Literate or Fluent?

Migrants to Australia who are not fluent in spoken English may be quite literate but still have difficulty in communicating. My Uncle came from Eastern Europe and worked on the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme for many years. He arrived in Australia before I was born and during my teen years we corresponded periodically - in English. He lived alone, and when he died we found that he had hand copied the entire Bible 3 times in order to improve his English.

After retirement, when he came to visit me at boarding school, his accent was still so strong that the other students queried whether he actually spoke English.
He was literate. He could read and write in two languages. He was almost 'able to speak a foreign language correctly and [mostly] without hesitation', but he was not totally fluent, that is 'able to express himself clearly and without hesitation' because his accent was so strong it offended his hearers ears. Thus he was not considered to be 'fluent' but rather awkward and embarrassing.

To live effectively in the 21st century we must all be both literate and fluent. We need to be able to read and write, although not necessarily using the written language conventions of previous generations. (The speed of everything in this generation is developing a kind of sms shorthand, although still requiring uniformly understood print conventions to facilitate communication). Just like my uncle and other migrants, people using 21st century information and communication technologies (which are, or are rapidly becoming, the norm in our everyday lives,) can be 'information literate' in a print sense but not necessarily 'information fluent' in the ICT sense. This lack of fluency causes embarrassment and will continue to do so until overcome by upskilling (or by death as in Uncle's case).

Uncle could have immersed himself in social activities to practice his English conversation and to improve his fluency in the English language. This would have produced many embarrassing incidents in the short term, but would also have helped in the long term. Teaching and learning in schools in the 21st century must involve total immersion in the Web 2.0 environment to produce both information literate and information fluent members of society.

BTW, Uncle probably knew more about the structure of written English than many of my school peers, but they had the advantage of fluency through regular and continual use. Teachers and Teacher/Librarians can/must learn something from this.