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Benchmarking, swimming through treacle | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 9 of 18 15 April 2015 at 5:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I often see that I can do something I couldn't do some months ago. I also often see that I can do something I thought I couldn't do before, and then realize that I've done something similar before already. Reading through my old blog posts in English is depressing in a way, because I rarely can see that I'd made mistakes back then which I wouldn't make today - and that goes against my belief that I am constantly improving, if only a little by little.
But what seems more important to me aren't the first times, but the moments when something becomes habit. The moments when I forget which language I am using, because I don't have to exert control over using it, because I simply know how to use it in that context. And of course the nature of those moments makes it hard to notice them. I claim to speak English, but I know there are still many parts of the language in which I don't have that kind of automaticity when I do have it in German. On the other hand, people get angry at me when I say my English isn't as good as I'd like it to be. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5310 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 10 of 18 15 April 2015 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
91.5% IS low. My percentage for Spanish is 98.2% (out of 129,900 words). I'm sure with 91.5% your comprehension can be very, very good. With 98.2%, my comprehension is very, very, very good. What's there to be amazed about? ;p
I measure different skills differently. VOCABULARY 1 I read digital novels and extract unknown words for SRSing. X words extracted out of Y words read gives X/Y, a number which keeps dropping within a book or author or genre. I monitor these numbers more than I do my weight. VOCABULARY 2 I download pre-made decks suitable for my level, and study them. I don't benchmark these because I don't have to. Surely the more words I learn, the more words I know, and I'm progressing, right? LISTENING 1 I have a family member to whom I report my progress regularly via email. The email records show my progress, from "I can hear about 8 words per sentence (usually of about 10 words each) and comprehend about 50%" to "I can completely understand that female DJ now, but once in a while she has a guest speaker whose accent throws me off". Basically benchmarked via word-count and descriptions of what's hard and how hard. LISTENING 2 With Spanish, regional accents are very different. At first I couldn't hear NHK news, so I worked on it until I could. Then I realised I could not hear Democracy Now news, so I work on it until I could. Then I realised I could not hear actors in movies. etc etc. How to benchmark: from "can't hear" to "can hear". More detailled benchmark: from "can't hear even with Spanish subtitles" to "can't hear even with English subtitles" to "can hear the Spanish with just English subtitles", etc. SPEAKING 1 I compare myself with sample oral exam videos SPEAKING 2 I monitor my self-talk performance to work out my biggest weakness for the moment, eg. "Speaking in the preterite tense" or "Using conjunctions to organise ideas". And I go ahead and improve it. Usually it's pretty obvious whether or not I've improved. GRAMMAR & READING COMPREHENSION I do online tests and record my score in the browser bookmark. Eg. for an Italian test I have "TEST - 20110901 90 90 70 60 B1 - 20120115 93 93 67 A2 - 20141225 97 87 67 A2" which means I scored B1 in 2011, A2 in 2012 and A2 in 2014. But I don't usually monitor or benchmark my grammar skills because I learn all grammar upfront so there's not much improving to do. READING Reading ability seems to come as by-product of vocabulary and grammar, so I don't have much experience benchmarking this area. Edited by smallwhite on 15 April 2015 at 6:06pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5061 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 11 of 18 16 April 2015 at 9:32am | IP Logged | |||||
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I usually don't self-test. I just make sure that I'm enjoying the learning process and that I'm always learning new
words. Since I don't study any language full-time, I almost never make any noticeable progress in a timespan as short as 1-2 months unless it's the absolute beginner stage or sometimes the first time I read a novel. However, in the long run I always find that my level improves over the months and years. I think if you studied full-time, you might be able to make a measurable amount of progress at B1-C1 in a month, though. If I had to measure, counting unknown words is a reasonable option. If you're really fixed on measuring listening comprehension, you could try to transcribe a recording and count the proportion of words you were able to figure out. I don't know of any online test you could retake monthly to track your progress.
What's a good source of online tests that you can retake without it just being the same questions again? Edited by robarb on 16 April 2015 at 9:42am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 12 of 18 16 April 2015 at 9:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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I try to benchmark against myself - am I doing better than before? Am I using more
complicated language than before? Am I pronouncing more accurately? Is my flow better? The tests are nice, but I see them more as something that you use for career advancement than hobbyism. I don't really think those levels measure much more than your professional ability - which is very useful in a lot of circumstances - but they say nothing about how well you judge people in real life, which is different from controlled examination situations. All laboratory tricks need to be tested in the real world to see if they work. Language is no different. And for me the real world is the better criterion, because it's the world we actually live in. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 18 16 April 2015 at 9:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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According to Mythbusters you can swim as fast through treacle as through water, because each 'push' backwards hits upon something that gives greater resistance than water does. Maybe that can be transferred to language learning: i personally prefer writing things down even it is more cumbersome because it is to easy and therefore more flimsy just to kick everything in your mind.
Apart from that I do regular benchmarking in the field of passive vocabulary in the form of my wordcounts (and last year also my retention of word list words). I can feeel that things as different as reading and doing wordlists become easier with time, but in both cases it is hard bordering on impossible to quantify the progress. Passive vocabulary has the advantage that it can be counted (though still with some reservations concerning definitions and criteria), and I assume that it grows in parallel with at this my passive skills so it is not totally irrelevant to do those calculations. But I have no illusions about its correlation with the ability to use a language actively. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5310 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 14 of 18 16 April 2015 at 12:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't check my answers, so I don't know what the correct answer is, so it's OK to retake the same test with the same questions. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 15 of 18 16 April 2015 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I occasionally take the Dialang tests or just whatever tests that become viral here on HTLAL. Dialang shuffles the questions but some may be the same. It also has vocabulary placement tests where you don't know which answers were correct.
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7207 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 16 of 18 17 April 2015 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I look for progress in the materials I use. Some examples...
Assimil - After sitting a course down for a couple months and then coming back to it, do I notice an improvement? Then I go at the course again from another angle, and usually in less time I've picked up a few more words. I may reading without the audio and notice if there are any words that still seem fuzzy. I read the notes and note if it seems I'm re-learning a point. FSI - FSI is a grind, so it's a course in which my enthusiasm waxes and wanes. Are the drills easier? Am I getting further in the course? Anki - I'm not a fan of Anki, but I do give it about 10 minutes a day. It has charts. Listening and reading - Here, milestones are identifiable. I tend to go at books that are beyond my level and require multiple listens, some reading, etc. As a book goes from "getting the gist" to "easy to follow", I'm making progress. With audiobooks, I can often find the same author and the same reader doing another book in the same genre. That doesn't mean the books are inherently at the same level, but the effort involved to get to the same level of understanding does give an indication of progress. The News - I'm not a news buff, but I do recognize that being able to "get the news", whether in audio or written format is a skill. If it were to become easy, I would de-focus attention on it. If my only goal was to get the daily news and I achieved it, then I know my progress would slow and be difficult to measure in terms of weeks or months. At the intermediate level, the holes in my game are apparent to me. I do a variety of activities and rotate focus regularly. The most important thing is to just continue and let time and the fact that I'm studying take it's course. It boils down to "comfort zone". If the domains I'm using the language in are growing, and my comfort zone within those domains is growing, I'm progressing. Edited by luke on 17 April 2015 at 2:10pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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