Evening all,
Having searched through many, many interesting threads about language fluency, I still didn't find anything that answered my question, so forgive me if I'm repeating something which someone else has said
I was wondering if fluency in your native language could possibly be defined by age? I was reading an article about a television show of top children's books and at the end it gave different lists of books which applied to different age ranges that went as such: "Early (5+)", "Developing (7+)", "Confident (9+)" and then "Fluent".
Is it just me, or could you count an articulate 8 or 9 year old as fluent in their language? Certainly, they won't be aware of very sophisticated structures and some vocabularly, but then again, neither are a lot of adults, even ones that go to university. For example, I have a 20-year-old Glaswegian friend that is in his 3rd year of an accounting degree at university who persistantly uses a past participle instead of the preterit or vice versa (eg: I done, I should have went) despite being well-educated. It is fair to say that he is more fluent in English than a well-spoken 9-year-old that knows to say 'I did' and 'I have done'?
I am rather confused on this issue!
Having searched through many, many interesting threads about language fluency, I still didn't find anything that answered my question, so forgive me if I'm repeating something which someone else has said
I was wondering if fluency in your native language could possibly be defined by age? I was reading an article about a television show of top children's books and at the end it gave different lists of books which applied to different age ranges that went as such: "Early (5+)", "Developing (7+)", "Confident (9+)" and then "Fluent".
Is it just me, or could you count an articulate 8 or 9 year old as fluent in their language? Certainly, they won't be aware of very sophisticated structures and some vocabularly, but then again, neither are a lot of adults, even ones that go to university. For example, I have a 20-year-old Glaswegian friend that is in his 3rd year of an accounting degree at university who persistantly uses a past participle instead of the preterit or vice versa (eg: I done, I should have went) despite being well-educated. It is fair to say that he is more fluent in English than a well-spoken 9-year-old that knows to say 'I did' and 'I have done'?