How Good is Your English?

I always find it interesting how measuring and quantifying your own language skills and speaking abilities can be so subjective. I find it amusing to see people inflate their fluency with a very high percentage when reality says otherwise. Often times, employers in Mexico ask how well you can speak English as it is becoming more than an asset in the workplace. “What percent do you know?” Some people have the huevos to say 100% while they can barely hold a conversation with me in English! Well, if your English is considered 100%, then I’m quadrilingual (English, Spanish, Ebonics and Spanglish). That’s right sucka fish. I keepz it real por vida vato loco!

OK, my point is the following: just because an exam says you can speak a language doesn’t mean you really can. But failing a language exam doesn’t mean you can’t speak the language either. Perhaps you need five or six beers in order to get that fluency out but would give the wrong impression of you at the test center. Besides, we all know how some language exams can measure your understanding of culture, idioms and rules of the language rather than actual fluency.