Description
Progress is a major focus in language learning – but what does it actually mean to make progress? Many learners look to formal markers like CEFR exams to measure their growth and while that can be a useful indicator, they only capture part of the picture. In the first part of this talk I want to address the many other milestones – like reading your first book or being able to pronounce a difficult word – that are often overlooked.
In the second part, I want to address that every metric we use, whether test scores, word counts, time spent learning, is just a proxy for the underlying “language knowledge”. And while useful, these proxies can be misleading – just because you sit down to study for an hour doesn’t mean you learned one hour worth of information (whatever that would be anyways).
Language knowledge is an incredibly complex topic, with many factors (often outside of our control) influencing how well we are able to learn a language.
Emine Tedman (Emi) is an aspiring polyglot with a Bachelor’s degree in English and Japanese and an (almost) Master’s degree in Linguistic Data Science. She loves learning about general linguistic theories and connecting them to language learning and teaching people how linguistic principles can make language learning easier.
https://youtube.com/@emisnikki-polygloddess
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This video was recorded at the Polyglot Gathering 2025: https://www.polyglotgathering.com.