You’re into your target language every day.
You maintain a studying routine, immerse heavily on podcasts and videos, attend to your tutors for speaking practice, and more importantly, you see significant progress over time.
So how do you determine if you’re fluent enough?
The way to know that you’re fluent is 1) by personally evaluating yourself, 2) by taking tests in your target language, or 3) by using an internationally recognized standard such as the CEFR.
Each method carries its own advantages and disadvantages, but they can all help track your progress in your target language.
If you use them all, you’ll have multiple lenses to which you can view your fluency level.
Measuring Fluency By Yourself: How It Works
The easiest way to determine how fluent you are is by checking yourself out.
Intuitively, you can notice your improvement over time as you spend hundreds of hours in your target language. Sometimes, you wake up one day and find yourself better. Other times, you might experience a breakthrough while immersing as you start to notice new words and understand more sentences than before.
Learning a foreign language is a huge project. But because it’s big, there are plenty of areas to move around and countless ways to measure your ability. You’re in full control of what to track and improve in yourself.
For instance, you can customize a set of indicators in specific areas of language:
- Speaking: holding a conversation with a native for 15 minutes
- Vocabulary: learning 500 new words
- Immersion: understanding TL (target language) content without subtitles
- Reading: developing the endurance to read foreign text for a long time
- Writing: learning to handwrite the alphabet of your TL
- Grammar: distinguishing slight nuances of slightly different grammar points
- Thinking: being able to think (or even dream) in your TL
- Custom: understanding humor and jokes, moving up a level in graded textbook, being confident in a particular subject matter (i.e. cooking), seeing how far you’ve gotten in a language learning app or course
Given a well-designed self-evaluation of your abilities, you can effectively use the evaluation as your personal measure of fluency.
When asked how fluent you are in your TL, you can simply tell people something like “I can read Mandarin blogs” or “I can overhear the Spanish guys in the neighborhood cafe” or “I’m already studying the B2 textbook in Swedish” or something similar.
Not to mention, it’s quite liberating to evaluate yourself instead of succumbing to the pressure and standards set by your family, peers, friends, other language learners, and institutions. You follow your own lead and you go at it your own way.
Pros
- You’re in total control with how you evaluate yourself
- You design your metrics based on your goals
- You can be as specific as possible with what you measure
- You can communicate your personal indicators to your friends
- Frees you from the social pressures around you
Cons
- Can be overwhelming to choose which to measure
- You could end up tracking the wrong indicators and get distracted
- Being too hard on yourself can be demotivating
- Self evaluation is often not enough if you want to master the TL
- Not a good substitute for an actual certificate (if trying to earn credentials)
Taking Language Tests: How It Works
Language tests are straightforward – they test your proficiency in your target language.
Whether you’re taking one to study abroad or work for a foreign company, or simply to check out how far you’ve come, your score will provide a tangible means to measure your progress.
Tests are useful because they can assess your abilities in the different language skills: reading, listening, writing, and speaking. Plus, it can determine your ability as a whole.
You can find official tests in your target language by looking them up. Some examples include:
- French: DELF, DALF, TEF
- Mandarin: HSK
- Japanese: JLPT
- Arabic: ALPT
- German: TestDaF
- Italian: CILS, CELI
- English: IELTS, TOEFL, CAE
Personally, I took the TOPIK exam for Korean in 2019 just to check on my Korean level. It’s a bit different from EPS-TOPIK, which is required for employment in Korea.
But of course, you can become fluent without taking any proficiency test, especially if you have no particular use for your test result, It may help to remind yourself why you’re learning the language in the first place to see if you’ll ever need one.
Nonetheless, the result will give you a glimpse of your progress towards fluency.
Pros
- You can get valuable feedback on your ability
- Standardized tests are established and trusted by many
- The result can serve as a valid credential for work or study
Cons
- It costs money (plus a couple of requirements)
- Availability of tests may be limited depending on your country
- It doesn’t always capture your actual level
- Getting a high score doesn’t necessarily mean you’re fluent
Using an Internationally Recognized Standard: How It Works
It would be nice if you can measure your level and be able to communicate that level to fellow language learners. You can do this by using an internationally recognized standard.
The most popular means to achieve that is through CEFR, or the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Their scale runs from A1 to C2 (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2), giving language learners the ability to evaluate themselves based on the guidelines provided in every level.
The scale is quite flexible because you can evaluate yourself based on the four language skills: Listening, Reading, Speaking, and Writing, and end up with different levels for each skill (i.e. B2 for Listening, but A2 for Speaking).
Another way to measure language ability is through the ILR scale, which ranges from Level 0 (No Proficiency) to Level 5 (Native or Bilingual Fluency). They get very detailed on each individual level for every individual language skill
If you don’t want to create your own personal metrics to evaluate your abilities, you’ll find that these recognized standards are reliable enough for reference.
Pros
- Reliable to use across many different languages
- Fluency level can be communicated towards other language learners
- Detailed descriptions on every skill level
Cons
- Hard to determine your level if done by yourself
- Assessment guide can be too complicated to understand
- Doesn’t focus much on vocabulary ability
What’s Your Level Right Now?
Knowing where you are is important to see how far you’ve gotten. It also helps determine how far you need to go towards your goal.
So go ahead, try any of the three methods above. Or try more than one to get richer feedback.
Then let me know your progress.
Do you gauge your language level often? Or do you not value it and just enjoy the ride? Comment below and let me know.
