Accuracy versus fluency

“Do you know what a foreign accent is? It’s a sign of bravery.” – Amy Chua

As you begin learning a new language, there are so many things to work on: pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, culture, and so much more! One thing to bear in mind is that it will take a long time to master a language, so be patient as you gradually increase your skills. Throughout your language learning journey, try to focus on achieving a balance between accuracy and fluency:

*accuracy is the ability to speak correctly, using target-like pronunciation, speaking in grammatically correct sentences, and making appropriate word choices.

*fluency is the ability to speak with ease and efficiently express your ideas in the target language. It allows you to participate in a conversation and speak in a natural way without having to stop to collect your thoughts or search for words.

Although it’s not possible to achieve an equal balance, it’s important to pay attention to both. When you focus on accuracy, you will want to pay close attention to, for example, how a word is pronounced, or which form of the verb you might need to use, or which preposition might be needed. Pronunciation, as many of us who are learning a language later in life will know, can be very tricky. Research suggests that there is a critical or sensitive period for learning one’s first language, during which time the brain has sufficient plasticity to allow for successful first language acquisition (or acquiring one’s mother tongue). While there is some dispute about the time frame (somewhere between the age of 5 and puberty), this Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) suggests that learning another language after the first one has been acquired may be more difficult, and most second language learners do not reach the proficiency level of a native speaker. This is particularly relevant for pronunciation: most of us who learn a language at a later stage will have an “accent”, which means that we will not sound like a native speaker and may carry over some of the sounds and other speech patterns from our first language into our second one (or third one). On the one hand, that makes us sound foreign, but it also reveals something about our linguistic identity: when I try to speak French, my accent will also show that I am a bilingual speaker of both Dutch and English. As long as your accent does not seriously interfere with being understood, it’s something to work on but not to agonize over!

Focusing too much on accuracy can stand in the way of gaining fluency. If you don’t dare speak until you have found the correct article (“is it le maison or la maison–the house?”), or remembered the right verb forms (aller-to go: je vais-tu vas-il va), you might not be able to get a word out at all. Sometimes it’s better to just venture out with what you know and try to get your point across, even if the grammar isn’t perfect. Many people who learned a language in school complain that they never dared speak the language for fear of making a mistake. The reason for this is that they focus so much on being correct that they freeze and cannot get a sentence out. Some ways around this are, for example, to paraphrase a word if you can’t come up with the right word, use gestures to point to things, or keep speaking even if you bungle the grammar. The most important thing to remember is to simply communicate with what you know as long as you can make yourself understood. Don’t worry too much about being perfect and allow yourself to make mistakes because that is part of learning a language!