I've dabbled over the years with multiple kids in the middle school range, using BtB, GSWS, and Rosetta Stone.  I'd estimate that I'd only get a very low passing grade on a Spanish I final, even though I often get weirded out by picking up pieces of people's conversations in Spanish.   But I can't speak a word beyond the obvious yes, no, water, thank you, you're welcome, happy birthday, let's go, and I don't speak Spanish.  Oh, and a few choice words I learned working in a restaurant with young Latinos!

[wendyroo]

This is my best guess for those fluency numbers on Duolingo, based on reading from the book Fluent Forever, which I read a couple years ago.  

 

Supposedly, if you get yourself to a 5000 word vocabulary (of high frequency words), you are about 80% fluent in a language.   Obviously fluency is more than academic recall, you'd need to be able to understand and use those words, and a person can read fluently without being able to write and speak fluently... but in general terms, at 5000 words, you can understand about 80% of what you come across.  

 

Duolingo has different vocabulary sizes for different languages, though they are roughly similar.  German claims to teach about 2300 words.  If they are high frequency words, then this would get you a bit past 40% fluency, since obviously as you move down a high frequency list, each word actually brings you slightly less fluency acquisition because its frequency would diminish, so the first half of the 5000 most common words would be "worth more" fluency than the second half, and learning words 5001-10,000 would be significanty less bang-for-buck than the first 5000.  

 

And this is where fluency becomes such a tangle.  This is why the more you learn of a language, the farther you feel you have left to go!  Getting the first 5000 words is quite an achievement and will give you a solid base for communicating on most common subjects.  Getting the next 5000 words (10,000 working vocab words is about what you'd expect in terms of fluency of a "non-native" long-term resident of a country not speaking that person's mother tongue) is significantly harder and probably can only occur with immersion- this is where fluency is generally considered acquired.  And getting from the 10,000 words of a "fluent" non-native, long-term resident in a country of non-maternal language to the approximate 25,000 word vocabulary of a native speaker is virtually impossible.  

 

So anyway, back to duolingo.  I'm guessing it puts the fluency mark somewhere around that 10,000 word point and bases its numbers accordingly.  It has no way of taking into account just how active that vocabulary is, vs passive understanding, so of course any number needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

 

- sincerely, an extremely fluent French speaker who is reminded daily that she is not as fluent in French as she'd like to be.  :-) 

 

This all makes a lot of sense.  Based on these ideas, I think I am probably beyond a fluency that Duolingo can measure.  I recently took a college placement Spanish test, and it would have started me in Intermediate Spanish II...aka "Spanish 4".  I am a very solid CEFR B1 level.  I can read articles in Spanish newspapers, and while I certainly miss some of the finer details, I can understand the main points of the story.

 

I think the Duo fluency number has been bugging me, because I feel like I am a bit more fluent than 47%, but I also don't want to overestimate my abilities.  I certainly don't know more than 50% of Spanish words, but I think I am closing in on that 5000 word milestone, and that feels like it should be "worth" more than 47% fluency.

 

Wendy

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

This all makes a lot of sense.  Based on these ideas, I think I am probably beyond a fluency that Duolingo can measure.  I recently took a college placement Spanish test, and it would have started me in Intermediate Spanish II...aka "Spanish 4".  I am a very solid CEFR B1 level.  I can read articles in Spanish newspapers, and while I certainly miss some of the finer details, I can understand the main points of the story.

 

I think the Duo fluency number has been bugging me, because I feel like I am a bit more fluent than 47%, but I also don't want to overestimate my abilities.  I certainly don't know more than 50% of Spanish words, but I think I am closing in on that 5000 word milestone, and that feels like it should be "worth" more than 47% fluency.

 

Wendy

§

 

Fluency is such a nebulous thing.  I think by definition, you are fluent if you can communicate well, even if you need to use some circumlocution to get to a concept.  Heck, I still do that after 13 years residing here.  

 

I know the number one thing I could do for my own vocabulary acquisition is to read in French- novels and such.  I just can't bear to use my relaxing reading time to work.  lol.  Probably much to the disappointment of my poor DH.  haha

[Carrie12345]

I wish there were a history I could look up. I know I've gotten into the 50s in French. I don't know if I got any higher than that. It's currently at 21% for me, and I haven't used it in ages.

Just bumped it up to 33%, lol. I still don't think I'm 1/3 fluent!

[Laurie4b]

The little shield on my Duolingo profile says that I am 47% fluent in Spanish.  All things considered, I think that is a fairly decent loose estimate.  But where does it come from, and does it ever change?

 

I'm currently approaching a year long streak, and that fluency percentage has barely budged during that time.  When I first got on the site, a couple years ago, I swept through and gilded the Spanish tree over the course of a couple weeks.  (Obviously, I had studied Spanish previously.)  Then I got bored and took a year off.  Last year, I came back and re-gilded it over the course of a couple weeks.  Since then, I have done a couple practices a day, and kept the tree ~75% gilded.  I could have it completely gold in a matter of hours if I wanted to; I can knock out a practice in any skill fairly quickly and easily.

 

Since Duolingo only teaches a very finite amount of Spanish, how could it possibly judge how fluent you are once you have gotten beyond that threshold?

 

Wendy

 

I am pretty sure that they calculate fluency by how often you practice, not by how fast you fly through. 

[Laurie4b]

Currently I am 46% in Spanish and 51% in German. I think I was further along in Spanish, but stopped practicing on Duolingo for a while then when I came back, I did more German than Spanish. 

 

That being said, I am probably in real life somewhere around 50% fluent in Spanish and about 15 % in German. I finished the Spanish tree once. I am not close to finishing the German tree, but I do practice certain things like adverbs or conjunctions or those parts of speech that tie language together frequently--even if they are "gold." I retain nouns and verbs much more easily so I don't practice those sections until the gilding falls off. 

 

I would not use Duolingo's estimation of fluency as any  gauge for the real world. What I like about it is that it is a motivating factor. I like to see it go up even if it's not really tied to reality. I have learned quite a bit of German from Duo but also have some other German books I learn from. 

Edited June 11, 2017 by Laurie4b

[wendyroo]

I would not use Duolingo's estimation of fluency as any  gauge for the real world. What I like about it is that it is a motivating factor. I like to see it go up even if it's not really tied to reality. 

 

That is the thing, mine is not going up!!  I have practiced every day for almost a year (349 days to be exact), including re-gilding my tree twice during that time, and the fluency percent has only gone from 46% to 47%...in a year!!  It is not motivating me; it is irrationally discouraging me.

 

Wendy

[Carrie12345]

That is the thing, mine is not going up!! I have practiced every day for almost a year (349 days to be exact), including re-gilding my tree twice during that time, and the fluency percent has only gone from 46% to 47%...in a year!! It is not motivating me; it is irrationally discouraging me.

 

Wendy

Hmm. That IS odd. I played obsessively today, and got back up to 52%.

[winterbaby]

There are several languages where I could absolutely fly through Duolingo if it wasn't so boringly easy, and can read to varying levels between so-so and darn near perfectly, and currently none where I could participate fluently in a real conversation. IMO no amount of practice with anything other than a human teacher equals any degree of fluency. For the most part they won't even do much for real-world listening comprehension. But maybe I am weird. In both Spanish and French I can read extremely well, and find their broadcast media near-totally incomprehensible. Being able to read a foreign language isn't nothing but it's half-knowledge. When I decided to learn Irish I did it the other way around, listening to radio all day long and doing very little with grammar books, Duolingo, etc., and so far I have very nice results. Although with noone to practice with, I can barely spit a sentence out. There are a few different skills in speaking a language and though they reinforce each other (e.g. you can't speak without vocabulary), you can't develop a skill unless you practice that skill.

[heartlikealion]

I haven't touched my account in a long time. It lists me as level 12 and 11% fluent. I never finished my tree. Maybe try another element or another app. I don't know what causes your fluency to not move.

 

My dad uses the program backwards sometimes! Like pretends he's a German speaker learning English to get a different experience than when he used the program as an English speaker learning German. Maybe try that and see if it is a more favorable experience?

[heartlikealion]

Btw, I had to log into the PC to even find my shield. I originally logged into my phone app. I have it on my kindle fire as well but I haven't logged in there to check. Each experience is a little different.

[Beth S]

This thread was encouraging to me, and our 15yo son.

He's been doing German Duolingo nearly every day for about 2.5 years & is at 50%.

Level 23.

He too was stalled at 44% for a long time.

We figured that 100% = done with all the lessons (the Tree).

Maybe that's not the case.

 

He wanted me to add here that he's eagerly awaiting the Klingon course that Duolingo has promised. :)

Edited June 12, 2017 by Beth S

[wendyroo]

We figured that 100% = done with all the lessons (the Tree).

 

Nope.  I finished my tree a couple years ago, and have fully gilded it (all skills simultaneously at full strength) several times since then.  During most of that time I have been stuck at 46-47%.

 

Wendy

[heartlikealion]

Are you using every feature? Like the speaking lessons with microphone? Lots of people opt out of those. You can disable or enable it.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Another interesting fluency tidbit:

 

An average five year old is considered fluent in her mother tongue.  So, the bar for fluency is about what you'd expect your five year old to understand in her first language.  

 

Just more food for thought...  

[Laurie4b]

That is the thing, mine is not going up!!  I have practiced every day for almost a year (349 days to be exact), including re-gilding my tree twice during that time, and the fluency percent has only gone from 46% to 47%...in a year!!  It is not motivating me; it is irrationally discouraging me.

 

Wendy

 

Well in that case, I'd ignore it!  It is not a true measure of fluency anyway. 

[luuknam]

I certainly don't know more than 50% of Spanish words

 

 

I'm pretty sure I don't know 50% of English words:

 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq-how-many-english-words

 

(still going to say I'm fluent)

[Nan in Mass]

I'm pretty sure I don't know 50% of English words:

 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq-how-many-english-words

 

(still going to say I'm fluent)

I would have said the same thing, but I have looked at several pages of my college dictionary and excluding names of people and place names, I seem to know about 2/3 of the words. Then again, this isn,t a full dictionary, only a collegiate one. I picked pages with lots of words, also, not pages that are all one word like 'run'.

[luuknam]

I would have said the same thing, but I have looked at several pages of my college dictionary and excluding names of people and place names, I seem to know about 2/3 of the words. Then again, this isn,t a full dictionary, only a collegiate one. I picked pages with lots of words, also, not pages that are all one word like 'run'.

 

 

I was joking - yes, I meant I don't know half of those one million words that English allegedly has - and that's just fine. 

[luuknam]

This says I know at least 20,000 word families:

 

http://my.vocabularysize.com

 

It also says I did better than 24% of native speakers... I'm going to blame selection bias. 

[Nan in Mass]

This says I know at least 20,000 word families:

 

http://my.vocabularysize.com

 

It also says I did better than 24% of native speakers... I'm going to blame selection bias. 

 

I got 26,800 words.  Or it might have been 28,600 words.  Middle 70's for Better than 5 of native speakers.  This doesn't surprise me.  I wonder what I would get if I did it in French?  My vocab is good enough to read an Agatha Christie and escape into the story ok, but not good enough to read something more complicated without a dictionary.

 

I knew what you meant about the 50%.  I didn't think I knew that many either and was really surprised by the results of my informal test. I had the impression that the dictionary contained mostly words I don't know.  : )

 

Nan

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Roughly, a native (first language) speaker of a language knows 20,000 words.  

A fluent second-language speaker knows 10,000 or so words in that second language, plus the 20,000+ of their first language.  It's very hard to get that 10k number to move higher, for a number of reasons.

 

Nobody knows 50% of the words in any language... that would be essentially impossible.  (As someone said for English, that 500k words or more...).  Fluency is not about size of vocabulary after a certain point (10k words or so), it's about ease of use and precision of expression.  

 

Duolingo's number is essentially useless.  It doesn't take into account the speed with which you respond to questions, it doesn't allow for circumlocution, and the speaking component is minimal.  Obviously it's measuring something, probably vocabulary, so watching it move up is a positive thing, but I believe duolingo is supposed to place you at a B1-B2 level for completion, and fluency is C1-C2 level.   

 

 

[Nan in Mass]

I don't believe I know even 50% of English (despite the vocabulary quiz) because of all the areas of specialized vocabulary. I know my area's most common birds but not desert birds. I know about half of the weeds in my area but almost zero desert plants. I know a lot of modern sailing vocabulary but only a small portion of schooner vocabulary (not that schooners aren't modern - new ones are still being built and the vocab is still being used). I know the most common tools but not the specialized ones. Etc. There are so many areas that my life hasn't touched - racing, rocks, rocketry, ..., all with their own vocabulary.

 

Nan

[luuknam]

Fluency is not about size of vocabulary after a certain point (10k words or so), it's about ease of use and precision of expression.  

 

 

Yes and no. Ease of use and precision of expression do depend on vocabulary, and imo, they do depend on that even after 10k. The differences are more marginal the more words you add, but there are differences. When I was fresh off the boat, so to speak, 12.5 years ago, I could convey pretty much anything without too much trouble, and I got a 720 on the SAT verbal a month after arriving, so obviously my vocab was okay. But, there was just that slight awkwardness of not being a native speaker, some of which was related to slang, idioms, and other vocab (like the question I missed on the SAT practice test I took which was about an oar and a rudder and I knew they had to do with boats but wasn't sure what *exactly* they were... I'd almost certainly have known if I were a native speaker (I knew that Dutch word, I just didn't know which word translated to what)). I was 'fluent', but I wasn't as fluent as native speakers. Whereas nowadays, I feel like I don't have vocabulary-related fluency problems. It's not like I know all English words, but I feel like I'm at about the same level as a reasonably educated native speaker. I don't feel like I have to circumlocute more often than I did in Dutch before moving to the US, and I'm sure I have to do it less often than I had to in English when I first moved here. 

 

Gotta go - my kid had bad dream.

[Carrie12345]

The grammar is what kills me.  I can re-gold, but it takes me a LOT of errors to get there in the less simple verb forms.  I suspect that's a big part of the algorithm.  I mean, I finally got "He was the only one who needed to move" after 6 tries, but what are the odds that I'll be able to say it next week?

[luuknam]

I don't believe I know even 50% of English (despite the vocabulary quiz) because of all the areas of specialized vocabulary. I know my area's most common birds but not desert birds. I know about half of the weeds in my area but almost zero desert plants. I know a lot of modern sailing vocabulary but only a small portion of schooner vocabulary (not that schooners aren't modern - new ones are still being built and the vocab is still being used). I know the most common tools but not the specialized ones. Etc. There are so many areas that my life hasn't touched - racing, rocks, rocketry, ..., all with their own vocabulary.

 

 

Right... I almost mentioned that in my post too. Botany is one of my areas of weakness... there are some plants that I know the Dutch words for, but not the English... but, if I then ask a native English speaker, the answer is usually "I don't know", unless they're into gardening (I'm obviously not talking about roses or dandelions or daffodils here). So, I feel that if I'd been a native English speaker, my English vocabulary probably would've been a bit bigger... but w/e. If I actually cared about flowers and gardening I would pick up those English words in a heartbeat... but for the most part I don't. My mom just happened to like pointing out certain flowers and telling me their names when I was a kid, and even though I was largely uninterested, I still picked up a bunch of them. Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing... I sometimes want to point out certain flowers to the kids and tell them what they're called, and they're being spared that. It's one of those things I'm probably only inclined to do because my mom did it, lol.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Yes and no. Ease of use and precision of expression do depend on vocabulary, and imo, they do depend on that even after 10k. The differences are more marginal the more words you add, but there are differences. When I was fresh off the boat, so to speak, 12.5 years ago, I could convey pretty much anything without too much trouble, and I got a 720 on the SAT verbal a month after arriving, so obviously my vocab was okay. But, there was just that slight awkwardness of not being a native speaker, some of which was related to slang, idioms, and other vocab (like the question I missed on the SAT practice test I took which was about an oar and a rudder and I knew they had to do with boats but wasn't sure what *exactly* they were... I'd almost certainly have known if I were a native speaker (I knew that Dutch word, I just didn't know which word translated to what)). I was 'fluent', but I wasn't as fluent as native speakers. Whereas nowadays, I feel like I don't have vocabulary-related fluency problems. It's not like I know all English words, but I feel like I'm at about the same level as a reasonably educated native speaker. I don't feel like I have to circumlocute more often than I did in Dutch before moving to the US, and I'm sure I have to do it less often than I had to in English when I first moved here. 

 

Gotta go - my kid had bad dream.

 

I definitely agree that there are varying levels of fluency.  The problem is that most people want a formal definition of fluency and that formal definition is actually a relatively low bar compared to the level of a native speaker.  Like you, I am certain I came to France (then Switzerland) and became technically fluent in my first 3 months there.  I already had the vocabulary/grammar, and the immersion brought me up to a comfort level corresponding to the technical definition of fluent.  However, I am still far from native speaker, and probably always will be.  

 

As a bilingual person, I can feel steam coming out of my ears when people say things like, "I finished Rosetta Stone Spanish and am now fluent."  NO, YOU'RE NOT!  LOL.  But it's not a hill I'm willing to die on, just a pet peeve. 

[Nan in Mass]

Right... I almost mentioned that in my post too. Botany is one of my areas of weakness... there are some plants that I know the Dutch words for, but not the English... but, if I then ask a native English speaker, the answer is usually "I don't know", unless they're into gardening (I'm obviously not talking about roses or dandelions or daffodils here). So, I feel that if I'd been a native English speaker, my English vocabulary probably would've been a bit bigger... but w/e. If I actually cared about flowers and gardening I would pick up those English words in a heartbeat... but for the most part I don't. My mom just happened to like pointing out certain flowers and telling me their names when I was a kid, and even though I was largely uninterested, I still picked up a bunch of them. Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing... I sometimes want to point out certain flowers to the kids and tell them what they're called, and they're being spared that. It's one of those things I'm probably only inclined to do because my mom did it, lol.

Haha - that is why I know so many plant names. I even know some of the Latin names. I have just about zero interest in knowing Latin plant names ... and I told my children the ones I knew on our walks. I am now glad I know the common names of plants. I tell dven my grown children the names when we are together because that had to have been the easiest way I ever learned anything. I memorize only with great difficulty and I forget everything the day after I stop using it. And yet plant names stuck.

 

Nan

[Julie Smith]

Yes and no. Ease of use and precision of expression do depend on vocabulary, and imo, they do depend on that even after 10k. The differences are more marginal the more words you add, but there are differences. When I was fresh off the boat, so to speak, 12.5 years ago, I could convey pretty much anything without too much trouble, and I got a 720 on the SAT verbal a month after arriving, so obviously my vocab was okay. But, there was just that slight awkwardness of not being a native speaker, some of which was related to slang, idioms, and other vocab (like the question I missed on the SAT practice test I took which was about an oar and a rudder and I knew they had to do with boats but wasn't sure what *exactly* they were... I'd almost certainly have known if I were a native speaker (I knew that Dutch word, I just didn't know which word translated to what)). I was 'fluent', but I wasn't as fluent as native speakers. Whereas nowadays, I feel like I don't have vocabulary-related fluency problems. It's not like I know all English words, but I feel like I'm at about the same level as a reasonably educated native speaker. I don't feel like I have to circumlocute more often than I did in Dutch before moving to the US, and I'm sure I have to do it less often than I had to in English when I first moved here. 

 

Gotta go - my kid had bad dream.

That is sort of what my husbands french is like. He grew up in Quebec, and did most of his schooling in French. But he was always English. He speaks well enough. He even bought a house, speaking only french. He has some friends who don't spreak English.

 

But he has holes in his vocabulary. He might be reading us the french version of,"fly guy", (grade 1 or 2 level) or a Robert munsch book (perhaps grade 2 or 3) and not know what one of the words means. Some words he doesn't know are; rake, caneo, paddle, ... just general words he would have picked up if he was french.