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English learners often worry about how much or how little progress they’re making in English. I remember a student I met a long time ago who started in the pre-intermediate class (A2) and finished nine months later in the advanced class (C1). That's a lot of progress! But he was still convinced that his English was the same level as when he started! This post will show you how you can measure your progress and why it’s important to do so. Why measure progress? First, why is it important? 1. If you don't see your progress, you might lose confidence. But when you see where you are improving, this helps you to feel more confident. 2. When you see your progress, this motivates you to keep learning. Otherwise, you may feel like giving up. 3. Sometimes progress is hard to see until you actually measure it. You may think you're not getting anywhere when in fact you are. How to measure progress 1. Set goals One thing you can do is to set yourself SMART goals. You may have seen idea this before but how does it relate to learning English? SMART goals are: Specific: e.g. “I want to know how to write a formal email.” Measurable: e.g. “I want to learn ten new words a day.” Achievable: e.g. “I want to learn 5 words a day.” Relevant: e.g. “I want to write a business email so I’m going to learn some formal phrases.” Time-bound: e.g. I’m going to write for 10 minutes a day” or “I’m going to learn about the present perfect by the end of this week.” For more examples of SMART goals, have a look at this post: Small goals for language learning SMART goals are NOT general, unrealistic or long-term. For example, “I want to speak fluent English” or “I want to improve my listening” are not SMART goals. They are too general, you can’t easily measure them and they take a long time to achieve. 2. Sticking to your goals: accountability and tracking Write your goals down. You could also make a list of what tasks you’re going to do and tick things off as you do them. This helps you to feel a sense of progress. Even better, tell somebody about your plans and your goals - a friend, family member, teacher or study partner - and then ask them to check if you’ve done what you said you’d do. Just telling somebody, “This week I’m going to …”, makes it much more likely that you’ll actually do it! In my women’s Facebook group, I encourage members to set a goal each week and share it with the group. Then at the end of the week, they can let us know how it went and celebrate the wins. My hope is that doing this will help people to see their progress and grow in confidence. If you’d like to join the women’s group, you can find it here. (Women only please!) Other benefits of joining my group include monthly chats on Zoom and interesting discussions to practise your English on the group page. 3. More ways to measure progress Here are some practical suggestions to measure your progress. Vocabulary Vocabulary is the easiest aspect of language learning to measure and a good way to see progress. If you know more words now than a week ago, that’s definite progress, right? The simplest method is to write down new words in a notebook. Include the date. Test yourself regularly to see what you remember. Another idea is to choose a number of words you want to learn each day or each week. Make it a small and realistic number. Grammar If you put “free online English grammar test” into Google, you’ll find lots of websites where you can test your grammar. Do a test today, write down your score, and then do the same test again in a few months and compare your score. Reading and listening Find texts or videos that are created specifically for learners of your level. When you discover that the level you’re reading or listening to is too easy, you can try the next level up and you’ll know you’ve made progress. You can find online reading resources here and listening resources here. Graded readers (books at different levels of English) are good for this too. Some of them have audio so you can test your listening as well as your reading. Another idea is to watch a favourite movie or read a favourite story and make a note of the percentage that you understood. Next time you watch or read, perhaps a few months later, see if your percentage has changed. Writing Keep a journal. Write something in English every day if you can, or every week if you’re busy. After a month, two months, or six months, look back at your earlier writing and you’ll be able to see your progress. Another idea is to write a paragraph about a topic. Make a note of how long it takes you and how many words you wrote. A month or two later, repeat the task and compare your two texts. What differences can you see? Were you quicker? Were you able to write more? Or were you actually more concise? Did you use better grammar and vocabulary? Can you see mistakes in the first text that you didn’t make the second time? Speaking This is the hardest area to measure progress in. Try recording yourself speaking. Give yourself a score out of 10 about how fluent you were and how confident you felt. Keep the recording somewhere safe. A month later, do the task again and see if you notice any changes. Were you more fluent or more confident? Did you use different grammar or vocabulary? 4. Signs of progress If you ever feel like you’re not making progress, here are some things to look out for:
Final words I hope you found some new ideas today on different ways to measure your progress! Remember that progress in a second language takes time. Don’t give up when you can’t see your progress! Be patient and be kind to yourself! You might also find these posts useful: Why am I not making progress? - this post will give you some ideas for things to try if you feel stuck and want to speed up your progress Do you know what level your English is? - this post includes some links to free online tests Do you want to feel more confident using English at work? Get my "Confident English for Professional Women" newsletters here:  Comments are closed.
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