How To Measure Your Progress In A Language: A Practical Guide

Picture this: you've been learning Spanish for months, grinding through grammar books and vocabulary lists, but you can't shake the nagging feeling that you're not actually getting anywhere.

Sound familiar?

In this post I'll show you how to measure progress in a language without taking endless exams.

If you prefer watching videos to reading, hit play on the video version of this post at the top of this page. Otherwise, here's what you'll discover in this article:

Greg's Question About How To Measure Progress In A Language

This exact frustration came through loud and clear in a question from Greg, a Spanish learner from Chicago who recently sat the DELE B2 exam.

While waiting for his results, Greg posed a question that strikes at the heart of every language learner's journey:

“Aside from taking formal exams, how do you keep track of where your current level is and what your strengths and weaknesses are as you progress in a new language?”

It's one of the most common questions I receive, and frankly, it's no surprise.

Unlike other skills where progress feels obvious – think of how clearly you can see improvement in your running times or guitar playing – language learning often feels like navigating through fog.

You know you're moving, but it's hard to tell if you're heading in the right direction or how far you've actually come.

The problem is that most of us don't have obvious, objective criteria to measure our progress against.

There are so many different variables at play, and unless you're regularly sitting formal exams (which most of us aren't), it can feel impossible to gauge whether you're actually improving.

Why Traditional Progress Measurement Falls Short

Here's the thing: measuring progress isn't just about satisfying curiosity. It's fundamentally about staying motivated.

If you can't see that you're making progress, you're not going to be very motivated to carry on, are you? And the reverse is equally true—when you can clearly see improvement, it fuels your motivation to keep pushing forward.

The most important principle here is that any measure of progress has to be done against a goal. But here lies the problem: most of us don't have very well-defined language learning goals.

I chatted recently with someone who always articulated his goal as “become fluent in Spanish” or simply “learn Spanish.” This vague notion of “fluency” doesn't give you much to aim for.

But there are far smarter ways of making progress, and it comes down to defining short-term goals rather than chasing the holy grail of fluency.

Think about it: if you're measuring yourself against a C2 level – the highest level for language learners – there are always going to be countless things you don't know. Your progress will seem like a huge, long, insurmountable mountain.

But that kind of measure isn't necessary because it doesn't accurately reflect our actual goals. We don't need to reach C2 level in the language we're learning unless we really, really want to. It's absolutely not necessary for most people's real-world language goals.

Setting Goals That Actually Help You Measure Progress

So what does a well-defined goal look like? These goals can be anything that matters to you personally:

• I want to be able to speak with my parents-in-law in their native language
• I want to read a novel in Italian without constantly reaching for the dictionary
• I want to enjoy casual conversations with friends when I visit Germany
• I want to order food confidently in a restaurant during my trip to Spain next year
• I want to understand French films without subtitles

Notice how specific and personal these goals are? Each one gives you a clear target to aim for and, crucially, a clear way to measure whether you're getting closer to achieving it.

You've got to have a short-term goal in order to know whether you're progressing towards that goal. This is fundamental to measuring progress in language learning.

My Topic & Situation Approach To Measure Language Progress

Now, I'll be honest with you: this is something I'm not particularly good at. I don't really track my progress in a formal way because I tend to do it intuitively.

My goal in most of the languages I learn is simply conversational fluency – I want to be able to enjoy having conversations in the language.

My approach to measuring progress revolves around topics and situations. As I'm making progress in a language, I think, “Right, I want to be able to talk about the weather,” or “I want to be able to talk about my family,” or “I want to be able to discuss language learning.”

A situation might be meeting someone for the first time, ordering something in a restaurant, or opening a bank account.

I tend to focus on one topic or situation at a time until I can talk confidently about that topic or until I know all the main vocabulary related to it. That's how I measure my progress.

Let me give you a concrete example. If you're learning Italian and your short-term goal is to be able to order food in a restaurant when you visit Italy next year, you've got a clear goal and an easy way to measure your progress.

You can quite easily define what you need to know to handle that situation:

• Menu vocabulary (appetisers, main courses, desserts, drinks)
• Dietary restrictions and preferences
• Asking about ingredients or preparation methods
• Making requests and modifications
• Understanding the bill and payment process
• Basic politeness phrases for restaurant interactions

You can measure whether you know those words and phrases or not. It's concrete, it's measurable and it's directly relevant to your real goal.

Tools To Track Your Language Learning Progress

Beyond the topic-based approach, there are other practical methods you can use to measure your progress.

The Flashcard Progress System

One thing I do regularly is use flashcards, and I organise vocabulary that I'm learning into decks.

The reason I do this isn't just for memorisation – it's because it helps me see progress clearly. Once I know all the words in a particular deck, it gives me a sense of completion and achievement.

I tend to organise flashcard decks in lots of different ways, but you could easily organise them by topic. For instance, you might have separate decks for:

• Family and relationships
• Work and career
• Travel and transport
• Food and dining
• Health and medical situations

When you've mastered a complete deck, you get that satisfying sense that you've conquered an entire area of vocabulary. It's a clear milestone that shows you've been making progress.

Regular Conversation Practice As A Progress Indicator

The other thing I always do is make sure to have regular conversations, because speaking is my aim – it's what I want to achieve.

Generally, if conversations are becoming easier and I can talk about a wider variety of topics, then I know I'm making progress.

This isn't a very scientific approach, but it's intuitively how I go about measuring improvement. You might notice that you're:

• Speaking more fluently without long pauses
• Using more complex sentence structures naturally
• Incorporating new vocabulary without thinking about it
• Understanding nuances and jokes that would have confused you before
• Feeling more confident jumping into conversations

These are all valid indicators that you're progressing, even if they're not quantifiable in the traditional sense.

How To Assess Your Language Skills Without Formal Testing

While formal exams like the DELE provide clear benchmarks, most of us aren't taking regular exams. Here are some alternative ways to assess where you stand:

• Create your own mini-assessments. Record yourself speaking about a familiar topic for two minutes. Do this monthly and compare the recordings. You'll be amazed at how much clearer your progress becomes when you can actually hear the difference.
• Track your comprehension milestones. Note when you first understand a joke in your target language, when you stop needing subtitles for certain types of content, or when you catch yourself thinking in the language without trying.
• Monitor your comfort zones. Pay attention to situations that used to make you nervous but now feel manageable. If ordering food used to terrify you but now feels routine, that's measurable progress.
• Set reading challenges. Choose texts that are slightly above your current level. When articles that once seemed impossible become manageable, you know you're advancing.

The key is to make your assessment methods as specific and personal as your goals. Generic progress tracking rarely works because language learning is such an individual journey.

The Reality Of How To Measure Progress In A Language

Let's be realistic about this: measuring progress in language learning will never be as straightforward as monitoring your bank balance.

Language is complex, multifaceted, and deeply personal. Your progress won't always be linear, and that's completely normal.

Some weeks you'll feel like you're flying, understanding everything and speaking with confidence. Other weeks you'll feel like you've forgotten everything you ever learned. This is the natural ebb and flow of language acquisition, not a sign that you're failing.

The most important thing is to have some system—however simple—for recognising your progress.

Whether it's my topic-based approach, flashcard milestones, conversation tracking, or something entirely different that works for you, the key is consistency and honesty about where you're headed.

We're not aiming for perfection here. We're aiming for progress towards goals that actually matter to us. And when you can clearly see that progress happening, staying motivated becomes so much easier.

Your language learning journey is unique to you, and so should be your method of measuring progress along the way.

Olly Richards

Creator of the StoryLearning® Method

Olly Richards is a renowned polyglot and language learning expert with over 15 years of experience teaching millions through his innovative StoryLearning® method. He is the creator of StoryLearning, one of the world's largest language learning blogs with 500,000+ monthly readers.

Olly has authored 30+ language learning books and courses, including the bestselling "Short Stories" series published by Teach Yourself.

When not developing new teaching methods, Richards practices what he preaches—he speaks 8 languages fluently and continues learning new ones through his own methodology.