Measuring your progress in learning languages

Hello beautiful reader, today I want to share with you a great way how to measure your progress in learning languages. I know, you have your Duolingo account and the wise owl shows you your fluency percentage but if you really want to see your progress you need to do something else.

MySwedish progress
MySwedish measuring your language progress, Photo by Jungwoo Hong on Unsplash

Are you progressing?

You are building your language skills day by day, little by little and that is why it is a little bit difficult to recognise whether you are progressing or not. You do not see yourself ageing, do you? You need to take a look back and go through some older pictures of you to compare today’s you with a-few-years-ago’s you. And it works pretty much the same with languages (or any other skill).

Write a short story about your day

I suggest the following. Write a short story about your past day. Try to describe it as much in detail as possible, use all you have in your language skill-set. Write this story every three months and compare the actual one with the previous ones. Or you can go even more hard-core and make a short video so you can even compare how is your pronunciation and self-confidence is developing through the time.

First story

The first story probably consists of short and simple sentences and you are most likely using present tense since you do not know how to make a sentence in the past tense. Your story goes something like this:

Jag vaknar klockan åtta varje dag. Jag äter frukost och sedan cyklar jag till skolan. Jag tycker om att lära mig nya saker. Efter skolan träffar jag mina kompisar. Vi spelar tennis eller tar en promenad genom parken …

Second story

The second story is a bit more complex. You are using more adjectives and you can already use a past tense. The sentences are probably still simple and you are talking much more slowly than in you mother tongue. Your story could be something like this:

Idag vaknade jag klockan sex. Det var ganska tidigt eftersom jag behövde hinna med bussen till Trelleborg. Jag hade tyvärr ingen frukost. Jag började arbeta klockan åtta och sedan fikade vi med mina kollegor. Jag åt lax med potatis till lunch och började arbeta igen vid två tiden. Jag mådde dåligt efter lunchen eftersom jag tror att laxen inte var färsk …
MySwedish progress in learning
MySwedish measuring your language progress, Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

More advanced story

Your more advanced story is probably even more complex and you are using some really nice native expressions. You feel more confident when you speak and you are much faster now. You feel that you can describe your day precisely. You story could sound like this:

Klockan sex ringde min väckarklocka men jag var jättetrött. Alltså det räcker faktiskt inte att sova 5 timmar ! “Herregud, var snäll och ge mig fem extra minuter” sade jag till mig själv. Jag åt frukost fast det var inget speciellt …ja, det var mat helt enkelt. Det regnade mycket men som sagt “det finns inget dåligt väder bara dåliga kläder” …

So this is the way how to recognise and measure your progress. Try this method and you will be surprised over your results and it will give you this extra motivation to work even harder since you see the real results of your effort.

Call to action

Write your story below this article in the comment section and come back in a couple of weeks and tell the story again. Do not be afraid to make mistakes it is ok this is a safe place. You can see and share you progress with others. How does that sound to you?

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