Becoming fluent in a language, despite what many popular language learning programs would have us believe, is a nuanced, complex process. Yet society’s fixation on standardized, surface-level results leads us to prioritize quantitative metrics as markers of success at the expense of actual growth.
Instead, I propose an approach to learning that emphasizes personalized measures of success and embraces the elements of play we experience as children, such as mistakes, curiosity, and exploration.