The missing link to fluency
This is what's holding you back
I’d like to tell you a story. I teach a beginner French student who’s fluency has improved by 66% after just 1 lesson. I track fluency by calculating one’s speech rate, measured by counting the average number of words you speak per minute. She increased her fluency from 15 to 25 WPM in just 1 lesson.
This student is also able to hold long French conversations.
The past few lessons, we have had free-flowing conversations for the entire 60 minutes. That’s so impressive, especially considering that:
She has only taken 16 lessons with me
Prior to taking lessons, she had only taken an introductory French course using traditional teaching methods (31.5 hours of lessons in total).
This is a wonderful demonstration of how fast people can progress.
Language learning does not have to be as hard as people think. Clearly. My students are learning so fast that it makes my head spin. And I can measure the progress. My primary metrics at this time are:
Conversation. Measured in minutes of free-flowing conversation.
Fluency. Measured by counting one’s speech rate (words per minute)
Accuracy. Measured by dividing your errors by the number of words spoken
Good data is the missing link for so many language learners.
In other industries, data is necessary. For example, I lift weights. Anyone who lifts weights always knows much they can lift. Duh. It’s so common sense I feel weird even writing it!
Without measuring progress, we don’t know how effective our methods are
Nobody tracks progress with data in the world of language learning. Lately I’ve been finding that tracking and sharing data with students is more than half the battle.
I heard once from someone in the fitness industry that if you want to lose weight, the best habit to get into is stepping on the scale every morning. It’s the same with learning languages: knowing some basic data will instantly boost your proficiency.
Thanks for reading!
Azren
Calgary Language Nerds owner
https://azrenthelanguagenerd.com