Hello! My name is Abigail and welcome back to Polyglot Progress.
One of my biggest language learning goals this year is to work on improving my German speaking,
and this past month I did a lot to work on making that goal happen because I finished the challenge
I was doing where I took a 60-minute Lingoda lesson every single day in German for 30 days.
And I feel like my German improved so much over the course of that language learning
sprint. However, I think because progress is made sometimes in very small increments or is
just made really slowly and gradually and also because we can all be our own harshest critics,
it can be kind of hard to tell if you're making progress and where you're making progress.
But at the same time, I think seeing the ways that you're progressing is a great way to stay
motivated, it's a great way to build confidence,
and just prevent burnout and feelings of frustration with your language learning.
And while things like certification tests and feedback from your tutors and progress videos can
be really helpful in providing some insight into your progress, those are all very external things
and they only show certain types of progress. So, even if you're doing all of those things and
getting all of those things, it can be hard to feel like you're actually making any progress.
And progress is about more than just passing tests or shocking natives with your speech;
it's about all of the small improvements that
you're making to make you a better speaker of your target language.
So today I just wanted to talk a little bit about some small signs that your
speaking may be improving– no matter what level you're at– as well as some
of the ways that I have seen progress in my own German over the last month.
As I said, all 30 of the language lessons I took during my challenge were with Lingoda and I also
just really really love them so I'm really excited that they are the sponsors of today's video.
If you're not already familiar with them, Lingoda is a 24/7 online language school that
offers both one-to-one and group lessons with certified native-level instructors.
They offer those classes in English, business English, French, German, and Spanish and one
really cool thing about them is that they offer the language sprint and super sprint,
which is a challenge just like the one I just completed where for 60 days
you take 15 lessons a month for the sprint and 30 lessons a month for the super sprint and if
you successfully take all of those classes and complete the challenge you get 50%
of your money back for the sprint and 100% of your money back for the super sprint. So,
yeah, if you take the super sprint and you take all of the classes you take 60 classes for free.
And one of the great things about Lingoda, I think my personal favourite part about Lingoda,
is that although all of the classes involve a lot of speaking practice
and you'll get to use your target language a lot verbally, not all of the classes are
exclusively focused on speaking. Instead, there are speaking-, reading-, grammar-, vocabulary-,
and communication-based classes that will involve all of those other skills as well,
so you can be a really well-rounded user of your target language.
Plus, in addition to covering a range of skills, Lingoda's classes cover a really, really wide
range of topics and, although Lingoda has laid out a set suggested pathway and curriculum,
you do have full control over which classes you take, the order you take them in,
and when you take them so you really can focus on just taking classes in
the things that you need to work on the most or just that interest you the most.
30 lessons in a month sounds like a lot, but I never found it anything other than just super fun
and super interesting because I had so much control over the topics that I got
to talk about and I was able to vary the things that I was discussing every single
day. And with that I also never felt like I had to take a class that I really didn't
care about in order to take one that I did really care about. I was just able
to jump into the things that I actually wanted to learn about and talk about,
which also made me feel like I was really able to make progress in the places that I wanted to
since I was able to pick the topics and the types of things that I needed to work on.
So if you're also looking to improve your speaking this year, if you also want to try out a daily
challenge like I did, there will be a link down below to sign up for the next Lingoda sprint
and if you use that link you will get $25 or 20 euros off of your initial deposit and of course
if you complete that sprint or super sprint you can also get up to 100% of your money back.
And as you do that challenge, or as you speak your target language in general,
here are 10 small signs that your speaking may be improving.
You can ask questions about words or grammar points that you don't understand
and talk through them with your tutor or language partner in the target language.
This one might seem a little obvious but I feel like I at least tend to overlook
just how big of a sign of progress this is. Not only is being able to use your target language
to learn that language a huge sign of progress, but it also just opens up so many more
opportunities for you to continue to use the language and learn the language and make progress.
And not only is it a huge sign of progress when you're first
able to use the language to ask these questions and to get answers,
but I think it's also a really big sign of continual progress as your tutor or friend
or whoever you're speaking with is able to reference other grammar points that you know
or use synonyms or antonyms to describe the words that you're asking about and as you're able to
use more words and more grammar constructs to really explain more and more complex topics
and also offer your own ideas for what something might mean, even if you don't fully understand it.
Before starting my 30-day German challenge I was already at the point where any German lesson I
took was going to be entirely in German, so I honestly wasn't really expecting this to be a
place that I saw any sort of progress over the course of this challenge. It felt like
I had already done that, I checked it off, but as I took more and more classes and asked more
and more questions and offered more and more clarifications to other students as they asked
questions, I noticed that the ways that I asked and answered questions actually changed a lot.
As you expand your vocabulary, get more of a sense of the nuance between synonyms,
and just get more comfortable speaking your target language the easier it becomes to
formulate all of those thoughts and words into more complex questions and more intricate answers.
Progress when it comes to having fully monolingual lessons or conversations
isn't just about the ability to ask and to answer questions,
it's also about progressing in the ways that you're questioning and thinking about
and understanding the things that you're learning about in your target language.
You have a better sense of humour.
As you become more and more comfortable speaking a target language, you also become
more and more comfortable being creative with that language, especially when it comes to humour and
just expressing your personality. Physical humour can obviously transcend some of those
language barriers but, beyond that, what we consider funny and what we think of as
comedic really all comes down to using language in new and creative ways. Puns
are a really great example of this seeing as the thing that makes them funny is exclusively the
noting of similarities in the meaning and sounds of words. But also beyond that
any kind of joke really relies on using language in creative and what we consider comedic ways.
For example, my favourite joke as a child was “What do you get when you cross a bird,
a car, and a dog? A flying carpet” and when I say favourite, I mean it was literally the only
joke that I told for probably a good year or two, but it also works as a perfect example, because
that joke relies entirely on the meaning and sounds of words in order to be considered funny.
As you're learning a language, you are learning all of these words for the first time and
maybe noting some of those similarities, but you definitely don't have a ton of
experience with that yet. So once you're able to start making jokes and start even
understanding jokes, that is a huge, huge sign of progress.
Jokes are also only funny when they're timed right, which requires you to be able to follow
what is going on, think of your quippy response, and deliver that all in a very timely manner.
It's a very good sign that your brain is able to keep up with whatever is happening
and naturally think of a creative and funny response all very, very quickly.
You feel less tired after speaking your target language.
No matter how well you feel like you know words and grammar points and things about
your target language, speaking is going to feel very very tiring when you first start.
And chances are when you start speaking you won't know every single vocabulary word or
understand all of the grammar points. In fact, there might be a lot that you don't
know and understand yet, which means that you have to use quite a bit of
energy to think about all of these things and to make it through the conversation.
As you expand the number of topics you're comfortable talking about in your target language
and also just as you use your target language more the less and less tiring it will feel.
This was definitely one of the biggest ways
that my German progressed over the course of this challenge.
Even though I could really, really comfortably understand what was
happening in my lessons/respond to all the questions/speak for an hour,
my hour-long lessons still felt like hour-long lessons and at the end of them I felt like I had
just spoken for an hour. But the more and more I did it, the more and more my brain got used
to speaking German every single day and the less and less tired I fell after them until by the end
I could really comfortably take my lesson and felt like I hadn't really done very much at all.
Reading aloud is easier.
This one's a little bit tricky, it is definitely not just a speaking-based skill, it's also,
of course, built on your reading skills. You could be a really, really proficient speaker, have no
trouble speaking at all, but still have a lot of trouble reading aloud if you are not familiar with
the writing system or just the orthography of the language you're learning and also for some people
(it's me, I'm some people)
reading aloud is just weird and awkward and unnatural sounding in
any language, including my native language.
But, assuming you are also reading and building that skill outside of speaking,
reading aloud can be a pretty good indicator that you're making speaking progress.
As you get better and better at speaking, it will become more and more natural for
your mouth to form the words that you need to form when you're reading aloud, so even
though you may sound a little bit less natural than if you were just saying those sentences,
feeling more comfortable reading aloud or feeling like you sound a little bit
more natural when reading aloud is also a good sign that your speaking is improving.
You don't feel like you have to think as much about the things you're saying
or it almost feels like you're able to speak without thinking.
As someone who makes videos and watches a lot of videos, it can be really easy for me to base
my own speaking progress off of how I feel like I come across in videos and how I feel
like I compare to other people's speaking but I feel like a bigger sign of improvement and,
honestly one of my favourite improvements to start to see in my target languages,
is seeing that I feel like I am able to think simultaneously while speaking
or even feel like I'm not thinking at all when I'm speaking my target language.
It shows that speaking your target language is becoming more and more natural for your
brain and you don't have to give as much thought to how you conjugate that verb
or what vocabulary you need or how to form a sentence, it's really just all
starting to become ingrained in your head the way that your native language is.
You're using varied sentence structures.
When you first start to learn a language, you tend to learn the same kind of basic sentence
structure and same very easy/simple way of saying everything. Being able to move past that and more
creatively vary the structures you're using and just, again, more creatively use the language,
is a great sign that you're really instilling all of these parts of language that you've learned and
it's also something that can mean different things at different levels and can also just be something
that you're always building upon. Overall, the more types of sentences you're able to create and
the more you vary the length of sentences you're using and the types of sentences you're using,
the more interesting your speech will be and also more natural it will sound and is overall
just a sign that you're becoming more and more comfortable formulating your own sentences instead
of just using those kind of set phrases that you've probably memorised from the beginning.
Similarly, another big sign of progress is that you don't use the same words every single time
you speak and you're able to use synonyms. This is a habit that is really, really hard
to break even in your native language or even at a very advanced level in your target language.
Once you learn and then practice saying one way of saying good or bad or nice or whatever,
it's really hard to switch to a synonym or change up the language that you're using to
express something that you express pretty often. But at the same time, once you start
using synonyms you're going to be able to express a lot more nuance and just be a lot more clear
and creative with the language that you use and using those synonyms and varied words is a great
sign that your speaking is improving and a great sign that your vocabulary is expanding and that
you're able to differentiate between those really, really minut similarities and differences between
synonyms and really quickly and effortlessly think of which one you need in that moment.
You can multitask.
Multitasking is another one of those things that you don't see in a video and go “Oh
I have improved, I am progressing in speaking my target language”,
but it is also a huge sign that you are making progress.
If you're able to write yourself a note on what is happening in your lesson while asking or answering
a question or measure out an ingredient from a recipe while talking to your friend,
it's a great sign that you don't have to think as much about the things that you're saying
and you're able to focus some of your attention elsewhere and also that it's
just becoming a lot more natural for you to think in your target language,
since you don't have to put as much attention towards recalling words or figuring out how to
conjugate verbs or whatever while you're thinking about something else.
And I'd say this is actually probably one of my favourite signs of improvement to see in
my target languages. It is by no means the most glamorous sign of improvement,
but it certainly makes taking language lessons in my target language a whole lot easier.
It feels easier to switch into your target language.
This is another one that I think is, in a sense, its own sort of skill. Just because
you're really advanced in two languages doesn't necessarily mean that switching
between the two of them is going to come really easily right away.
I think it's its own skill that you also work on developing, but it does help a lot and it is
something that you can work on improving and see improvements in in your target language. Again,
not everything about speaking a language is about speaking it perfectly, and having an easier time
shifting from one language into another is its own sign of progress. And, similarly,
I think you can really start to tell when speaking a new language is becoming more
natural to you when you have an easier time doing it when you're tired or when you've just woken up,
which is something I definitely got a lot of practice with during this Lingoda challenge,
because I very frequently took lessons before work. Just like with multitasking, it's a good
sign that all of those things that you're learning are really in your brain and it's becoming easier
and easier for you to recall things and use that language without a lot of preparation.
You can self-correct or even just catch your mistakes.
I think really often when we look for progress in our target languages we look for accuracy
and a lack of mistakes, but the first step to not making mistakes is knowing where
you're making mistakes and knowing how to fix them and so self-correcting yourself when you
do conjugate a verb wrong or you do use the wrong vocabulary word is a sign that you're
progressing because you do know how it should be, you're just working on breaking that bad habit.
In fact, even just catching your mistakes and not being able to fix them is also a sign of
progress. Progress is progress, and while you might not know how to conjugate that verb yet,
knowing that the way that you're currently doing it isn't the correct way is a sign that you are
starting to pick up on certain patterns in the language and also shows you what you need to
work on so you can go look up how to conjugate it and begin to practice it correctly in the future.
Honestly, that is the biggest thing I want to say in this video:
Progress is not perfection. Progress is when you're feeling a little bit more comfortable
or a little bit more capable than you were before and it's something that can
sometimes be really huge, it's something that can sometimes be noticed externally,
but it's also something that can be really subtle and can also be something that fully
just relies on how you feel and it's also something that never stops happening.
I am planning to make these for other skills like reading and writing and listening,
so if you're interested in seeing those videos or just other videos about language
learning and my language learning journey you can go ahead and subscribe down below.
There will also be a link down below to sign up for the next Lingoda language
sprint if you're interested in taking on a challenge for your English, French,
German, or Spanish. If you sign up using that link you'll get $25
or 20 euros off of your initial deposit and of course you can earn up to 100% of that back, so
it's a great way to get a lot of speaking practice in and make a lot of progress in your target
language in a really short period of time for a really affordable, or absolutely free, price.
I would love to know what signs of progress you've been seeing in your speaking recently.
I will see you in the next video and remember practice makes progress.