Today I wanna talk about language tests.
How important are they?
Do I take language tests?
What impact do they have on our learning?
It might be a little controversial, but to me the fundamental fact of language
learning is that it's a fuzzy process.
As language learners, we have to be willing to accept
uncertainty for a long, long time.
The language is unclear to us.
There are always moments when we forget words that we know we know, what we
have in our memory somewhere, but can't produce, we can't recall them.
And the whole process itself, I believe in input based learning.
I believe in the power of reading and listening, and yet whatever
I'm doing in the language, I have no idea what is sticking.
Even if we study a table of, you know, declensions, uh, grammatical rules
or lists of words, whatever we're doing with the language, we have no
idea to what extent are we learning.
It's a fuzzy process.
It's not only fuzzy, but it's an error driven process.
In other words, we need to make mistakes in order for the brain
to get used to the language.
And so to some extent, if we focus on tests and test results, we may be
discouraging ourselves from venturing out in the language, discouraging
ourselves from making mistakes.
You know, it's even true that we may get something right one time and get it
wrong the next time, or get it wrong on a test, uh, when we actually knew it.
There's so much fuzziness surrounding this whole issue of language acquisition.
I liken it a bit to setting up a new computer when you have this sort of
finger touch ID on your keyboard and you have to continue touching that key
with your finger so that the computer can identify your fingerprint so
that you then have something that's unique to yourself that you can use.
A password on the computer.
You watch this thing, I have no idea how it works, but I know I have to
keep on touching that key in order for that fingerprint to be registered.
And language learning is the same.
We have to stay active and gradually the fuzziness will dissipate and
things become clearer and clearer by a process that we don't fully
understand.
You know, it is sometimes said that we overestimate short-term progress
and underestimate long-term progress.
For example, electrical vehicles, for the longest time people talk about
them: it's gonna happen right away.
It doesn't happen right away, but eventually it happens big time.
And I've seen this in business, a new product
we think it's gonna do very well.
It doesn't do very well at first, but eventually it does
the same with language learning.
We are listening.
We don't understand.
We think we're not learning anything, and maybe in the short term we're
forgetting lots, but we don't know the impact of our engagement with content,
speaking with people and making mistakes.
What impact that has on our longer term acquisition of the language.
It's all fuzzy.
So that makes me wary of the value of tests, which try to take a snapshot of
where you are in the language, where you in fact, may have accumulated a lot of
potential capability in the language, which is not showing up in the test.
Somewhat related to this idea of tests is when people ask me, how long
does it take to learn a language?
How many words do I need to know in order to become fluent?
How long does it take to stop thinking in your native language when
you're learning another language?
These things are all very gradual, very fuzzy.
There's no hard and fast rule, and therefore, if there are no hard and
fast rule on what is required to be effective in a language, then by the
same token, it's very difficult to meaningfully test someone in a language.
Yet it's common.
Just the other day I was checking out a, an app that the Canadian
government puts out called Mauril for learning French and English, and on
their landing page they ask you to
test yourself to see what your level is.
I would never do that.
I'm either a complete beginner or I'm somewhere on the way to becoming better,
and I like to search for content of interest and explore the language.
It doesn't matter to me where I am and many apps, Duolingo
was like this when I tried it.
They force you to pass a certain test before you can go to the next level, which
I don't know if that's still the case.
But also, I don't like those kinds of restrictions.
I just like to explore and I don't really believe that
those tests are that accurate.
In fact, it was my experience before.
I've met people who had high scores in TOEFL and didn't communicate
very well in English at all.
And TOEIC, which is cheaper than TOEFL, I felt to be good enough
because it's less expensive and faster.
And along those same lines, apparently Duolingo now has an English test that
you can take, which is accepted by some schools and it's inexpensive
and takes an hour or two to do, and therefore I think it's better.
So cheaper, faster is better because I'm very skeptical of the value of those tests
in terms of being any kind of an objective measurement of a level in a language.
However, there are negative aspects to tests.
It encourages people to be reluctant to make mistakes.
I've spoken to people here in Vancouver who say, gee, Steve,
I would love to learn languages, Spanish, but I'm very bad at languages.
I couldn't learn French.
I did poorly at school.
And so they have negative sort of memories of language learning based on
making mistakes, and yet making mistakes is exactly what's needed in order
to improve in the language, assuming that you enjoyed the process, because
language learning is all about your attitude, your level of enjoyment, your.
Interest, your curiosity, your confidence that you'll get there eventually, all of
which influence the time that you put in.
And if you have a positive attitude and you put in the time, you will learn.
So if the purpose of the test is to help you learn the language,
I don't think it does that.
If the test is there because it's required by an employer or by a
school, well, of course that's a different situation and there I would go
for the least expensive one available.
And however well you speak a language, you are still gonna have
moments where you don't understand.
For example, I mentioned that, uh, Canadian Language Learning app.
On their landing page, they have a person speaking very quickly
in French, it's from Quebec.
And I think that a large number of people who are quite proficient in
French will have trouble understanding what she's saying because they're
not familiar with the context.
They haven't heard that form of French before, any number of reasons that
make it difficult to understand.
And I've had the same situation where you think you're good at a
language, all of a sudden you're put in a situation that you're unfamiliar
with and you won't understand.
So there's so many ways in which it's so hard to nail down what a level is in
a language, and yet very often it can trigger sort of a negative reaction.
And from that point of view, I think.
Tests if they're not necessary, are best avoided.
So as I always say, find ways to enjoy the process.
Find ways to enjoy the language.
If you enjoy tests, by all means take them.
But if you don't enjoy tests, I would steer clear of them.
I've only taken tests in two of the languages that I have learned,
and yet I've been able to use those languages either in the country
where the language is spoken or with other people in very meaningful
ways where they're listening to.
Podcasts in Persian or in French or Swedish, or at where my levels
are, you know, uh, different.
I enjoy the languages and that keeps me going, and that would be my advice to you.
If you don't need tests, don't take them, but the key is enjoyment.
Enjoyment is the driver of language learning.
Thank you for listening.
Bye for now.
