Regardless of the learning method you use, you need to be able to track your progress. As a language learner, you need to see yourself becoming better. Otherwise, you’ll likely get lost in a series of lessons and your motivation will go down the drain. This is especially true when you have the opportunity of creating your own personalized learning path.

You never want to think “I’ve been learning this language for 3 months, but I have no idea if I’m getting any better or what I have learned”. This is a sentence that we’ve heard many times from people trying to learn from unorganized sources (YouTube, blogs etc.). Every time we hear this, we feel a mix of negative emotions because we know that this person is getting frustrated and will most likely give up. As you may know by now, we are very passionate about seeing people succeed when it comes to language learning. The same three months with something more organized would have been a much more positive experience.

You need to be able to see which lessons you took, and how well you understood the material. You’ll find that some lessons in Ouino will be taken once and you’ll never need to go back, but other lessons may require more practice before you get a full grasp on the material. We included two main ways to clearly identify your progress within the program.

How to use the Knowledge Stars. At Ouino, we strongly believe in having control over your learning. When it comes to progress, you need real data to tell you how well you are doing. We believe that no one or nothing can tell you how well you understand something better than yourself. That is why we included the Knowledge Stars to rate your understanding on each lesson.

After you complete a lesson, choose a Knowledge Star to rate yourself on how well you understand and remember the material presented in the lesson. You will rate your knowledge on a four-star system.

1 star ★ – You took the lesson, but had a very hard time understanding or remembering the words in the presentation. You feel confused and know you’ll need to revise this a few times in order to really grasp this lesson.

2 stars ★★ – You understand and will remember some of the words presented here, but some are still confusing and will need a lot of revision.

3 stars ★★★ – You understand the presentation very well, but you will need to come back to it at least once to feel fully confident in your own knowledge.

4 stars ★★★★ – You understand and remember all the words very well and will never need to go back to it. You feel fluent in this lesson.

These are general guidelines of what the Knowledge Stars represent. Everyone has a different goal and can use them like they please. The purpose of the Knowledge Stars is to give you an incredible flexibility and control over your progress. Sometimes you may get 100% on an exercise, but you know that the words are still a little unstable and that you would not necessarily remember them the next time around. You could also get a lower score, but feel that this particular lesson is not all that important to you and give yourself 4 stars. We are not here to judge on your self-evaluation.

The stars are also very useful for people who have already started learning the language somewhere else. For example, you may start the program and already know the numbers by heart and feel very confident about them. Go ahead and click 4 stars under the numbers lesson and it will show up in the menu. The Knowledge Stars are there to guide you. Unfortunately, clicking on 4 stars for every lesson will not get you fluent… 😛 I’m sure none of you thought about cheating, but remember that the Knowledge Stars have to mean something, otherwise they are useless. Use them to your advantage to guide your progress, not just to have a nice colorful menu. 🙂

Exercise Scores and Medals. The second method to keep track of your progress is your actual score on the exercises. The only way to cheat with this is to become really good at your target language (assuming you won’t take the exercises with Google by your side). After you complete each lesson, you will have to complete the multiple-level exercises that follow. You will receive a score for each level you complete. If you get a high enough score, you will also receive a shiny medal for that level. Here are the scores you need in order to receive a medal within the exercises:

Bronze medal – 70-79%
Silver medal – 80-89%
Gold medal – 90-99%
Fluency award – 100%

If decide to skip a level, your score will be updated for the easier levels also. It is not mandatory to complete all levels of the exercises, but you need to be able to get a high score on the hardest level we offer and taking the easier levels can certainly help you get there. 🙂

When you complete some exercises, your score will then appear in the module menu on top of the corresponding icon of the lesson. If you complete a large enough portion of the exercises, you will also see a medal appear in the menu. Here are the scores required to receive a medal in the menu.

Bronze medal – 55-70% of exercises complete
Silver medal – 70-85% of exercises complete
Gold medal – 85-99% of exercises complete
Fluency award – 100% of exercises complete

The score you see in the menu is the percentage of exercises complete. Since there are multiple levels, you will not see 100% in the menu if you scored 100% on the easiest level. To see the Fluency Award on the lesson icon, you will need to get a perfect score in the hardest level. For example, if you get a perfect score in the first level of the Vocabulary module, you will get a Fluency Award for that level. However, in the Vocabulary menu, you will see Exercises 25% Complete, since there are 4 levels. Get a perfect score on the third level and you will see Exercises 75% Complete, and so forth.

This is a lot of information and may sound complicated, but it is really simple. Plus, it doesn’t really matter because your end goal will be to reach for that Fluency Award in the hardest level. Right? 😛

Hint: The menu is absolutely beautiful when it is filled with Red Ribbons and Yellow Stars. Stunning red and yellow are the colors of language-learning success. 😉