Fluency Levels FAQ

I took the fluency assessment... Can I switch fluency levels?

The assessment is designed to help you choose the most appropriate level meeting for your ability. While the assessment isn't perfect, I strongly recommend that you follow it. "Beginners" are notorious for underestimating their abilities, while advanced speakers suffer the same perspective, insisting that they aren't that good. And occasionally we will get the very confident advanced or intermediate speaker who simply doesn't have the speed or the precision necessary for those fluency levels. Show up to the level meeting assigned to you, and I will let you know if you should move up or down.

Why are they important?

Working in a group of peers is important for our community. Beginners and intermediates feel more comfortable making mistakes in front of their peers and become more confident. Advanced members get better fluency practice when the conversation is fluid and naturally-paced. When a beginner infiltrates the advanced meetings, it slows down the conversation and the advanced members do not get quality practice time in. When an advanced member shows up to beginner or intermediate meetings, the lower-level members can lose their confidence and feel intimidated by the difference in abilities.

Higher level members often want to share their knowledge by offering corrections or suggestions. However, this often backfires, since I usually strategize when I make corrections, and which corrections to make. I encourage lower-level members to gain confidence instead of speaking well - the goal is to understand others and to be understood by others. For this reason, I ask all members to withhold their corrections at all Beginner and Intermediate meetings, as well as holding firm on keeping the fluency levels separated.

Advanced peeps? You can discuss vocab and grammar corrections all day long! Just remember that with 20 Spanish-speaking countries, you gotta relax on your vocab. If an English "lorry" is an American "truck," then "conducir" is a perfectly acceptable substitute for "manejar." Even native Spanish speakers grow up learning their own regional form of Spanish and might not be very familiar with many Spanish terms used in other places. There's a ton of words for "drinking straw," and none of them are "wrong."

How do we classify fluency levels?

While most language instruction will categorize students based on primarily written language, our group recognizes that you can know the language even if you can't speak the language. So, generally, your fluency is determined by how many words you know, your ability to conjugate verbs, and how fast it takes you to put those words with that grammar. Another part is listening comprehension - you can't really have a conversation if you can't understand the other person!

At all levels, members are encouraged to work around words that they don't know.

Foundational: No hablo the español.

If the only thing you can do in Spanish is count to five and tell me your name well... there's nowhere to go but up! No one is expected to understand anything without English.

Beginners: Tell me about yourself.

Mistakes are expected, but so is effort. You'll have to prepare for the meetings - don't try to walk in and bluff your way through! You should have a fair grasp on the present tense and a solid vocabulary base of frequently-used words, but you probably need to write down what you want to say - and you will STILL speak slowly with LOTS of pauses. If you feel embarrassed or dumb about your Spanish journey: Welcome home!

Intermediates: Tell me about a childhood memory, and why you thought of that one to share.

You should have a good chunk of vocab in your pocked, and your present, preterite, and imperfect tenses down well enough. Even if the stem-changing verbs are giving you problems and you can't get por/para right, you're on your way. Some phrases and sentences may start to flow nicely together, but generally you will speak thoughtfully as you work to make verb conjugations part of your speech patterns, instead of running it through the manually-operated translation mechanism in your brain each time you want to use that word. You'll know you are in Advanced territory when you don't really need to prepare anymore and you don't have to think of each word you want to say. If you feel frustrated by your limited Spanish: Welcome home!

Advanced: Tell me about an argument that started because of a miscommunication.

If you can have a full conversation without English, at an expected speed... you've made it, baby! If you are still working on the subjunctive, we're cool. You still know how to navigate the language to communicate effectively without relying on English. And that is awesome.

What happens if I show up to the wrong meeting?

You'll just let me know, and then participate in the meeting as much as you are reasonably able to! We don't expect you to be silent, and you should take care not to dominate the meeting. At the end of the meeting, I'll let you know how you did. However, if you are way out of your league and would prefer to leave, then please do whatever makes you feel comfortable! No worries if you get up 10, 20, or 30 minutes into the meeting, for real.