According to merriam webster, "life" can be defined as "the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body". Well, I've just discovered the meaning of life. Thank god for dictionaries.

The CEFR scale is fine, albeit somewhat inaccurate, for letting people get an idea of your level in a language. People over or underestimate their abilities all the time and even if they've been tested, tests do not necessarily well reflect a person's ability. Anyway, the point of the article was to help people define their own goals, not to change how people describe their level in a language to other people...

This article is definitely not useless, Peter seems like a troll Lynkusu. 

As someone who has lived in several foreign countries this article rings true on many levels. My former bosses husband in South Korea attained a high level of literary fluency, he could read and understand virtual any book, journal or academic article regardless of the difficulty level however when it came to speaking he could barely put together a sentence.

Thanks for sharing these ideas Lynkusu

Another strange article about fluency. I wish people would just use the CEFR scale when they talk about levels. The torture never stops.

To me, the article is useless. It brings no value. Writing and talking about different type of fluency will not make anybody fluent. It just creates a new problem in people's mind. "Oh, there are so many fluencies. There is a lot of to do. I must set another goal, go for it, work hard! OMG, help me!" ... it is ridiculous and stupid.

Also, this article is confusing. It says:<em>"Well, actually, I can’t tell you what fluency means. The only person who can tell you what fluency means is you." </em>It sounds like those positive sweet talks "you have the power! You are the hero! You can change the whole world!" Then she describes what perfect, quick, native-like, literary fluency mean.

A lot of the public blather around fluency ("fluent in 3 months, 10 days, a week!", duoLingo's fluency badge) annoys me.  In contrast this is certainly one of the more nuanced articles I've read about this subject lately. 

I especially like that it started out with the mythical perfect fluency that some people seem to imagine.

The CEFR scale is useful, but it's not the be-all and end-all either.  For example, the article talks about literary fluency (with which I am personally well familiar).  That's not represented on the CEFR scale, and yet it is a meaningful measure of fluency.