Dimensions of Language Usage: Complexity, Accuracy, & Fluency
The layers of communicative competence apply to both oral and written language. When it comes to spoken English, as ELLs develop communicative competence in English, they also acquire knowledge of pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. They also learn how to discern context, culture, and discourse patterns. All while they recognize their limitations and harness their assets to strategically navigate oral communication.
One could argue that ultimately, at the heart of communicative competence, is the grammatical sub-competency. Without a certain degree of grammatical competence, the sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic sub-competencies have no foundation.
In terms of the linguistic elements that one must navigate effectively to achieve grammatical competence (pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary), applied linguists often measure performance using three dimensions: complexity, accuracy, and fluency.
Let’s look at each of these within the context of speaking, starting with accuracy:
1) Accuracy describes how closely one’s speech adheres to the identified patterns of forms and structures of a targeted variety of English. Accuracy is the easiest of the 3 domains to measure. For better or for worse, it’s often where the focus gets placed when it comes to learning a foreign language. However, it’s not necessary for a speaker to be 100% accurate to be understood. Consider the following exchange:
Speaker 1: “What are you doing tomorrow?”
Speaker 2: “I tomorrow goed to the male to go shopping.”
The question by Speaker 1 is grammatically accurate because it uses “correct” word order, subject verb agreement, verb tense. It also is lexically accurate. This means the vocabulary the speaker uses makes sense and the meaning of each word (along with the collective meaning of all the words together) conveys the intended message. We can’t determine the accuracy of the speaker’s pronunciation without hearing this question uttered aloud, but this could be measured.
Speaker 2, on the other hand, produces a response that is grammatically inaccurate. There is a lexical error in which the speaker uses the word ‘male’ instead of (presumably) a similar sounding lexical item, ‘mall’. The speaker also makes a word order error, placing ‘tomorrow’ between the subject and verb of a sentence. Furthermore, the speaker mistakenly forms the simple past tense of the verb ‘to go’ using an -ed ending rather than the irregular form, ‘went’. As a result, this sentence is grammatically inaccurate. Yet, Speaker 1 could likely make meaning of his conversation partner’s responses. Why? Because the lexical and grammatical errors that Speaker 2 makes are not severe enough to render this sentence incomprehensible. Speaker 1 could use context and his strategic competence (remember the sub-competencies of communicative competence?) to logically infer what Speaker 2 means.
2) Fluency: The term fluency has multiple definitions. Within the CAF framework, it refers to a language user’s control and speed. Fluency considers how quickly a learner can recall and produce linguistic forms and structures automatically, smoothly and without awkward stops and starts. While fluency certainly doesn’t exist completely independently of accuracy and complexity, it is possible for a learner to be quite fluent while making errors and using simple vocabulary and structures. However, without at least a basic capacity to produce language that is phonetically, phonologically, grammatically, and lexically accurate, a user has no foundation upon which to build fluency.
3) Complexity: The dimension of complexity is the most challenging to measure. Linguistic complexity is the variance and sophistication of a learner’s language. For example, the sentence “I am a student” is less grammatically complex than the sentence “I have been a student of English for four years, and I continue to study at home and at school.” The longer length of the second sentence is a byproduct of complexity. It’s the intricacy of the forms and structures within the sentence that make it more elaborate. Linguists are still working to understand and define complexity, to determine how important it is, and how we can measure it.
Ultimately, learners of English build complexity, accuracy, and fluency over time through repeated meaningful exposure and practice. These dimensions form an essential foundation for building communicative competence. Ideally, this process occurs within contexts in which English is a home language, but not all learners have access to this.
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