The BEST Way to Measure Language Learning Success

How do we measure success in language learning?

I'll tell you how I don't measure success in language learning, and that

is in getting, you know, nine out of 10 questions right on a test or a drill,

because I know from experience that I can get some things correct on one

occasion and get them wrong the next time.

So it's not really, in my opinion, a good measure of success.

I have said many times that what we like to measure at LingQ and what

school language programs should measure is the level of activity.

Because if we stay active with the language, we will improve.

We cannot help but improve.

And so at LingQ we measure, uh, you know, hours of listening, words read,

words looked up, which is LingQs created.

And so we measure the level of activity.

We have...

we have a composite activity index.

If you stay active, you will improve because the, the brain

is acquiring these words.

You may feel that you're not improving, but in fact you are.

So from that perspective, success to me in language learning

is are we staying active?

Are am I staying the course?

Am I spending time with the language, whether on LingQ or whether I'm reading

a book on paper or talking to people?

Am I active with the language?

As long as I'm active with the language, I'm successful.

Uh, we can keep track of that the way we do at LingQ or

you might wanna keep a diary.

How many, you know, how much time do I spend with the language?

Um, you may just have that impression.

It seems recently I've been reading a lot in the language or I've been

watching movies in the language.

As long as you are engaging with the language, even though you

might feel you're on that plateau, and I often get the question,

you know, I'm on the plateau, I really don't think I'm improving.

So you sort of have a negative, you know, feeling about your degree of

success in learning the language.

As long as you are active, to me that is success because I know, again, from my

experience at LingQ that if I stay with it, if I'm reading every day, if I'm

creating LingQs, even though I may not be deliberately learning anything, in

fact, my known word count is increasing.

And I know from experience, if I am listening, continuing to listen a lot,

every day, the brain is becoming more and more familiar with the language.

Every opportunity I have to speak, maybe with a tutor, I'm engaged

with the language I'm using, the language that is success.

The process is the reward I have said before, but the process is

always, is also the point of success.

As long as you are engaged, you are successful.

How much you improve, how much you're able to use, the words that you have learned

is going to depend on a number of factors.

It's going to depend on opportunities.

It's gonna depend on, say the subject matter of a discussion you have.

It's going to...

say in terms of how well you speak, it's gonna depend on how well you connect

with the person you're talking to.

How well uh, you understand the subject matter.

Uh, there's so many things that can impact that, but the one thing that

is objectively true is that the more you are engaged with the language,

the more active you are with the language, the better you will do.

If you can force yourself, if you can nudge yourself through, you

know, streaks at LingQ through.

Having a discipline that you're gonna have, you know this habit.

I've mentioned Atomic Habits: every morning I get up, first thing

I do, I listen to my language.

If you can force yourself into a pattern where you are regularly engaged in

language learning activities such as listening, reading, speaking, if you

are doing that, you are successful.

You cannot force the success, you cannot force your progress in the language.

You can only commit yourself or nudge yourself or discipline yourself or create

the habits, the habits of success, the habits of being active with the language.

So to me, the measurement of success in the language is how active have I been?

How active am I now?

For example, I very much enjoyed my visit to Poland.

I've got both loaded on LingQ and in traditional book form material about

the history of Poland and a novel.

And I'm just, I feel I'm very successful because I'm engaging with this material.

And I know that by engaging with this material, my familiarity with

Polish, my comprehension of Polish, I mean, I see it already now, I,

I, I read and I understand more and more and more of what I'm reading.

And so the success comes from being actively engaged with the language.

So how do we measure success?

We measure how active we are with the learning process.

Everything else will look after yourself.

Thanks for listening.

Bye for now.