“Good enough” quickly enough, or why fluency is an ill-advised goal
A lot of failure in language learning—and so much misdirected action!—is driven by commitment to vague goals. The problem with vague goals, to paraphrase David Allen, is that if you don’t know what your “done” looks like—how on Earth do you know when you’re done? More interestingly, how do you even get “there”? When you know exactly what it is that you’re trying to accomplish, you can reverse engineer your strategy to achieve goal X by time Y. With languages, more often than not, not only do we not have a Y (the deadline) but we also have no idea what X (the outcome) even looks like. Forget the strategy.
When you say, “I want to learn Spanish,” what does “learn Spanish” mean? What is the desired outcome? For many, the intuitive answer is fluency. I came to realize that fluency is an ill-advised goal. First of all, the concept itself lacks an agreed-upon definition—which is a little… problematic? If you don’t know where you’re sailing, no wind is favorable. You’re unsure what steps to take and you can’t objectively evaluate the effectiveness of your actions, so the natural response to this lack of clarity is to either:
undertake haphazard action in hopes that it will bring you closer to the desired outcome of “knowing Spanish” (also known as the “Random bullshit go!” approach where you sign up for these Spanish classes, order a copy of Spanish Grammar for Beginners, get yourself Duolingo Plus, and start binging on La Casa de Papel with English subtitles).
OR: do nothing because it’s unclear what the right action is.
Option #1 gives you the illusion of progress. Option #2 conserves energy. Tough choice. And so, most of us end up on a hamster wheel of getting all excited about learning a new language → engaging in random motions that demonstrate our deep commitment to this goal → realizing that we aren’t getting anywhere → losing all motivation and retreating. Wash, rinse, repeat. Oh well.
To make matters worse, the definitions of fluency that do exist tend to emphasize oral command of the language in question, almost to the exclusion of everything else. And this wouldn’t be a problem, if fluency weren’t performative in nature. But it is. And performance is not the same as competence. I have days when I can’t form a grammatical English sentence—and any unlucky soul that runs into me in such a moment would be convinced that I’m fresh off the boat heading in for my weekly Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada class. Fluency doesn’t have bad days. Plus, more often than not, fluency in our mind equates with a native speaker's level of performance—which, for a second language learner, is a far-fetched goal.
Fluency is a language learning equivalent of a black belt in combat sports. And I can’t think of any other skilled activity where people en masse would set themselves black belt-level goals right off the bat. Generally, we don’t mind dabbling in stuff first. If we like it well enough, we might consider going pro—however, mastery is rarely the initial goal. You can totally enjoy chess without being a grandmaster—you just want to get to the level where you can hold your ground without losing to your five-year old. You can sail competently without having Joshua Slocum’s ambitions. You don’t have to be John Butler to play guitar. Take any skilled activity, and most people would consider aiming for the expert level of performance simply unnecessary.
Yet, with languages, the expert level of performance is almost expected. Incompetence is not readily tolerated. We judge (ourselves) rather harshly. It doesn’t take much self-awareness for us to realize that our comprehension is imperfect, our accent is horrendous, our grammar is nonexistent, and we generally give the impression of a 3-year-old whenever we open our mouth. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who wouldn’t hold deep insecurities around their foreign language competence—despite having an excellent command of the language! I wonder if this is due, at least partially, to the fact that each and every one of us (with very few exceptions) is an expert in at least one language—our mother tongue. And so we compare our L2 skills to our native language skills and go all “😬”.
Now, many of us sense that we’re never quite “done” learning a language. Fair enough. There’s always something to learn. But shooting for the stars with foreign languages doesn’t serve you—at least initially—because you can’t develop an appropriate game plan. What you want instead is to get “good enough”.
When I started doing jiu-jitsu, my goal wasn’t to get a black belt—a black belt might be ten years down the road if I don’t break anything to anyone. My goal was to get good enough—quickly enough—to stop being choked out at the rate of 9 submissions per 6-minute roll and start being a fun opponent to upper belts. Same with languages: you want to get good enough—quickly enough—to start having fun (and being fun to interact with).
Until you’ve reached that point, your experience will mostly be humbling (provided you’ve got the right attitude). If you’ve got a wrong attitude, however, the damage to the ego can be considerable. Speaking a language is just so deeply human—and so we view a good command of language as a proxy for intelligence and erudition. Intelligent and well-educated people tend to have an impressive thinking capacity coupled with a rich vocabulary, an expansive grammatical repertoire, and a certain eloquence that allows for presenting ideas logically and gracefully. And then you throw all your mental energy at stitching these brilliant ideas together in a somewhat coherent French, take a breath… and bleh!—you still come out sounding like an excited toddler.
Not being able to express complex thoughts is extremely frustrating. But if you weather this phase of being incompetent and useless and transition to being “good enough”, the reward is—hands down—one of the most impactful achievements out there. Proficiency in a foreign language quite literally gives you access to a whole new world of knowledge, relationships and opportunities. The problem is that language is a complex cognitive skill with a delayed payoff. Depending on your target language you need between 200-400 hours of practice (*) to get "good enough": able to understand spoken and written language and able to maintain a conversation on a range of topics without needlessly straining yourself and your companion. (In comparison, becoming "good enough" in something like driving requires a mere 60 hours of practice.)
(*) With the right approach, 200 hours is enough for most English speakers to get to a so-called limited working proficiency (=”good enough”, =ILR Level 2, =CEFR level B1/B2) in a language that is similar to English. Think Italian, Spanish, French, Danish, etc. The same level of proficiency in structurally different languages, like Russian, Greek or Hindi, will take longer. Getting there with Chinese, Arabic, Japanese—and any other language where you have to deal with (1) tone, (2) completely different writing system, and/or (3) lack of language standardization—is even more time-consuming.
But it is this "quickly enough" part where most of us trip over and perish. Because you can absorb the required 200-400 hours in several years (with weekly language classes) or several months (with an Ultralearning-style approach). But it so happens that, for a truly motivated and capable learner, weekly language classes are the equivalent of Chinese water torture. You start out being incompetent and useless, and then a year later you are flue…ah no, wait—still incompetent and useless. Here’s an alternative: you could get serious, plow through these 200-400 hours at a rate of 3 or so hours a day (**) and enter the brave new world of multilingualism in just a few months.
(**) Check the screen time statistics on your phone if you don’t believe that you have 3 hours of downtime a day.
So here you go. You’ve got your X (a realistic and specific-enough goal of absorbing the required 200-400 hours of practice to get “good enough”) and your Y (an intense yet doable ~3h/day timeline that will get you there in 3-4 months). What’s missing? The strategy.
Written by Alina Kuimova | 08/08/2024