Getting feedback about your language skills isn’t hard. Just ask a teacher or a native speaker what they think, and you’ll usually get an answer. What’s hard to get, however, is real, honest feedback that you can use to get better.
Native speakers can be the worst persons to ask. Since they know you’re a second-language speaker, they tend to simply assume you’re going to suck. As such, when you speak and you only suck a little, they’ll actually tell you that you’re doing amazingly well.
Here are some ways to get useful honest feedback if you’re looking for them:
- Ask for just one thing. Asking people to give you “any feedback” may sound like you’re giving them space to tell you everything. What usually happens, though, is it leaves them uncertain about what to tell you. When you ask them something specific, they can focus their mind on exactly one thing, increasing the likelihood that you’ll actually get a useful answer.
- Ask people who know you. It’s hard for someone to make a decent assessment of your skills if they’ve only known you for an entire 30 minutes. As much as possible, seek feedback from people who can actually take your background into account in their assessment, such as a teacher, a friend or a learning partner.
- Ask groups of people. If you want to get lots of feedback, don’t ask people one by one. Instead, ask them as a group. All you need is for one person to start the critiques and the rest of the crew will start cracking your head with their own.