There’s no simple answer to what it means to “know a language.” It’s not just about having a large vocabulary; otherwise, memorizing a deck of flashcards would make you fluent. It’s not just about understanding grammar; otherwise, studying all the rules would suffice for communication. And it’s not just about the language itself; otherwise, there’d be no need to understand the history, culture, or people of a language community. In reality, knowing a language involves a combination of all of these aspects and how they interconnect. As a teachers, we must acknowledge that languages are complicated and that language knowledge is not inherent; students are walking into our classes with various levels of understanding. Here’s a list of some of what is required to “know a language”:

  • Lexical Knowledge: understanding words – vocabulary
  • Morpholexical Knowledge: knowing how new words are created
  • Morphological Knowledge: recognizing different forms words can take
  • Grammatical Knowledge: identifying different kinds of words – nouns, verbs, etc.
  • Syntactic Knowledge: understanding how various kinds of words work together
  • Idiomatic Knowledge: knowing common expressions and their structures
  • Pragmatic Knowledge: understanding what is often implied but not explicitly stated
  • Discourse Knowledge: recognizing the kinds of contexts certain language is used in

Personal Reflection

While reflecting on these points and the languages I know, I would consider myself a competent language user in English (my first language), but I’m not certain that I would consider myself one in my second language, French. To elaborate, I went through school in the French Immersion program, learning French from K-12. My instruction included reading, writing, and speaking in French, contextualized to a school environment. As an adult, and now a French Immersion teacher, although I can communicate, read, and write at a proficient level in French, I lack the understanding of cultural nuances and social norms that I mentioned earlier – I very much learned the French language without French culture.

References

Sigrist, D. (2023, May 9). What does it mean to “know” a language? Immersio. https://immersio.io/what-does-it-mean-to-knowing-a-language/