[steven]

EDIT (to my last post) Yea, although I have italian in my blood I can't speak it, but I had to sing in italian a couple of times and the pronunciation is very similar to spanish. They are both very similar to Japanese. Japanese isn't even flawless in its pairing of writing and speaking though, which seems to be a common misconception. It's definately better than most languages in that regard, however. Discounting all the grammatical differences and what-not between written and spoken Japanese, there are still differences. For example, 学校 vs 中学校 or 小学校 the pronunciation of 学校 will change. The が becomes a different sound than it normally would. This happens all over the place and it's these kinds of subtleties that, if worked on and mastered, will lead to more respect.

"I mean, I was taught 〜というのは〜／〜ということだ in my first year of Japanese, but I sure wasn't fluent."

I think we both know that that doesn't lead to one being fluent... I'm talking about being explained words with whole concepts behind them in a language and being able to understand the explanation of them.

I did put as a small disclaimer at the end of my phrase which read, "or on the way there". In otherwords, being able to do that suggests that you are on the road to fluency. When you don't need a dictionary, you're fluent. I said it a few pages back, but I look at spoken and written language as almost two different languages. So you can be fluent in reading/writing, but not fluent in speaking. The opposite also occurs. Most natives are fluent in the spoken form of their language before they are fluent in the written form. That's what lead me to suggest that maybe studying kanji shouldn't be as prioritized as early on as it is... and maybe that extra energy could be put to listening.