Alan Palmer's Language Chat Podcasts

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 a