Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World

What Fluency Is
Let’s look at a more formal definition, from the Oxford English Dictionary:
fluent adjective: (of a person) able to express oneself easily and
articulately; able to speak or write a particular foreign language
easily and accurately; (of a foreign language) spoken accurately
and with facility.
I don’t see any implication here that you have to pass yourself off as a
native speaker or never make mistakes. Speaking a language accurately and
with facility is precisely what I have in mind when I aim for fluency.
However, this is not something you will ever get a consensus on. There
is no absolute, discernible point you pass when you can say, “Now I speak
the language fluently.” It’s like the idea of beauty, in that way. You can have
more of it, but there is no threshold you finally cross that signals you’ve
arrived. It’s all relative.
This is a problem if we want something distinct to aim for, though. And
even if we each came up with a personal understanding of what feels
accurate or good enough, because we are all filled with bias, confidence

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issues, unrealistic expectations, and elitist standards, as well as definitions
of the word fluent that might be way too flexible, I don’t think such vague
understandings are useful for a mission with a specific target.
The CEFRL System
With such conflicting ideas about what constitutes fluency, the system I rely
on is a much more scientific and well-established language threshold
criterion used by the major bodies that examine language levels in Europe.
Foundations like the Alliance Française, the Instituto Cervantes, and the
Goethe-Institut all use the Common European Framework of Reference for
Languages (CEFRL), a comprehensive guideline of language evaluation.
This system uses standard terminology, accepted across Europe (and
used by many institutions for Asian languages, even if not adopted by those
countries formally), for specific language levels. In the terminology,
basically A means beginner, B means intermediate, and C means advanced.
Each level is then split into lower 1 and upper 2. So upper beginner level is
A2, and lower advanced level would be C1. The six levels on this scale,
from the simplest to the most complex, are A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, and C2.
On this scale, an A level is what I would generally call a functional
tourist: good enough to get by for basic necessities, or a beginner in various
stages. C level implies mastery: you can work in the language exactly as
you would in your native tongue and are effectively as good as a native in
all ways, though you may still have an accent.
In my mind, fluency starts at level B2 and includes all levels above it
(C1 and C2). More specifically, a person who reaches the B2 level on the
CEFRL scale, relevant to the conversational aspect, is defined as someone
who