Episode 51: Set Yourself Up For Seeing Your Progress

Aug 28, 2023

Discover practical ways to track your language learning progress and boost motivation. Learn about creating benchmarks, note-taking, and selecting specific topics for practice. Discover techniques for tracking growth, such as recording, dictation exercises, and word count tracking.

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Introduction

00:00 • 3min

Setting Yourself Up For Seeing Your Progress

02:59 • 4min

Reflecting on Language Learning Progress Through Note-Taking

06:35 • 3min

Choosing a Specific Topic or Story for Language Practice

10:04 • 2min

Tracking Language Growth

11:34 • 9min

In today's episode I share 4 (or 4.5) tips for creating benchmarks along your language journey to guarantee that your future self will recognize and believe that you're making progress. In language learning, it's really easy to be so down in the weeds and the details of studying and practicing that progress feels slow or even stagnant. Yet, every single word we learn is a tiny bit of growth, and the more progress we see, the more we keep coming back for more. But it can be difficult to recognize that progress, especially if we don’t work toward a particular measure of progress like taking a level exam or counting the number of words we learn or something like that.

But why wait for those big measures of progress to happen? At any point in your language journey, you can intentionally create meaningful bencharks that will set you up for future moments of progress recognition. I hope today's episode allows you to brainstorm some creative ideas that bring a little extra excitement, motivation, and pride into your language life.

If you like the idea of making sure you see the language progress that you're making (because you are making progress), check out episode 22 here, where I talk about the role mindfulness also plays in seeing and believing our language progress.

Links to other resources for getting ideas on how to realize and measure your language progress and growth:

Blogs & Articles:

How to Record Your Language Learning Progress by Lindsay Williams of Lindsay Does Languages
Language Learning Progress: 9 Ways to See How Far You've Come by Meredith Kreisa on FluentU
Keeping Track of Your Learning by Lindie Botes
The Ultimate Language Learning Guide Part III: Commitment -- Drops by Shannon Kennedy, published in Languagedrops

Podcasts & Videos:

Signs That You're Making Progress with Language Learning by Grace of Guresu
Don't Let the Intermediate Plateau Scare You by Emily Richardson of The Language Confidence Project
5 Steps for Creating Your Language Habit by Kerstin Cable of The Fluent Show
Tracking Your Language Learning Progress by Lindie Botes

Where to find me:
Love, Joy, and Languages Blog
All podcast episodes can be found here.
Instagram: @love.joyandlanguages
Twitter: @LoveJoy_Lang