Language skills have traditionally been divided into reading, writing, speaking and listening skills, and further into areas like grammar and vocabulary. However, this framework does not sufficiently capture the complexity of how we use languages. There is a significant link between skills and attitudes, beliefs, personality, learning strategies, motivation, teachers’ personalities, methodology as well as our own conceptions of our personal skills. The differences that students typically describe between their production skills (speaking and writing) and their comprehension skills (reading and listening) may have something to do with their own language learning background in terms of the quantity and quality of practice.
Good self-evaluation skills are needed to complement external feedback, such as exam results. Your perceptions of your own skills need to be realisticthus allowing you to understand and focus on specific features. Try the Dialang. It will help you to make a positive assessment of your skills and it also supports your personal assessment by giving feedback on the self-evaluation section.One way to evaluate your own skills is to try out the Common European Framework of Reference Self-Assessment Grid. Self-assessment works best if you actively reflect on your developing skills, it may need to be adjusted, especially after receiving constructive feedback.
Student’s voices:
I understand almost everything but I can’t say very much
Are there any ways of evaluating my skills’ levels on the internet?
I haven’t used the language for a long time
It’s the teacher’s job to tell me what my problems are
Reading academic text books is terribly slow
I know my pronunciation is terrible!
Listening to lyrics has improved my language