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title is one such example of a very specific target and a deadline to reach it by. Successful language
learners are those who are as specific as possible with their goals.
To help you gauge what to aim for, I ll dive into what fluency and other useful targets really mean,
and we ll look at how much time you need to reach those targets. Plus, I ll explain why  Fluent in 3
Months has been a great goal for me personally and why fluency and beyond is a goal more of us
can strive for.
What Fluency Isn t
The question of what fluency means is one of great controversy, depending on whom you ask. I want
to provide a much more precise understanding of fluency once and for all.
First, some definitions can be way too loose. A monolingual novice with next to no language
learning experience may ask me which languages I speak fluently, but before I quantify my answer I
will ask for her understanding of the idea of fluency, because her definition may be more what I d
consider that of a functional tourist a level easily achievable by anyone within a few hours or days
and not fluency at all.
Second, there is sometimes a too elitist way of looking at being fluent (or saying that you  speak
a language) as being equivalent to a native speaker in all ways. People who look at fluency this way
sometimes go overboard and demand that you should be able to
participate in a debate on a complex or philosophical topic,
speak with no hesitations,
use complex vocabulary and advanced expressions,
never have any serious miscommunications, and
be able to participate in a discussion that any typical native might have.
The problem here, though, is that if you have such high criteria for fluency, then I have to confess
I am not fluent even in English, my native language!
I can t participate in a debate on many complex topics (including philosophical ones; it s just not
my forte). I hesitate all the time in English (watch any unscripted video of me speaking English
online, and you ll hear plenty of ums and uhs). I am not the kind of person to use pompous vocabulary
in everyday conversations, or even in formal ones. And because I m Irish, I have had to learn to adjust
the way I speak and the words I use whenever I m with Americans or other foreign native-English
speakers.
Finally, I can t participate in any conversation a typical native might have. If you start talking
soccer (or any sport, for that matter), which I don t follow, you ll lose me quickly. Many guys can talk
sports for hours, but I m just not that interested, so I can t join in. If you start talking about nice
fashionable clothes, which many native English-speaking women can do fine, I m a dunce and can t
contribute. I almost never watch TV in English anymore, so if you start talking about the latest show
everyone is crazy for, I m going to be able to offer nothing more than defeated shrugs.
These aren t necessarily complex conversations, and they are conversations many typical natives
with no specialization or advanced studies can participate in, but I can t because I m not either
interested in or familiar with the topics.
So if you had these criteria for fluency in the past, discard them immediately, because this is
effectively saying that you have to be able to do in your target language what you can t even do in
your native language, which is a totally unfair and unrealistic standard to set for yourself.
What Fluency Is
Let s look at a more formal definition, from the Oxford English Dictionary:
fluent adjective: (of a person) able to express oneself easily and articulately; able to speak
or write a particular foreign language easily and accurately; (of a foreign language)
spoken accurately and with facility.
I don t see any implication here that you have to pass yourself off as a native speaker or never
make mistakes. Speaking a language accurately and with facility is precisely what I have in mind
when I aim for fluency.
However, this is not something you will ever get a consensus on. There is no absolute, discernible
point you pass when you can say,  Now I speak the language fluently. It s like the idea of beauty, in
that way. You can have more of it, but there is no threshold you finally cross that signals you ve
arrived. It s all relative.
This is a problem if we want something distinct to aim for, though. And even if we each came up
with a personal understanding of what feels accurate or good enough, because we are all filled with
bias, confidence issues, unrealistic expectations, and elitist standards, as well as definitions of the
word fluent that might be way too flexible, I don t think such vague understandings are useful for a
mission with a specific target.
The CEFRL System
With such conflicting ideas about what constitutes fluency, the system I rely on is a much more
scientific and well-established language threshold criterion used by the major bodies that examine
language levels in Europe. Foundations like the Alliance Française, the Instituto Cervantes, and the
Goethe-Institut all use the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL), a
comprehensive guideline of language evaluation.
This system uses standard terminology, accepted across Europe (and used by many institutions for
Asian languages, even if not adopted by those countries formally), for specific language levels. In the
terminology, basically A means beginner, B means intermediate, and C means advanced. Each level is
then split into lower 1 and upper 2. So upper beginner level is A2, and lower advanced level would be
C1. The six levels on this scale, from the simplest to the most complex, are A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, and
C2.
On this scale, an A level is what I would generally call a functional tourist: good enough to get by [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]