proficiency – AndyMountHood

My goals with German

Arbitrary proficiency goals like B2 or C2 can add stress and demotivate

There was a discussion on Twitter lately about whether it makes sense to the aspiring polyglot (or even the average language learner) to automatically set C2 (high advanced) as their lifetime proficiency goal for every language they’re learning. C2 is the highest level on the CEFR proficiency scale, and represents a highly educated, near-native proficiency. Others in the discussion concluded that a high-intermediate level (B2) would be a more logical proficiency goal for them. Advanced levels are hard to reach and even harder to maintain, and are not always necessary. https://twitter.com/polywerden/status/1125982184760840192

I replied that I’m less interested in proficiency levels. Instead, I create a “bucket list” of things I want to be able to do in my lifetime–such as listening to news broadcasts or reading literature. I then arrange the list from the easiest goal to the hardest, and it becomes a continuous source of motivation, which an arbitrary proficiency goal can never be. https://twitter.com/and_e_r/status/1126332816759726080

Having said that, I’ve only created a list for French so far. (See my article, “My goals with French.” https://oregonpolyglot.com/2018/07/17/my-goals-with-french/ )

My current language project is German, so today, I’m writing my “bucket list” for German and sharing it with you, my readers.

My final goal (so far) is to become a multilingual tour guide. I asked a tour guide which language she gets the most request for tours in (besides English), and she said German. So, I’m learning German.

This year’s goals

Stepping back to the beginning and working my way up to the tour guide goal, my first goal for German is to complete the Add1Challenge. I’m currently one month into this 90-day challenge. Around 100 people are participating this round, but in a variety of languages. I’m one of four people taking the A1C to learn German. We each study independently but use the large group for support and accountability using a social media platform called Slack. The challenge is designed to help us to learn focus, study habits, and conversational skills. At the end, we will be able to converse for at least 15 minutes entirely in our target languages. I can do that already, but with difficulty. At the rate I’m improving, I should find it an easy skill by the end of the 90 days. If anyone wishes to follow my progress, I post a video every 30 days of myself speaking German on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIlQVD0LsA5qYSNp5qtR-AA

I want to pronounce German well, and for this, I bought the Mimic Method German Master Class. I plan to start it soon and finish it by the time I finish A1C.

Another reason I want to learn German is because it’s one of five languages for which a tremendous number of courses and resources have been created (along with English, Spanish, French, and Italian). I bought a lot of beginner German courses that I was curious about and want to try all of them out (even if I don’t finish all of them). Many of them are courses that are out of print, and some of them are so old that they come with audio cassettes. I’ve already completed a few of them: German for Children, Paul Noble Complete German, Dr. Blair’s German in No Time, Pimsleur German (Level 1 only, that is, the first 30 lessons), and Michel Thomas Total German, plus some Deutsche Welle podcasts. I’m currently on Michel Thomas Perfect German, Language Transfer, All Audio German, Yabla, FluentU, and other courses. There are a few more waiting after these. By trying out a variety of courses and methods, I hope to expand my repertoire of methods which I can use to learn other languages. (For example, I use elements from the Michel Thomas method to learn Korean grammar successfully.) Also, I’ll be in a better position to recommend courses to people who ask for recommendations.

My next goal is to prepare for my 30-year university reunion in October. I earned a B.A. French degree at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. Minnesota is far from Oregon, so this will only be my second visit to Concordia since graduation. My plan is to arrive a day early and hang out in the foreign language department. Concordia offers bachelor’s degrees in French, Spanish, German, and Mandarin Chinese. I want to converse with the current students and teachers in these languages. Maybe I don’t have time to learn Mandarin before then, but I at least want to use Spanish, French, and German as well as I can. A1C will make me conversational, and the beginner courses will keep expanding my vocabulary and improving my listening skills ahead of the reunion. It will be like a Polyglot Conference for me.

Future goals

When I decide to move on to intermediate courses, Deutsche Welle has one that I’ve always wanted to try (but which is too advanced for me now). It’s called “Top Thema.” It’s at the B1 level and includes a lot of simplified news articles–but about interesting cultural topics rather than just the usual politics and economic articles of daily news reports. The variety of topics is vast, so it should greatly broaden my vocabulary. Each article includes a monolingual glossary (i.e. totally in German), the one-page article, and an audio recording. About 100 articles are published a year, going all the way back to 2007. In other words, there are over 1000 articles available. I’ll use Lingro to help me. Lingro is one of those free dictionaries that lets you read something from the internet, click on a word, and see its translations into English or another language. I’d like to read as many articles as I can until I lose interest.

I would love to be able to read the news and listen to news broadcasts in German, then discuss current events in German with native speakers. When I can do that, I feel like I’ve “made it” in that particular language–even though there are many other things I might not be able to do yet (such as understand slang, watch movies, watch YouTubers, read and write scholarly materials, give public speeches, write business letters, etc.). I generally shy away from U.S. news because it’s “close to home” and often makes me sad or angry. Foreign news topics (such as Brexit) have less impact on me personally, and I’d be more likely to follow it. There are intermediate resources after “Top Thema” which I can study at the B2 level, to help prepare me for watching live news broadcasts.

Finally, I want to create a series of YouTube videos about Oregon history–in German. This will prepare me for a possible career as a tour guide, after I retire from IT many years from now.

Observations and conclusions

If you find yourself losing motivation to continue learning a foreign language, write yourself a “bucket list” like this, arrange the goals from easiest to hardest, and start working on the first one. Also take note of anything you’ve already accomplished in that language, such as courses you’ve completed or skills you’ve learned. You will then be unlikely to lose your motivation again.

You might have noticed that my “bucket list” for German is different than my list for French. Some items are the same and some are different. Each language has a unique list. I plan to create similar lists in the future for my other languages. And your lists will be different than mine. Another interesting observation about these lists is that French is a lifelong enterprise but I can meet all of my German goals in just a few years.

I find that these lists take some of the stress out of learning, while arbitrary proficiency goals like “B2” or “C2” can add stress and demotivate most people (but not everyone). Proficiency goals can also lead to learners evaluating their own proficiency levels inaccurately–or worse, can persuade people to do boring, stressful studies for proficiency exams that are of no use to them personally.

My goals with French

French has turned out to be a lifelong enterprise for me, which will probably never end until I die.

I recently heard Kerstin Cable, in an interview by Géraldine Lepère, talk about the importance of specific long-term language goals as well as a plan to reach them. A goal to get “fluent” is way too vague. French has turned out to be a lifelong enterprise for me, which I started when I was a teenager and will probably never end until I die. After listening to Kerstin, I thought about French and realized that I have quite a few specific goals which I would like to meet in my lifetime. In case anyone is interested, here they are. Writing them down like this will help me to think about my goals for each of my other languages. Reading about them might help you to think about your own goals for each language and make them clear in your mind.

First, I have several goals which I can group together. These are the ones I’ve been working on for the past several years. Essentially, when I graduated from the university (Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, USA) with a Bachelor of Arts in French, my French skills were actually rather weak. My teacher said I was only “moderately fluent.” (I could probably converse at a B1 level.) I didn’t like to practice conversation because I didn’t like hearing myself speak French: my own pronunciation sounded ugly to my ears (and I wasn’t yet able to pronounce the French “R”). Another problem I had was that I didn’t have interesting things to read (such as graded readers or LingQ). That means my vocabulary was too small to read the news or French literature. These are things I feel in hindsight that I should have been able to do when I graduated. After that, I didn’t use French for over two decades, but I started it up again a few years ago and have been learning it ever since.

So, my first set of goals involves achieving skills I felt I should have had when I graduated. Over the last few years, I achieved two of them: I built up a strong vocabulary through reading novels and I built up my conversational skills to a high-intermediate (B2) level.

These give me the foundation for my next goal, which I’m working on now and which I’ve come close to achieving: comprehending (audio) news broadcasts. I’ve been using LingQ and Fiverr to help me. I pay someone on Fiverr to transcribe short news videos from YouTube and then I use LingQ to help me read the transcripts, after which I rewatch the videos. The videos are about Francophone African news, so the journalists have a variety of French accents. Now that I’ve been introduced to a few different accents, Standard French sounds a lot easier! And for the past two weeks, I’ve been listening to live news audio broadcasts. I understand a lot, but there’s a lot I still don’t understand. At this rate, I should be able to understand most of it soon.

My next goal will be to improve my pronunciation. For this, I purchased a Mimic Method course by Idahosa Ness, and I’ll also listen to YouTube videos about the differences between written French and spoken French. I’ve started learning German, and this has helped my French “R” tremendously, but I don’t pronounce it consistently yet. After that, I’ll start reading famous French literature, starting with Jules Verne and Molière. That will complete my first group of goals, after which I’ll have achieved what I had hoped to achieve when I finished college. To recap, those goals are: vocabulary, conversation, listening to the news, pronunciation, and reading French literature.

I have four more goals after I complete these goals. They’re more like wishes, but certainly achievable. I can meet them in any order, but the following order seems to go from the easiest to the most difficult.

(1.) I’ve been studying the French education system, and I’m impressed by it. The French study history and geography almost every year–from the beginning of elementary school through at least middle school. They also study a lot of math and science. Most students are required to study philosophy during their last year of high school. And all students in a general high school are required to select a study track: either languages and literature, or economics and social sciences, or physical sciences. And each year builds on intellectual skills learned the previous year. If a student is lazy or distracted one year, they will be at a disadvantage the following year. By graduation, French students in a general high school have achieved the broad liberal arts education that US students get in college. Some high school graduates are qualified for white collar or gray collar work, or so I’ve heard. I would love that kind of education! So, I bought some schoolbooks via Amazon France and plan to read them. I’ll probably choose the economics and social sciences track with a specialization in geography, if I can find all the schoolbooks I need.

(2.) One of my dreams is to use at least one foreign language in a career. My current, tentative plan is to become a multilingual tour guide when I reach retirement age. Therefore, my goal is to make YouTube videos where I talk in French about the local history around where I live. I can probably try to do it now, but I think it will be easier after I’ve read some history schoolbooks in French. Some science schoolbooks can help me, too, if I talk about local geology in those videos.

(3.) French is my most advanced foreign language. I’ve observed that the confidence I gain as I improve my French makes it easier to improve in my other languages. It’s like cutting a trail with my French that makes it easier for other languages to follow. French becomes a template for the other languages, like a prototype. Therefore, the more advanced I can get in French, the better. My goal, then, is to reach the C1 (low-advanced/moderately scholarly) proficiency level in French. Achieving all of the goals above might bring me up to C1 automatically. If not, I’ll be nearly there, I think.

(4.) Finally, another dream is to take university classes in another language. Since they’re expensive, MOOC’s (free, non-credit university courses) will suffice. They’ll help me to maintain my C1 level and they’ll be easier to complete if I achieve C1 first.

The goals I’m working on now will provide me a solid foundation for the final four goals. I’ve achieved two goals from the first set so far and I’m close to meeting the third. This makes me happy. I recommend you make long-term goals for each of your languages (or at least your most important language or two). Have you met any goals already? Are you close to meeting any others? Answering these questions can increase your confidence (maybe) and it will also give you clues about the skills you should work on now in order to meet your next goal.

Templates and Innovation in Language Learning

Now I had a template (French) which I could use to eventually bring other languages up to B2.

Generally speaking, the first language you learn on your own (not from a class or teacher) is one of the hardest because you don’t know what works for you yet. You need to experiment until you find materials and methods that you can sustain and persevere through (and preferably enjoy, at least a little). You also need to learn how to adapt the way you learn as you become more advanced in the language: What you listen to and read at the intermediate level is different than what you listened to and read as a beginner. And you need to learn how to manage your motivation and habits through a roller coaster of emotions until you achieve the proficiency level you want. But once you’ve been through it, you can use your first foreign language as a template for languages you learn afterward.

In my case, I studied French and a little Spanish, Japanese, and Russian in high school and college. I was going to teach French, but then I changed my mind. I didn’t study French for over 20 years after that, but then I suddenly had a strong motivation to learn it. I had a Bachelor’s degree in French on my resume, but I had forgotten it and couldn’t use it. (Unfortunately, my teacher said I was only “moderately fluent” when I graduated: I could carry on basic conversations, but my vocabulary was still too small and I didn’t like to speak it because I thought my pronunciation was bad, especially the letter “r.”) My plan was not only to revive my French, but bring it up to a fairly high level, so that my resume could properly reflect my skills.

When I returned to French, I was surprised to learn that I still remembered most of the grammar, but only the most basic vocabulary. I had studied a half-dozen languages on my own during those two decades, but only achieved a high-beginner level in them (partly because I kept changing my mind about which languages to learn, partly because I only had books and audio courses to work with—no conversation partners, etc.). My plan was to use reading and listening to build up my vocabulary, which would have the extra benefit of reviewing grammar without effort. I focused on meaning, not form, this time around. I started with graded readers, then graded readers with audio, then LingQ, and finally novels for older children (starting with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and building up to novels for children by French authors).

Meanwhile, I discovered the online polyglot community and learned what other resources were available to me. I hired italki tutors for Skype conversation practice and took advice from Olly Richards about how to prepare for conversation. I quickly achieved B1 (low-intermediate) conversational proficiency–and eventually, after a lot of reading, B2 (high-intermediate).

Now I had a template (French) which I could use to eventually bring other languages up to B2. And once I reach C1 (low-advanced/academic-level) in French, it will serve as a template for bringing other languages up to C1.

My successful template for French was to work on form (grammar and pronunciation) first, then switch to meaning (reading, listening, and conversation practice). I used courses such as Michel Thomas to help me with the grammar. My goal as a beginner is not to make my grammar perfect, but to learn enough to express my ideas in conversation. Over the past two years, I brought my Spanish, Japanese, and (briefly) Russian up to B1–and Korean will likely reach B1 by the end of this year. Meanwhile, I’m slowly building my Japanese up to B2. Japanese is more difficult than French because of the complex writing system and different grammar, so it’s taking longer.

What if the template is hard to apply? Then I innovate. I use trial-and-error, but eventually I sometimes have to create my own materials and find my own way to make them work. This was the case with Korean. I tried a wide variety of beginner materials (Pimsleur, FSI, textbooks, etc.) but couldn’t find anything I enjoyed enough to continue studying for very long. In fact, courses that were relaxing and fun in other languages were stressful to me in Korean. Finally, I discarded them all.

Now I skim through textbooks and grammar reference books, looking for grammar which I’m likely to use frequently in conversation. I write grammatical constructions in notebooks and create my own sentences aloud in Korean. I skim through topical vocabulary books and create paper flashcards for words I think I’ll use frequently, then talk to myself in Korean. Meanwhile, I read just the dialogs in beginner textbooks and listen to the audio recordings of those dialogs over and over until I understand them easily. I prefer textbooks whose audio is recorded at native or near-native speed.

This innovation has been working well for me in Korean. And lo and behold: Korean has become a second template which I can use for other languages, especially languages that have few irregularities (few apparent exceptions to the grammatical rules or few additional rules which are needed to account for the variations in word endings). I’ve been using my Korean study methods for Japanese with a lot of success, and I think I can apply them to other Asian languages I might learn in the future.

Russian was a source of frustration for me because of its many irregularities, because of the need to match prepositions with cases, and because occasionally a different case is used than I expect. I studied 13 or 14 Michel Thomas CD’s, and these gave me the confidence first to talk to myself and then to practice conversation with tutors. But then the tutors corrected seemingly every other sentence. I tried out many italki tutors and got rid of half of them who corrected me the most or who were not good at conversation. I finally achieved B1 conversational proficiency but was completely demoralized and worn out in the end. Now I don’t know when I’ll ever have the strength to return to Russian, even though I love the way the language sounds. If I do resume it or learn a similar language, I’ll need to use trial-and-error or even innovate in order to master enough grammar so that I will be willing to continue conversation practice again. Then Russian will become a template for other languages with complex, irregular grammars.

Once I master kanji, I’ll be able to use Japanese (for learning kanji), Korean (for learning grammar), and French (for learning conversation) as templates for Mandarin Chinese, if I choose to learn it. (Yes, Mandarin does have grammar, it just doesn’t have word endings.)

If you’re working on your first foreign language but plan to learn more, take heart: You can use your current language as a template for future ones, making the next ones easier. If you’ve studied several languages but are now struggling with one that you find too difficult, try different materials and methods and then, if needed, innovate. There’s a lot of frustration in language learning (sometimes with the language, sometimes with the available resources, and sometimes with yourself), but a lot of fun along the way–particularly as you find yourself able to use it in more and more situations. Templates and innovation will allow you to learn a wider and wider variety of languages, if you choose to do so.