Hey, welcome back, once again!  In this video, we are going to discuss how to assess your current skills in your target language, and why it is important to do so before moving on with the rest of the course.

As you’ve already heard me say many times, language learning is a journey. As with any journey, it is important to know where you are, before you can figure out how to get where you want to go.

Knowing where you are will ultimately help you determine which strategies, resources, and other tools will be most useful for you as you move towards fluency. Language learning is rarely “one size fits all”, so as you start this course, you’ll need to learn what fits you best in order to make consistent progress. A huge part of that is assessing your current abilities in your target language.

So, how can you assess your language skills in a precise, clear, and practical way?

Typically, learners tend to describe their skill levels by using vague, imprecise labels like “beginner”, “intermediate” and “advanced”. These terms have their uses—we’ve labeled this course as an “intermediate” course, for example—but beyond that, they give very little practical information about what a person can actually do with a language.

This is a problem because, as I’ve already mentioned, language is a complex network of interconnected skills—there are many things you can potentially do with a language, but just because you can do one of those things well does not mean you can do all, (or even a few) of them well.

And this goes beyond the 4 main skills of language (listening, reading, speaking, and writing) but into sub-skills as well.

For example, at some point, you’re going to need to ask yourself:

• How well can you pronounce words?
• What is your body language like?
• How authentic is your accent?

All of these skills are part of language, and you can be at different levels of proficiency in any of them, all at the same time. So this is why reductive, one-word labels like “beginner” or “intermediate” won’t help you much here.

For the purposes of this course, we’ve decided to rely on an existing framework for assessing language skills. This framework is flexible enough to allow you to define your language skills in both broad and specific terms, depending on what is most useful for you at any given time.

The framework is called the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, or “CEFR”, for short. Created by the Council of Europe, it is the series of guidelines for assessing language skills that is most commonly used in Europe, as well as many other places around the world.

To start, the CEFR breaks language ability down into 3 major “level groups”, that correspond roughly  to the “beginner”, “intermediate” and “advanced” levels we’ve already discussed.

A - “Basic”, (or Beginner)

B - “Independent”, (or Intermediate)

C- “Proficient”, (or Advanced)

Each of these groups is further subdivided into two levels, each with its own definitions of what a learner should be capable of at that stage.

A1, A2

B1, B2

C1, C2

While diving into what each of the 6 levels represent is beyond the scope of this video, I can now give you a broad indication of where your skills should be now, and what you should be aiming to accomplish by following this course:

First of all, I’ll state that the central goal of this course is to give you the skills you need in order to reach fluency. 

Fluency is a word that everyone tends to define differently, so to make things simple,  I’ll give you my own definition, which we’ll be using throughout this course:

“Fluency is the linguistic ability, combined with cultural awareness, to smoothly and confidently interact with native speakers in a meaningful way”. 

On the CEFR scale, I consider fluency to be at the B2 (or high intermediate) level. Again, helping you achieve that B2 level is the goal of this course, so ideally your current skills should be either at an A2 (high beginner) or B1 (low intermediate) level right now.

So let’s take a moment to describe what an A2 and B1 learner are capable of:

Learners at an A2 level have been learning their target language for roughly 3-6 months. At this point, they have likely completed one or more beginner resources, and are just starting to dive into more challenging, and more authentic content. In most cases, learners at this level have not had a lot of opportunities to practice output skills, like speaking and writing.

Learners at a B1 level, on the other hand, have been learning their target language for anywhere from 6 months or more. No matter how much time they’ve actually spent learning, they are not yet “fluent”, and so lack the confidence and automaticity of more advanced learners. That being said, they have a decent understanding of the spoken and written language, though they may still struggle with materials not meant for learners.

We can represent these levels (and indeed, all CEFR levels), using a simple graph:

On the Y axis, we have overall language skill, and on the X axis we have time spent learning. As you can see, the first third (A1-A2) is the beginner phase, the second third is the intermediate phase, and the last third is the advanced phase. By taking this course and applying the techniques that I share, you should be able to reach fluency, which can be found right at the border between the intermediate and advanced phases.

If you’ve never given serious thought to your language level before, this can be useful information. However, we can’t stop there and call it a day.

Like I said before, language is a skill comprised of many subskills. Because of that, a single broad description of your language level will tell you little about how well you can do any of the skills or sub-skills of language.

So now, it’s time to determine the level of your language skills in a more detailed, granular way.

Your task for this video is to dive a little deeper into your language abilities and determine your CEFR level not for your target language as a whole, but for each of the four main skills of language: reading, writing, listening and speaking.

That may sound like an intimidating task, but don’t worry—the Council of Europe has been kind enough to provide a simple and free rubric that anyone can use to complete this very task.

This rubric is known as the “CEFR Self-assessment Grid”, and it is available for download on the Council of Europe’s website in over 30 languages.

So, this is how you should proceed:

First, before looking at the assessment grid, I’d like you to reflect on your language skills in each of the 4 major skills.

So grab a piece of paper (or open up a Google Doc) and divide it into four sections: listening, reading, speaking, and writing. 

Under each section, I’d like you to answer two questions:

1. For this skill, what am I currently capable of doing in my target language?
2. What kinds of activities have I done to practice this skill up to this point?

Answer these questions as honestly as you can for all 4 language skills. The more detail you add, the better you will be able to assess your skills in the next step. Furthermore, being honest with yourself will help you determine where the gaps are in your current abilities, and point you towards what you will need to do in the future to fill in those gaps.

Once you’re done describing your skills in your own words, it’s time to take a look at the self-assessment grid. Open it up on your computer, and print out a copy, if you can.

Looking at the grid, you’ll see that it contains descriptions of what a language learner should be able to do at each of the six CEFR levels, across each of the four skills.

Your job now is to look at your own skill descriptions, and compare them with the ones on the grid. For each of the four skills, try to find the box on the grid that most closely matches what you think you’re capable of right now. If you’re working with a printout of the grid, circle that box; otherwise, write down your level for that skill somewhere in the notes you made earlier.

Once you’re done, take a look at your work. According to the grid, where do most of your language skills lie?

You may find that your current abilities in each of the 4 areas correspond nicely to one level—you’re mostly an A2, or a B1.

Alternatively, you might find that your skills are more scattered—maybe you’re a B2 in listening, but you’re an A1 in writing, and a B1 in everything else.

Whichever group you fall in, this task should reveal an important truth of language learning: language skills do not typically progress at the same rate. It is quite possible to be very good at one skill, and very poor at the others, or vice versa.

If your skills are all roughly at the same level—great! we’ll work on ways to ensure that they stay that way. If your skills are more scattered on the other hand, one of your goals for this course will be to get your skills to the same level, so that you can grow them at roughly the same rate, and reinforce your learning.

But before we move on, let’s review everything we’ve covered so far:

Before you move forward in your quest for fluency, it is important for you to take stock of your current language skills, so that you can determine the best way forward. This is because your current skills will determine what you need to learn, and how you will go about learning it.

Typical labels like “beginner”, “intermediate”, and “advanced” will not help you very much in this regard. Two people that are considered intermediate learners by conventional standards could have vastly different capabilities in any of the skills or sub-skills of language.

For that reason, we recommend a more comprehensible and more flexible framework for assessing your abilities—the CEFR scale. Using this scale (and the self-assessment grid that comes with it) will help you identify exactly what you’re capable of doing in each of the four core areas of language ability.

Since this is an informal assessment of your skills, and not a formal one, like an actual CEFR level test, it is of the utmost importance that you reflect on your skills as honestly as possible. When going through this task, you should really be clear with yourself about what you can and can’t do in your target language, right now.

Being honest with yourself in this way will give you a clear path forward into the rest of the course, as you’ll be able to more accurately determine which activities and strategies you’ll need to practice in order to advance your skills towards fluency.

Okay! That’s all for now! See you in the next video!