Many times you assume you must be fluent in a language which might be true, but often you can overestimate your ability. You might only be skilled at making small talk and assume you are a fluent.

If someone said “You are not as fluent as you think you are”, you might quickly perform mental gymnastics and assure yourself that you are fluent.

Mental gymnastics involves using inventive, complex arguments often to justify your lack of skill.



Anyone can be fluent in mental gymnastics but it takes a lot of humility to face the truth. Many times you will fail to improve because of an internal block. While language learning is challenging and you need some encouragement, it is also easy to constantly perform mental gymnastics, where you make excuses to protect your ego but stagnate in the long term. Here are some common examples of mental gymnastics that people use to justify their fluency.

1. “I’m fluent because a local, friend, or another foreigner said I was”

You have to realize that sometimes locals compliment you because they are trying to be nice. They might say you speak really well, your accent sounds nice, or even you are the best speaker they have ever met. It might be that you are actually good at the language but you shouldn’t assume that when someone compliments you, you must be skilled. But these compliments often get to people’s heads and they start believing that they know everything when they only know a little bit.

Because of the validation they get from locals, friends or other foreigners, they start believing it as if it was true. If anyone criticises their ability, they will perform mental gymnastics and tell themselves that the other person must be jealous, a hater, or a struggling language learner. The advice “fake it till you make it” has caused many people to believe they are successful by attacking the other person’s identity instead of improving themselves.

2. “I must be advanced (C1-C2 level) because I spent years using the language”

While it’s true that people who are advanced in a language have spent years using a language, they often had to challenge themselves with input of increasing difficulty and practice outputting in a variety of situations. If all you do is spend years being the popular guy who makes small talk with locals about the same few topics, you’re not going to magically become advanced, but you will feel like you should. If living in the country does not guarantee that you will be fluent, using the language for a few years does not mean that you must be advanced. It’s easy to justify that you must be certain level and they even start using certification levels like B2, C1, C2 as a badge of pride.

Whenever anyone challenges this learner and tells them they might be at a lower level, you’re B2 not C2, you’re A2 not B2, these learners insist they are at a higher level and will try hard to justify they have to be good without proof.

An example is a French learner who thought he was B2 but was more like A2.

Despite that, he declared that he was going to take the B2 DELF exam when he found out that I was going to take B1. Having seen him use French, I didn’t think it was a wise idea and suggested he try B1 first and even invited him to our DELF group study sessions. He couldn’t answer any of the B1 listening exam questions. He had forgotten major grammar points like the subjunctive. But that didn’t stop him from insisting that he was B2, and thus should take the B2 exam.

When your sense of identity depends on your certification level, you will do anything to defend it even though it might not reflect on your real skill.

3. “I must be really good because I know lots of words and I always use big words”

Knowing many words doesn’t mean much especially if you memorized them out of context. It doesn’t even help you if you can’t understand what you are reading or listening to.

If you’re trying to communicate with people and you try to show off your vocabulary, you’re less focused on talking to the person, missing the point of communication. The other person will feel like you are talking at them.

If instead of getting more input you choose to translate everything from your L1 (first language) without considering the nuances of your L2 (second language), you will habitually produce unnatural speech, like saying

“a building place” instead of “a building site”

“hearing ability” instead of “listening”

“widespread vocabulary” instead of “broad vocabulary”.

A large vocabulary in your L2 can’t save you if you use it in the context of your L1.

If you think using big words is going to impress people, you need to think about whether it is appropriate and necessary. Just because you consulted a thesaurus and tried blindly substituting an archaic word for a simple word does not mean you used the word correctly. Most likely it makes you harder to understand because you used the word in the wrong context and they have to try to decipher your message.

People who attempt to produce the language above the level that they TRULY understand (not just recognizing words, getting a vague impression, etc), aren’t speaking the L2 IMO. They’re taking their native language and enforcing it upon the L2, transferring word order, phrases, grammar, pronunciation, etc along the way, thereby simplifying the L2 to make it easier to produce. That’s okay if you want to communicate at a basic level, but you will never become truly fluent and advanced if you don’t break out of that.

Taking shortcuts to produce language above your level will get you extra validation early on but it will lead to many bad habits and misunderstandings. The words from your L2 don’t map directly to your L1, so you need to pay attention to collocations and word choice in your L2.

4. “I understand everything.”

You might feel a sense of pride by saying that you know everything. This becomes a problem as you get better because many words appear in low frequency. However by believing that you understand everything, you block out any unknown words and phrases, preventing yourself from learning more about the language.

This is the hardest one to overcome because it is easy to be unaware of it. The only way to break this habit is to consciously translate native material from your L2 to L1 exactly, instead of just vaguely. If you have to stop and focus on each word, you will notice vocabulary gaps unless you choose to avoid admitting you don’t know a word.

Conclusion

You shouldn’t assume you are fluent or have mastery of the language because of compliments from locals, friends, or other foreigners. Even if years pass, you’re not necessarily much better if you didn’t push yourself out of your comfort zone. If you find out you’re not as good as you imagined, it’s better to get punched by the truth and learn from it.