How Do We Know We're Learning a New Language?

If we keep ourselves positive, if we enjoy the process, we will be learning.

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann, and today I want to talk about like,

how do we know we're learning?

Okay.

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So, very often when we're engaged in some kind of language learning

activity, we don't know if we are actually learning anything.

It's not like if we lift weights, uh, our muscles are tired.

We have the sense that we have worked, we've done some work, and we're fairly

confident that we're contributing to a certain level of fitness once

we leave the gym or after working out for half an hour, we do feel

a certain tightness in our body.

We feel that we've done something and language learning is not like that.

So how do we know if we are in fact achieving anything?

If we're reading, we might enjoy what we're reading.

We might enjoy the subject matter.

If it's a novel or a book on history or whatever it might be,

we might find that interesting.

But how do we know that we are actually improving in the language if

that's what we would like to achieve?

Or conversely, if we're doing grammar, or reading a dictionary, like how do

we know that we are actually improving?

I have read grammar books.

I have even leafed through dictionaries.

I never know if I'm actually retaining anything, if I'm

actually learning anything.

Similarly, when I'm reading or listening or even saving words on LingQ, how

do I know that I'm learning anything?

I don't know.

I don't know.

So my advice here is, is several, first of all: Try to do things that you

enjoy doing so at the very least, even if you don't have a sense that you're

improving, at least you have the sense that you are enjoying what you're doing.

So I enjoy listening to my whatever podcast it might

be in Persian, for example.

I enjoy doing that.

I enjoy doing the sentence view of difficult content and then doing the

matching pairs and the sort of scrambled sentence that I have to put back together

again, I alert you that this function right now only exists in the iOS version.

We're trying to perfect it there, and then we will introduce it as

well in Android and in the web version, so please be patient.

I enjoy doing that.

It slows me down in terms of acquiring new words, but it gives me a good

grasp of how the language works.

I enjoy doing that.

I don't know for a fact that I'm better off doing that than just reading maybe.

And, and of course I vary it.

I do some, sort of, just reading through without picking through the

sentence in such great detail, and I vary it with this other activity.

But I'm not sure which of these activities is helping me the most, but I do know

that whichever one I'm engaged in, just reading or picking through the

sentences, I know I enjoy doing it.

So I think that's a very important factor.

Of course, over time you will see that you have improved.

You will see that your word count at LingQ has gone up, number

of LingQs created has gone up.

All of the statistics that we have that measure your activity, these

are good indicators that you are progressing in the language, even

if you're not aware of that feeling, that you know you're getting better.

And I have said before that, In the initial three to six months, we have

a sense of a steep progression as we're learning high frequency words.

A language which had no meaning to us, all of a sudden has meaning.

But then thereafter, there's this long period, the plateau, the

doldrums, where we have no great sense of progressing in the language.

And so we wonder, is this activity actually enabling me to, you know, learn.

Am I learning?

And I think there it's important to trust the process.

It's important to avoid doing activities that you don't like doing.

Like I don't do drills.

I've seen suggestions that, for example, after reading something, you should

try and summarize it in your own words.

I never do that.

To me that's unnatural.

I would rather just speak to someone.

I sometimes speak with my tutor.

Uh, some material that she has sent my way, a podcast on, you know, Iranian

identity or whatever it might be.

I'd rather just naturally have a conversation than try to sort

of artificially, uh, you know, describe what it is I just read.

So I don't do those things.

I don't try to analyze what I'm doing.

I avoid doing things that I don't like.

But if you like doing those things, by all means do them because it's so

hard in language learning to know at any given point if in fact all of our

activities are contributing to learning.

So we're best off to do things that we enjoy doing.

If we enjoy those things and if we continue being active in

the language, we will learn.

We will learn.

And, and I go back to my famous, not my famous, but the what this one director of

the language department at San Diego State University once told me there's only three

things that matter in language learning: the learner's attitude, time on...

time with the language and the ability to notice.

But to me, the ability to notice comes from a positive attitude,

a desire to notice, and spending a lot of time with the language.

If we keep ourselves positive, if we enjoy the process, we will be learning.

And there's all kinds of room there for people to make their own

choices as to which activities they prefer to do, which activities,

keep them active with the language.

And as long as you do that, you will be learning.

Even though very often we don't have the feeling that we're learning and uh, so you

know, how do we know if we're learning?

Uh, we should focus instead on how do we know if we're enjoying the process.

And, uh, with that, I'll just leave you with a couple of videos that

I've done over the past couple of years on related subjects.

Thank you for listening.

Bye for now.