There is a difference between proficiency and fluency and when teaching languages it is important to distinguish them. Proficiency is a measure of how many things you can do. Fluency is the degree with which you can do something without undue thinking or planning.
I don't know exactly what the parent poster had in mind, but for me fluency is what you should aim for when teaching novices. You should keep the domain very, very small and help them get to the point where they can explore it without undue effort.
In human language training you get the classic example of "I can read just about anything if I have a dictionary, but a can't speak to save my life". The lack of ability to output fluently is an indication that the language has not yet been acquired.
It is tempting to get students to achieve impressive results based on being able to piece together material from outside sources (Google, SO in a programming context or a dictionary and example sentences in a human language context). However, creating fluency in a small domain gives a more solid conceptual model and will ultimately serve them better IMHO.
> There is a difference between proficiency and fluency and when teaching languages it is important to distinguish them.
That is important; thank you for the clarification.
> fluency is what you should aim for when teaching novices
I think you should aim for both, but yes this is important. An earlier thread mentioned autocompletion: use of it during early stages of learning is a good example of working against fluency.
I don't know exactly what the parent poster had in mind, but for me fluency is what you should aim for when teaching novices. You should keep the domain very, very small and help them get to the point where they can explore it without undue effort.
In human language training you get the classic example of "I can read just about anything if I have a dictionary, but a can't speak to save my life". The lack of ability to output fluently is an indication that the language has not yet been acquired.
It is tempting to get students to achieve impressive results based on being able to piece together material from outside sources (Google, SO in a programming context or a dictionary and example sentences in a human language context). However, creating fluency in a small domain gives a more solid conceptual model and will ultimately serve them better IMHO.