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How to Count Your Progress in Language Learning
One of the most difficult challenges in learning a language is simply sticking with it long enough to develop the ability to actually use the language in a natural and fluid way.
In order to keep yourself motivated, it makes sense to rack your progress since it’s hard to see improvement on a day-to-day basis. But the issue is, how should you keep track of your progress? How long you’ve been learning? What level of class you’re in? How many words you know?
Getting this right is important to being able to set your expectations for how far along you are on your journey, how much work is left to be done, and how you measure up to where you should be. But there are a lot of pitfalls when it comes to tracking your progress:
The Syllabus Lies
Probably the worst way to measure your progress is by the grammatical structures you’ve been exposed to in class.
I remember in high school hearing someone talk about their Spanish II class. They told me all the things they were going to learn: “this week we’ll finish the irregular verbs then next week we’ll learn the preterit tense, after that we’ll do indirect object pronouns and then reflexive verbs.”
I’ve got news for you, at the end of next week you’re not going to know the preterit tense…
