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How much speaker how much learner?
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March 21, 2009 11:10 AM PDT
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Hello again
Today I want to make a suggestion about how we can make a decision on our language skills.

People say “I am a learner of English,” “ I am learning French”, “I learn Italian” etc

This means that we think of ourselves as “learners” , “students” “pupil”

Then people may say:

“I am a beginner of Chinese”
“I speak some German”
“I can get by in Russian”

All the time we make these sorts of statements to other people, particularly native speakers, we make a judgement of our ability and class ourselves as a “learner”.

I want to suggest that we think of ourselves as both learner AND speaker. This way we can make a judgement in a different way which I believe will help us improve and enjoy language.

For example

I would say that I am 80% speaker of French and 20% learner
I would say that I am 60% speaker of German and 40% learner
I would say that I am 10% speaker of Chinese and 90% learner
I would say that I am 5% speaker of Spanish and 95% learner

This rating changes as we feel we know more and are confident in speaking.
Even as a native speaker of English I would also say that I am a learner

I think I am maybe 98% speaker of English and 2% learner. This is because I learn new phrases and words in English as I learn new things about my language or as new words come into the language. For example I did not know the word “Podcast” two years ago, but now I use the word a lot.

These figures need not be very accurate – they are just a way of judging our language skills. My idea is that we rate our speaking to learning depending on our own feelings and attitude to the language

I believe the more we tell ourselves we can call ourselves a “speaker” – even if the percentage is quite low, the more we will feel proud, enjoy speaking as well as learning and make great progress.

Bye for now
Be good be happy