Literacy-Fluency-Mastery

 Literacy-Fluency-Mastery

You don't need to wait to be a master at something to use it.

When learning a new language, e.g., Chinese. knowing 500 words is akin to literacy. You know enough to live in China alone and to get about.

Perhaps fluency is knowing, say 2000-2500 words. You know enough to think in that language. Humans normally think in terms of words and images. So being fluent in a foreign language helps you to be able to think differently too. For example, the way English and Malay structure their sentences is very different, normally opposite. For example, my name is Zhuo ren is nama saya ialah Zhuo Ren. My name is nama saya. Being fluent is probably more than enough for most things.

Mastery is perhaps knowing 10000 words like a scholar. In most situations, knowing 2000 words is sufficient. Only in rare cases, knowing the 10000 words will be helpful.

Now to get Mastery, sometimes you need say 10 years. But maybe fluency requires 2 years. This is what I mean by not all time is equal.

And aim for fluency in most things. And for the main thing (normally just one thing), aiming for mastery is the way to go.
The rest aim for fluency. i.e., enough for most situations. This is very practical. And complete immersion is possible.

Fluency for chess could be knowing 50-100 positions really really well!