Reply to Has anyone's child become fluent in a language not spoken at home exclusively by learning in middle or high school?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have worked as a highly-skilled, public facing professional for decades (think lawyer, M.D., college professor).  In several decades working in the U.S., I have met 2 native born Americans who are fluent in a foreign language and were not heritage learners.  However, almost everyone claims that their DC is fluent in some foreign language.  So you would understand my skepticism.[/quote]

Agree that Americans are quite bad at assessing foreign language proficiency. That said, I’ve met quite a few more that have managed to actually develop some degree of fluency (let’s say B2 level and above). But usually it involved living elsewhere for a period of time, or otherwise a significant amount of time and effort. I think this latter part is what Americans often fail to understand—developing fluency will take hundreds of hours of consistent, concentrated effort, not 10 minutes a day on Duolingo or twice a week for 45 minutes each at school.[/quote]

This is correct. I spent a year abroad learning a very difficult foreign language. There’s a very small community of people in the United States who actually speak this language as a non-native language, and all of us lived in Hungary for at least a year. I wouldn’t call myself totally fluent, but I tested at a B2 level years ago and since then my listening and reading comprehension have improved significantly through radio and online news. It’s certainly enough to easily understand and use it in my work. [/quote]

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