How do you evaluate your language level in target languages?

[german2k01]

I have a query. How do you evaluate your language level mainly in all skills such as reading, listening, writing, and speaking? More so, if you are doing self-study.

Also, if you are taking an entrance test that evaluates your grammar knowledge (50% through the fill in the blanks, multiple-choice questions), reading (25%), and writing(25%). However, no listening and speaking sections are tested. In terms of authenticity, how good is it in order to evaluate your true level?

Thanks

[rdearman]

I use: https://oda.dliflc.edu/ for reading; as for speaking and listening, I just ask my language exchange partners if I'm doing OK. I don't care about writing, so I don't bother to check it.

[german2k01]

so that means you do not take any test that may evaluate conscious knowledge of your grammar.

[BeaP]

I have several CEFR-aligned coursebooks in all of my languages. I sometimes use them, so I know what one is supposed to know on each level. I use the CEFR terms when I discuss language learning with someone or buy new resources. And of course as a a starting point for exam preparation. Otherwise, I don't really care about this aspect.

For me language learning is binary, a yes or no question. I compare everything to English, the only foreign language I don't learn anymore. All the others are on the road, English is finished. For me the goal is the same for every language: reach the level of English. If I want to know where I am on the road, I think back on studying English. When my English was similar, how much studying did I still have to do (and what helped me to improve)?

Goals:
speaking: fully automatic, but not necessarily native-like
writing: fully automatic, not necessarily fully accurate, but I don't feel the need to look up grammatical structures
listening: only for enjoyment or research, I never look up new words
reading: I meet new words, but I don't care about them anymore, I don't look them up, because I know they're not necessary

(Side note: Reading is the most interesting. Reading in English for me is similar to reading in Hungarian, I only do it for pleasure. I also find new words when I read in my native language, but I skip them because I don't think that they're important. I don't even recognise them consciously. However, when I read in Italian for example, I meet a new word and I'm fully aware that it's unknown, and I contemplate if it's something that I might need in the future. I lose the flow all the time.)

I'd probably think about levels in another way if I had different goals for each language. I'd also need more outside help or feedback if I was a beginner learner.

In my opinion online tests are good pastimes, but shouldn't be taken too seriously. I don't do them. At the end of the day what truly matters is reaching your own goals. If you can't communicate with your German colleagues, but an online test says that you're C3, do you think the problem is solved? If you read Thomas Mann easily and an online tests estimates that your vocabulary is 1000 words, do you go back to the graded readers? Hope not.

It's extremely hard to make a good language test. Levels are only needed in academic and professional environments. CEFR tests are OK, they fulfil their purpose, but evaluation of complex skills will always have shortcomings.

[Iversen]

My reading level across languages is fairly easy to assess since I use Wikipedia in all the languages I know (and sometimes in some I don't know). And I assume the level is about the same - - just as the wellknown price level test: what's the price of a Big Mac in different countries? As for listening: the problem is finding comparable sources, like for instance the news or documentaries, but right now I only have flow-TV in eight languages, and I have to admit that I don't listen nearly enough to the rest.

As for writing and speaking and thinking: the distance between situations where I run into problems formulating something in my head should be indication enough, maybe also the length of time I can keep an inner monologue running - but I can only assess my effect on others by actually engaging in conversations, and since my travelling has been reduced to a fraction of what it was just three years ago (and the language cafés at the library have been closed down for good, it seems) I actually haven't got a clue as to whether my ability to communicate orally in different languages has improved or not - I can only judge whether it's more or less easy to communicate with myself in those languages.

Apart from a few online tests (mostly vocabulary size) I haven't done a proper language test since 1980, and I see no reason to start doing them now. However I sometimes do vocabulary counts because passive vocabulary size is the one thing in language that can be measured.

[german2k01]

@BeaP, Yes, that is the problem with tests and such. Your goals are pretty high for speaking and writing. My related question for you is when you start speaking and writing. Without a solid knowledge of grammar, I am not sure if you can be fully automatic in both speaking and writing? And, I believe that you have to read A LOT to make sense of grammar concepts? BTW, how long did it take you to be fully automatic in speaking and writing in English?

Good to know about your point of view, though.

[BeaP]

My related question for you is when you start speaking and writing. Without a solid knowledge of grammar, I am not sure if you can be fully automatic in both speaking and writing? And, I believe that you have to read A LOT to make sense of grammar concepts? BTW, how long did it take you to be fully automatic in speaking and writing in English?

Yes, grammar is crucial for both accuracy and automaticity. You'd like to know how I evaluate my grammar knowledge? When I speak or write in a language, I try to pay attention to the things that stop me or block me. An example: I don't know the irregular past form of a word, but I remember that it's irregular, and I don't want to say the non-existent regular form. Or I don't know which form of the article I have to use in a certain structure, and I start to think: is it Accusative or Dative, Dative ok, what's the form? This thinking takes a lot of time, and turns speech to stammering. Not paying attention to mistakes doesn't work for me. When I know it's not simply the base form, I can't say the base form. I find it hard to say something when I'm aware that it's incorrect.

Online grammar tests don't really help, because they won't tell me what are the specific things that block my speech, and (even more important) they won't tell me what to do to solve these problems. So, for me it's basically trial and error, I listen, repeat, learn, do the exercises, and after a while I notice improvement. Although based on the things I've mentioned in the previous paragraph I have some idea about the areas that I should work on. I study grammar from textbooks, and I try to do many exercises. Intensive learning also helps a lot in this respect. When I read I try to pay attention to the structure that I've just studied. For example, I learn the conditional from a grammar book, in the evening I read a novel, and stop when I see a sentence in conditional to think about the situation where it's used. But I don't do this a lot or for a long time.

At the moment it takes me 20 years to finish working with a language. But I think it's totally individual, no-one needs to have the same goals or go with the same pace. It's also fine if someone wants to achieve a basic conversation skill, only aims to read literature, wants to speak just one language on a near-native level or chooses to be a polyglot. That's why I say that your individual goal is more important than an arbitrary level. What is your goal and how far do you think you are from it?

[german2k01]

What is your goal and how far do you think you are from it?

Achieving working fluency is my goal. Mainly good listening and speaking skills. My listening skills keep improving. I am not there yet when it comes to speaking, partly, I have not studied German grammar consciously until this point. Whatever I have spoken comes from acquired knowledge mainly from watching Tv shows. Fixed sentences and phrases. I still lack that fluency punch.

Finally, I have found a good grammar book that is able to explain the rules of the German language in an easy way with lots of examples and pictures. Now I am able to notice the grammar patterns in the wild when reading. German Grammar is not difficult per se it is just that it is explained in a cumbersome way by authors in different grammar books. That is the issue.

Hopefully, once I notice different kinds of grammar structures in the wild when reading I may develop a deeper understanding of them and be able to acquire them and hence may produce them while speaking and writing.

I also think I should start reading more and regularly. Let's see how it goes. That's why I have signed up for the challenge.

You can not acquire complete grammar sentences just from listening alone. It is super fast. With reading, you can mull over a specific sentence. That is an added advantage.

[Le Baron]

Without a solid knowledge of grammar, I am not sure if you can be fully automatic in both speaking and writing?

I'm not sure this is true. In fact I'm fairly sure it isn't. I know a lot of people with whom I've spoken in several languages who have only done the usual grammar outline (if that) and developed their speaking by just interaction, which is where it all comes together anyway. I'm thinking of people like those I met on holiday, either natives who spoke another language to me or cases where everyone including me was a tourist/ex-pat.

I talked with some German students at a party and though we did some German and English, they were more eager to speak Dutch (since they were studying it). In both English and Dutch they made grammatical mistakes. Not very basic ones, but visible ones. This had no effect on their fluency/speaking reflex, because they were well over that hump. For sure I made grammatical German mistakes, and maybe Dutch too. This had virtually zero effect on the discussion, about the Erasmus exchange system.

As per usual the answer is that you get very good at doing something by doing it a lot, as a necessity.

I'm with STT44 on the measuring thing. It's a waste of time and effort unless it's for a test.

[luke]

Without a solid knowledge of grammar, I am not sure if you can be fully automatic in both speaking and writing?

I'm not sure this is true.

I talked with some German students at a party and though we did some German and English, they were more eager to speak Dutch (since they were studying it). In both English and Dutch they made grammatical mistakes. Not very basic ones, but visible ones. This had no effect on their fluency/speaking reflex, because they were well over that hump.

This goes back to the "individuality" and "what are your (the individual) goals"? If "communicate with ease" is the main goal, and one can do so fluently, precise grammar may be secondary, versus "communicate with ease and correctness", which adds more rungs to the ladder to the goal.

@german2k01, you're in the "communicate with ease and correctness" camp, right?