Bilingual?

Since I've been studying Spanish for 15 years now (really!) I often get asked if I'm "bilingual". When I give a completely automatic and definitely not intentional funny look, sometimes the questioner will rephrase and ask me if I'm "fluent".

*sigh*

Bilingual: using or being able to use 2 languages equally. For example, someone from Quebec is likely bilingual bc they could have a conversation, watch a movie, read a book, go to church, etc. just as comfortably in either English or Spanish. A person can have an accent and still be bilingual.

Fluent: mastery; capable of using a language effortlessly. For example, some people, like my dear husband, are much more fluent in mathematics than I am. (yes, math is a language. it's a language of numbers. it's spoken internationally.)

For language teachers, fluency is a range. Kind of like reading fluency = literacy. Some people can read better and faster and easier than others, but nearly every child in america is literate.
Language fluency involves reading, writing, speaking, and understanding the language. My Spanish I students are theoretically "fluent" in Spanish, even though they can only understand me, and only know about 10% of the language - in other words, seriously flunking Spanish use in daily life. In order to get a job using both languages, I would have to be significantly more "fluent" in Spanish, to the point where I was only confused about 10% of the time - still getting an "A" in my daily Spanish use, but clearly not a native speaker. (how many of your friends and neighbors misuse English 10% of the time? if they did, would they still be your friend?)

According to this really interesting online quiz http://language.bin.org/FXM/level.htm I was at about 50% fluency when I arrived 18 months ago. I could survive Spanish, and even understand about half of what was happening. Still a "failing" grade, but not horrible. Now, I'm at about 75%. I can write emails, read the paper, listen to the news, and share intimate stories with friends. This is a huge improvement, of course, but I'm an "A" student and I still, even after 15 years of exposure, 3 months in Spain, 18 months in Mexico, and over 100 hours of individual tutoring, I'm still a "C" student in Spanish. Sometimes that's discouraging.

Here is what does encourage me:
1. I can have a 30 minute spanish conversation at the lunch table with fellow teachers and make sense. Conversations normally involve sharing opinions (which is a complicated verb tense we don't have in English but that is really important to use correctly in Spanish) and also a LOT of past tense (what I did this weekend is all a past tense story).
2. I can pick up a newspaper or watch CNN en Espanol and understand the basic news stories: the who, what, where, and when at least, even if not the why.
3. I can now read easy stuff. When I first started tutoring 18 months and 100 hours ago, I was using a junior high workbook. It would take me an hour to read a 500-word story, answer 10 questions, and write a 3-sentence summary. Now, I can read a chapter of Max Lucado in about 20 minutes and then go on to have an hour long group discussion on the topic.
4. Dave & I have started "spanish night" where we try to talk to each other about our day only in Spanish, watch Spanish TV, and also do some Spanish online tutorials. The first couple have been a huge success. It is good that we can do this, bc when we go home, we may have only each other with whom we can keep practicing.