As you say, there are a lot of videos about the “intermediate plateau” but I’ve only heard Olly describe why it actually happens. In the beginning, you learn the most frequently used words and grammatical structures. These give a huge “bang for your buck” - something like 2000 words will let you understand most news articles. But over time, you move on to less and less common words, with less benefit-per-word. Like going from “good” to “excellent” to “exquisite” to “stupendous”. There’s nothing you can do about this, which is why it takes progressively more time (and more vocab) to move to each more advanced level. B1->B2 is always slower than A2->B1. No one has a “trick” to equalize these times. There’s a big drop off in word use frequency after something like the most common 2000-3000 words. I suspect that’s where people feel they hit the “plateau”. But progress will only continue to get slower and slower over time. The solution, I think, is to get an accurate picture of how many hours of study it will take to reach your ultimate goal. If you know that’s, e.g., 800 hours away, you won’t freak out about not being “advanced” enough after the first 200 hours.
Thanks for your comment Ayrton! In my recent video with Steve Kaufmann, we actually discussed this exact process of learning the most frequently used words and grammatical structures in the beginning and the process that follows. Thank you for describing the process in your comment. Personally, I don't think it is too realistic to attempt to calculate how many hours it will take you to reach your goal. I think that this sets you up for being disappointed and putting too much pressure on yourself to meet those expectations, instead of simply focusing on what's happening right now and genuinely enjoying the process. I think it's nice to have an ultimate goal, and even some intermediary goals/milestones, and to then focus on my system and process for getting there. Humans are bad at estimating *time* and there are so many variables that could impact how long it takes. For example, if you study 1 hour every day vs. 1 hour every week, it will take you more total hours with the latter approach because you have to recover a lot more loss. Whereas with studying 1 hour per day, you can continuously capitalize on those quicker learning cycles and what you learned the day before, you'll see repeated words and grammatical structures a lot more often, and see a snow ball effect. Does that make sense?
I also don't feel this plateau as much as other people. I use LingQ for learning words and as my comprehension goes up, so does my reading speed and my ability to infer the meaning of unknown words becomes even stronger and requires less repetitions of those words to learn them. So even though I'm not seeing the new words as frequently as a #/words_read, all of the other factors are in my favor. So this helps to balance things out.
Nice post, but 2000 words to largely understand most news articles is optimistic. Studies show we need at least 7000 lemmas (word families) just to tackle children's stories at 98% comprehension.
If you haven't read Atomic Habits and would like to check it out on Amazon while supporting me, here's my personal link 😊bit.ly/robins-atomic-habits I'm really enjoying this idea of reviewing non-language books from the perspective of language learners! More coming soon 📚🚀
Wow, this is so helpful! I've been learning a new language for the last year and in the last several months I feel like I've been going absolutely no where. I'm now 60 years old, and I was fearful that I'm just too old to learn a new language. I was feeling a bit hopeless for a time. BUT in the last couple of weeks, something just seemed to have "clicked." I'm understanding sentence structure and grammar rules so much better and becoming much more adept at reading and understanding the UA-cam channels I regularly watch. WOW! Noting is wrong with me! Thank you for enlightening me on what seems to be a very normal part of the process. The ice cube analogy was perfect!
Hey Robin, Great work. You're right, this is a great way to think about it. Another thing about the intermediate plateau is that although yes, you do descend if you stop studying, the drop off is much slower, so that's another thing to be happy about. Man I promise I didn't steal this idea from you (and actually I have videos from a few weeks back mentioning that I'd be doing it, so I'm in the clear haha) - but I am also going to be doing that book thing! Luca recommended "Peak: The Science of Expertise" by Anders Ericsson, so I'm half way through that now! I also have Atomic Habits on reserve at the library, and one by Steve Kotler, which I'm really really excited to get into. Actually even Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, I was thinking of doing a video on that book through the lens of LL!
I'm glad that you think this is a great way to think about it 😄 Thanks for mentioning those book recommendations, too! 💪🏼 I'm sure you'll present your own interesting perspectives on all of them 😊
You 're absolutely right. At the beginning every single small action that we take gives a huge result but the result starts decreasing progressively. at a certain level. An analogy would be trying to be good and then trying to be perfect. It is easier to become good from scratch than to become perfect from the a certain level. It is frustrating but is totally normal. I am currently at this level. I decided to accept the reality and take actions. I will definitively not see the results soon but I will if I keep showing up every single day.
I am a person who three years ago moved to Spain to learn Spanish for a year. After a year of studying Spanish in the classroom and outside of the classroom I quickly surpassed my peers and reached a rather intermediate level of Spanish. But after coming back home and trying to study more I noticed that I had reached this plateau and saw no more improvement. I had lost all hope and stopped trying to improve my Spanish :'( After recently feeling like I wanted to go back and see if I could find a shred of hope where maybe there will be a time where I will get past this intermediate level, I fell upon this video and the Lord blessed me with you. You have opened my eyes and have shown me that even though I am in a tunnel right now that is completely dark, even though this tunnel is a long dark road, I will not see the light until the very end. There is no light in the middle of the tunnel to confirm progress for intermediate learners, only at the end of the tunnel, and that's when we will finally see our progress. The light exists! You have just given hope back to a language learner, and you just earned a subscriber and a like. I will watch all of your videos and try to apply as much of your principles into my language learning journey. Thank you!
I love this analogy, I feel liberated of all my suffering and stresses regarding language learning. I have been wanting to “melt ice cubes” at 22 degrees (be fluent without enough time) not realizing I am slowly getting there. Thank you so much ❤️❤️
I have two videos embedded into Notion when I first jump into my language page to see me through the plateau that I probably watch once a month. This is one of them. Thanks!
Reaching this point on your language journey is a super positive, I agree! It’s like a exclusive club and when you get there you know your in the club and only good times ahead !
Thank you. This video is really help. Now, I'm in B1 level level in English, and I think I get the intermediate plateu. This video is motivating me ...
Hi Robin. Your videos are excellent and very insightful. Probably the best I've come across on the process of language learning. I'm definitely on this intermediate plateau with learning Russian and it can get a bit depressing. I think I'm making great progress with reading but then I'll sit and listen to a Russian talk show and think, I've been studying this for three years and I haven't a clue what they're talking about. But I'll keep going and I especially take comfort from the ice cube analogy!
I found your channel a few days ago and now I watch your videos every day, they are being very useful in language learning. I'm learning English and French, I'm not a beginner in English, but I am still far from being advanced, and in french i'm a complete beginner. Thanks for the amazing content!
ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC VIDEO! How does a person so young have so much wisdom? I enjoy your videos tremendously. Your vibrant personality resonates through my ipad and cheers me up during my language journey. I look forward to all of your videos. Keep up the wonderful work and thank you for taking the time to put together such engaging and informative videos.
Boy I LOVE YOU omg the best video I've ever seen in my life haha I mean it has everything I was looking for IM HAPPY BEING INTERMEDIATE NOW AND FEELING STUCK 😂
Diese Eiswuerfel-Analogie werde ich mir sicherlich merken, fuer zukuenftige Faelle. Und die Idee, gute Buecher zu nehmen und fuer das Sprachenlernen umzuinterpretieren, finde ich klasse. Ich stelle mir das Sprachenlernen immer als konzentrische Kreise vor. Wenn Du willst, kannst Du dir sechs Kreise mit Buchstaben A1, A2, B1...vorstellen. Jeder Kreis ist natuerlich groesser als der vorherige, und es dauert immer laenger bis man sich durch die ganze Flaeche durchgeackert hat. Und man vergisst halt auch leicht, was man bereits gelernt hat, waehrend man sich gerade auf ein anderes Gebiet konzentriert. Aber irgendwann hat man so viele Teile bearbeitet, dass sich der Kreis irgendwo wieder schliesst, und dann kommt man ein gutes Stuckchen weiter. Oder der Eiswuerfel schmilzt halt :-)
Carol! 😄 Ich bin froh, dass dir die Eiswürfel-Analogie und dieses Konzept der Neuinterpretation von Büchern zum Sprachenlernen gefallen hat. Ich genieße es wirklich! (is this natural to say?) Ich kann es kaum erwarten, über mein nächstes Buch zu sprechen. Vielleicht mache ich auch einzelne Videos für jedes Buch, die alle meine Erkenntnisse aus jedem einzelnen zusammenfassen 🤔😄
@@RobinMacPhersonFilms Gestern hatte ich Dir eine Antwort geschrieben, aber sehe sie heute nicht mehr, also schreibe ich einfach nochmals. Entschuldigung, falls Dich das zweimal erreicht. Ja, es ist voellig normal zu sagen: ' Ich geniesse es wirklich.' Das ist sowohl umgangssprachlich wie auch im Schriftdeutsch absolut ok und gebraeuchlich.
Hey Robin another great video, I was wondering am learning Spanish, at the moment I can read books aimed at teenagers with about 85-90% understanding. The thing I'm really struggling with is talking isn't not knowing the words I want to say however the order in which to say them as it is quite different to english, any advice would be amazing, keep up the work. Love from Melbourne
Hey Lelouch! It sounds like you're in a GREAT place with you're Spanish. Being able to understand 85-90% of reading books aimed at teenaged native speakers is NOT easy, so I think that's fantastic. I'm wondering, do you ever read out loud? I think this is an amazing activity! Especially reading the dialogues between characters. I think this would help with your specific problem because, for me, what helps me really internalize the grammatical structures is to be repeating them constantly. I find that the more you can get into the story with this activity, the better. So if the character is angry, try to read it angrily! I know that books are of course long and you might also not always be in a place where you can read out loud. So one other thing I like to do is just take note of my favorite dialogues so that I can come back to them over and over. This is also a great way of internalizing the humor of that language/its speakers, and many other things. I love this technique! Additionally, if I'm doing a course or an app where there are simple sentences with audio that I can repeat, I LOVE to repeat those and try to switch out the words - this concept of repeating sentence structures but switching out the words is one of my favorite techniques for really developing a strong mastery of the sentence structures and word order 😊
I'm a native Spanish speaker. I can help you with Spanish and you can help me with English. I believe that's a good deal ;) drop me a message if the idea sounds good to you.
Hi, Robin. Sorry I've been away. I participate more nowadays on other social media (language support groups on Slack and Facebook, plus interacting with other language learners on Twitch and sometimes Instagram) and less on UA-cam (except for listening practice in Spanish). I haven't read Atomic Habits yet (though I do follow the author on Twitter because he provides a lot of food for thought), but I'm listening to the audiobook version of a related book by Gretchen Ruben called Better Than Before. It dedicates a chapter to each strategy for forming a new habit, with the first two chapters explaining why not every strategy works for every person. I think you covered half of the equation very thoroughly in this video. The other half is variety. My French is at the B2 level and I'm loving reading novels in French most evenings after work. However, I realize that if I only read novels, I'll never become an advanced learner. I need to spend more time on other modes (speaking, listening, and writing) and read a wider variety of material. A couple of years ago, I learned to read the news in French with the help of LingQ, and now I can almost listen to news broadcasts. My next step is to read other kinds of non-fiction in French: self-help books like Atomic Habits either translated into French or by French authors, plus books on history, science, and other subjects. If I then write and discuss about what I read, I have a much better chance of eventually reaching an advanced level. Of course, I'm also slowed down by my other languages, otherwise I would have hit a high proficiency level a long time ago.
By the way, Rob, on the About page of your UA-cam channel, you have a couple of dead links to Instagram and Facebook. I don't know if you deleted your accounts or merely renamed them.
Wow it's so nice to see your comment, Andy! I've been wondering about how you're doing for a while and was planning to write an email soon to check in. It's nice to know that you've been so active on those other platforms and channels. I've added Better Than Before to my reading list 😄Very cool that you're able to enjoy reading French novels so much, and that for you this seems to be a relaxing after-work activity, that's awesome! Isn't it so delightful to reach that point with a language? I just LOVE it 😌 I totally agree that variety is absolutely key! Both within one mode (reading in this case) and also across the four key skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing).
Thank you for pointing out the dead links! I've been updating a lot of things to try to make them more consistent and simpler and still have a few gaps to track down where links need to be updated, so I'll work on that!
That, too, is problematic when your attention is focused on the topic of speech more than the language used for it. The thing that interests you the most is the one you learn best. This has happened to me. The world is full of interesting things that are not available in my own language. For me, it's not a big loss because I am old and already retired. But it slows down my language learning.
Great video. I just have to say that progress does not slow down while in the intermediate plateau. It's true that it seems like it, because the words you come by are less common, and the words you learn makes less of a difference based on how many words you know (as a beginner, a single words takes up 1% of your vocab, but as an intermediate it can take up 0.1%-0.01% so it seems less). However, I am currently in the intermediate plateau in Serbian, and I notice that I learn new words so much faster now. Because of all the words I already know, and all the patterns in my brain, I pick up words like it's nothing. In the beginning I forgot very common words because I had nothing to base them on. And now I know most of the context of what I read because I know 90% words or more, so I will automatically know what words mean just because of where it is in the sentence. The curve is steep at this stage, but it just doesn't feel this way. It's like having a million dollars and then earning another $10k, it feels like less compared to what it would if you only had $100 to start with, but it sure as hell is not "nothing" :)
That was wonderful! I do think I have reached a new level in German, although I am not intermediate. I am bored with the chapter I am on, even though I need the lesson. Maybe I am bored with the presentation. I will have to try a book. I hate to give up German so early. I am nowhere near the intermediate level in German.
I guess, it also comes down to allocating focused time. I've noticed a decline recently in my English skills, because I'm focusing on other languages, even though I'm putting countless hours into English, as I'm reading/watching everything in English to maintain the language. I've reached C1 in English maybe ten years ago and didn't really make progress since. And I'd say the reason is that I don't sit down and learn, but try to do it "en passant" if that makes sense. Just a theory, though. Some suggest, you need to change something in your approach when you hit the plateau. That certainly seems to be the case for me, as I didn't do that with English lately and I'm noticing a decline. Interesting. The analogy with the ice cube fits perfectly, I think, but it seems, there's more to it. I for one seem to really need to change the approach, once the plateau hits and put that focused time in and be persistent, as you suggest. That could be the key. Thanks for your advice :)
If enough people believe in something does it make it exist ? I think it's quite destructive to get hung up about this plateau. Perhaps it does affect many people but it's possible to make this feeling worse than it actually is.
If you can explain to me WHY you need to shake every book you recommend, I will be so happy. Anyway except this tentative to try to transform books to flying objects your videos are quite interesting .
As you say, there are a lot of videos about the “intermediate plateau” but I’ve only heard Olly describe why it actually happens. In the beginning, you learn the most frequently used words and grammatical structures. These give a huge “bang for your buck” - something like 2000 words will let you understand most news articles. But over time, you move on to less and less common words, with less benefit-per-word. Like going from “good” to “excellent” to “exquisite” to “stupendous”. There’s nothing you can do about this, which is why it takes progressively more time (and more vocab) to move to each more advanced level. B1->B2 is always slower than A2->B1. No one has a “trick” to equalize these times.
There’s a big drop off in word use frequency after something like the most common 2000-3000 words. I suspect that’s where people feel they hit the “plateau”. But progress will only continue to get slower and slower over time.
The solution, I think, is to get an accurate picture of how many hours of study it will take to reach your ultimate goal. If you know that’s, e.g., 800 hours away, you won’t freak out about not being “advanced” enough after the first 200 hours.
Thanks for your comment Ayrton! In my recent video with Steve Kaufmann, we actually discussed this exact process of learning the most frequently used words and grammatical structures in the beginning and the process that follows. Thank you for describing the process in your comment.
Personally, I don't think it is too realistic to attempt to calculate how many hours it will take you to reach your goal. I think that this sets you up for being disappointed and putting too much pressure on yourself to meet those expectations, instead of simply focusing on what's happening right now and genuinely enjoying the process.
I think it's nice to have an ultimate goal, and even some intermediary goals/milestones, and to then focus on my system and process for getting there. Humans are bad at estimating *time* and there are so many variables that could impact how long it takes. For example, if you study 1 hour every day vs. 1 hour every week, it will take you more total hours with the latter approach because you have to recover a lot more loss. Whereas with studying 1 hour per day, you can continuously capitalize on those quicker learning cycles and what you learned the day before, you'll see repeated words and grammatical structures a lot more often, and see a snow ball effect.
Does that make sense?
I also don't feel this plateau as much as other people. I use LingQ for learning words and as my comprehension goes up, so does my reading speed and my ability to infer the meaning of unknown words becomes even stronger and requires less repetitions of those words to learn them. So even though I'm not seeing the new words as frequently as a #/words_read, all of the other factors are in my favor. So this helps to balance things out.
Nice post, but 2000 words to largely understand most news articles is optimistic. Studies show we need at least 7000 lemmas (word families) just to tackle children's stories at 98% comprehension.
@@azhivago2296 I agree, read that and was like ugghh?
Wow, I never thought of it that way. I feel way more motivated!
Ahh I'm so happy to reas that this was new and motivating for you! 😄💪🏼Thanks for letting me know!
If you haven't read Atomic Habits and would like to check it out on Amazon while supporting me, here's my personal link 😊bit.ly/robins-atomic-habits
I'm really enjoying this idea of reviewing non-language books from the perspective of language learners! More coming soon 📚🚀
Wow, this is so helpful! I've been learning a new language for the last year and in the last several months I feel like I've been going absolutely no where. I'm now 60 years old, and I was fearful that I'm just too old to learn a new language. I was feeling a bit hopeless for a time. BUT in the last couple of weeks, something just seemed to have "clicked." I'm understanding sentence structure and grammar rules so much better and becoming much more adept at reading and understanding the UA-cam channels I regularly watch. WOW! Noting is wrong with me!
Thank you for enlightening me on what seems to be a very normal part of the process. The ice cube analogy was perfect!
Definitely not too old! Keep going :)
Way to go!!
Thanks Robin. Great reminder to keep plugging away! 😊
Hey Robin,
Great work. You're right, this is a great way to think about it. Another thing about the intermediate plateau is that although yes, you do descend if you stop studying, the drop off is much slower, so that's another thing to be happy about.
Man I promise I didn't steal this idea from you (and actually I have videos from a few weeks back mentioning that I'd be doing it, so I'm in the clear haha) - but I am also going to be doing that book thing! Luca recommended "Peak: The Science of Expertise" by Anders Ericsson, so I'm half way through that now!
I also have Atomic Habits on reserve at the library, and one by Steve Kotler, which I'm really really excited to get into.
Actually even Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, I was thinking of doing a video on that book through the lens of LL!
I'm glad that you think this is a great way to think about it 😄 Thanks for mentioning those book recommendations, too! 💪🏼 I'm sure you'll present your own interesting perspectives on all of them 😊
That quote is sooo beautiful and empowering thank you ❤
You 're absolutely right. At the beginning every single small action that we take gives a huge result but the result starts decreasing progressively. at a certain level. An analogy would be trying to be good and then trying to be perfect. It is easier to become good from scratch than to become perfect from the a certain level. It is frustrating but is totally normal. I am currently at this level. I decided to accept the reality and take actions. I will definitively not see the results soon but I will if I keep showing up every single day.
I am a person who three years ago moved to Spain to learn Spanish for a year. After a year of studying Spanish in the classroom and outside of the classroom I quickly surpassed my peers and reached a rather intermediate level of Spanish. But after coming back home and trying to study more I noticed that I had reached this plateau and saw no more improvement. I had lost all hope and stopped trying to improve my Spanish :'( After recently feeling like I wanted to go back and see if I could find a shred of hope where maybe there will be a time where I will get past this intermediate level, I fell upon this video and the Lord blessed me with you. You have opened my eyes and have shown me that even though I am in a tunnel right now that is completely dark, even though this tunnel is a long dark road, I will not see the light until the very end. There is no light in the middle of the tunnel to confirm progress for intermediate learners, only at the end of the tunnel, and that's when we will finally see our progress. The light exists! You have just given hope back to a language learner, and you just earned a subscriber and a like. I will watch all of your videos and try to apply as much of your principles into my language learning journey. Thank you!
I love this analogy, I feel liberated of all my suffering and stresses regarding language learning. I have been wanting to “melt ice cubes” at 22 degrees (be fluent without enough time) not realizing I am slowly getting there. Thank you so much ❤️❤️
I have two videos embedded into Notion when I first jump into my language page to see me through the plateau that I probably watch once a month. This is one of them. Thanks!
Reaching this point on your language journey is a super positive, I agree! It’s like a exclusive club and when you get there you know your in the club and only good times ahead !
Thank you. This video is really help. Now, I'm in B1 level level in English, and I think I get the intermediate plateu. This video is motivating me ...
I LOVE THIS!! Funny how I read Atomic Habits but didnt think to apply it to this...beautiful...language plateau. SO HELPFUL THANK YOU!!!!!
I used to watch lots and lots of polyglot motivational videos...But here is the exact one/person I searched. Thanks a lot!!
Hi Robin. Your videos are excellent and very insightful. Probably the best I've come across on the process of language learning. I'm definitely on this intermediate plateau with learning Russian and it can get a bit depressing. I think I'm making great progress with reading but then I'll sit and listen to a Russian talk show and think, I've been studying this for three years and I haven't a clue what they're talking about. But I'll keep going and I especially take comfort from the ice cube analogy!
I found your channel a few days ago and now I watch your videos every day, they are being very useful in language learning. I'm learning English and French, I'm not a beginner in English, but I am still far from being advanced, and in french i'm a complete beginner. Thanks for the amazing content!
Just what I needed to hear. Thanks Robin!
brelove1414 you’re very welcome! Ahh I’m so glad that this was helpful 😄
Wow, I just discovered your channel and your content is phenomenal!! I'm ecstatic! Thank you for your hard work and diligence! 😊
Really good advice and yes I love that book by James Clear too - it changed my life!
ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC VIDEO! How does a person so young have so much wisdom? I enjoy your videos tremendously. Your vibrant personality resonates through my ipad and cheers me up during my language journey. I look forward to all of your videos. Keep up the wonderful work and thank you for taking the time to put together such engaging and informative videos.
Great video, Robin. Keep it up!
Thank you Jake! I have to say I’m loving making all this new content 😄💪🏼
Boy I LOVE YOU omg the best video I've ever seen in my life haha I mean it has everything I was looking for IM HAPPY BEING INTERMEDIATE NOW AND FEELING STUCK 😂
Great post Robin. A really useful perspective.
Thank you Ian! I'm really glad this was useful 😊
Diese Eiswuerfel-Analogie werde ich mir sicherlich merken, fuer zukuenftige Faelle. Und die Idee, gute Buecher zu nehmen und fuer das Sprachenlernen umzuinterpretieren, finde ich klasse.
Ich stelle mir das Sprachenlernen immer als konzentrische Kreise vor. Wenn Du willst, kannst Du dir sechs Kreise mit Buchstaben A1, A2, B1...vorstellen. Jeder Kreis ist natuerlich groesser als der vorherige, und es dauert immer laenger bis man sich durch die ganze Flaeche durchgeackert hat. Und man vergisst halt auch leicht, was man bereits gelernt hat, waehrend man sich gerade auf ein anderes Gebiet konzentriert. Aber irgendwann hat man so viele Teile bearbeitet, dass sich der Kreis irgendwo wieder schliesst, und dann kommt man ein gutes Stuckchen weiter. Oder der Eiswuerfel schmilzt halt :-)
Carol! 😄 Ich bin froh, dass dir die Eiswürfel-Analogie und dieses Konzept der Neuinterpretation von Büchern zum Sprachenlernen gefallen hat. Ich genieße es wirklich! (is this natural to say?)
Ich kann es kaum erwarten, über mein nächstes Buch zu sprechen. Vielleicht mache ich auch einzelne Videos für jedes Buch, die alle meine Erkenntnisse aus jedem einzelnen zusammenfassen 🤔😄
@@RobinMacPhersonFilms Gestern hatte ich Dir eine Antwort geschrieben, aber sehe sie heute nicht mehr, also schreibe ich einfach nochmals. Entschuldigung, falls Dich das zweimal erreicht.
Ja, es ist voellig normal zu sagen: ' Ich geniesse es wirklich.' Das ist sowohl umgangssprachlich wie auch im Schriftdeutsch absolut ok und gebraeuchlich.
Perfect time for this vid!! Thanks for your effort!
You're welcome Jay!! Thanks for the comment!! 😄💪🏼🚀
Hey Robin another great video, I was wondering am learning Spanish, at the moment I can read books aimed at teenagers with about 85-90% understanding. The thing I'm really struggling with is talking isn't not knowing the words I want to say however the order in which to say them as it is quite different to english, any advice would be amazing, keep up the work.
Love from Melbourne
Hey Lelouch! It sounds like you're in a GREAT place with you're Spanish. Being able to understand 85-90% of reading books aimed at teenaged native speakers is NOT easy, so I think that's fantastic. I'm wondering, do you ever read out loud? I think this is an amazing activity! Especially reading the dialogues between characters. I think this would help with your specific problem because, for me, what helps me really internalize the grammatical structures is to be repeating them constantly. I find that the more you can get into the story with this activity, the better. So if the character is angry, try to read it angrily!
I know that books are of course long and you might also not always be in a place where you can read out loud. So one other thing I like to do is just take note of my favorite dialogues so that I can come back to them over and over. This is also a great way of internalizing the humor of that language/its speakers, and many other things. I love this technique!
Additionally, if I'm doing a course or an app where there are simple sentences with audio that I can repeat, I LOVE to repeat those and try to switch out the words - this concept of repeating sentence structures but switching out the words is one of my favorite techniques for really developing a strong mastery of the sentence structures and word order 😊
I'm a native Spanish speaker. I can help you with Spanish and you can help me with English. I believe that's a good deal ;) drop me a message if the idea sounds good to you.
Splendid!
Thank you so so much for this! My motivation needed this video!
what a great idea , i'm going to do thati never had though in the 1% stuff , but it's a powerful advice , thank
Interesting and very motivational explanation 👍👍👍
Hi, Robin. Sorry I've been away. I participate more nowadays on other social media (language support groups on Slack and Facebook, plus interacting with other language learners on Twitch and sometimes Instagram) and less on UA-cam (except for listening practice in Spanish).
I haven't read Atomic Habits yet (though I do follow the author on Twitter because he provides a lot of food for thought), but I'm listening to the audiobook version of a related book by Gretchen Ruben called Better Than Before. It dedicates a chapter to each strategy for forming a new habit, with the first two chapters explaining why not every strategy works for every person.
I think you covered half of the equation very thoroughly in this video. The other half is variety. My French is at the B2 level and I'm loving reading novels in French most evenings after work. However, I realize that if I only read novels, I'll never become an advanced learner. I need to spend more time on other modes (speaking, listening, and writing) and read a wider variety of material. A couple of years ago, I learned to read the news in French with the help of LingQ, and now I can almost listen to news broadcasts. My next step is to read other kinds of non-fiction in French: self-help books like Atomic Habits either translated into French or by French authors, plus books on history, science, and other subjects. If I then write and discuss about what I read, I have a much better chance of eventually reaching an advanced level.
Of course, I'm also slowed down by my other languages, otherwise I would have hit a high proficiency level a long time ago.
By the way, Rob, on the About page of your UA-cam channel, you have a couple of dead links to Instagram and Facebook. I don't know if you deleted your accounts or merely renamed them.
Wow it's so nice to see your comment, Andy! I've been wondering about how you're doing for a while and was planning to write an email soon to check in. It's nice to know that you've been so active on those other platforms and channels. I've added Better Than Before to my reading list 😄Very cool that you're able to enjoy reading French novels so much, and that for you this seems to be a relaxing after-work activity, that's awesome! Isn't it so delightful to reach that point with a language? I just LOVE it 😌
I totally agree that variety is absolutely key! Both within one mode (reading in this case) and also across the four key skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing).
Thank you for pointing out the dead links! I've been updating a lot of things to try to make them more consistent and simpler and still have a few gaps to track down where links need to be updated, so I'll work on that!
That, too, is problematic when your attention is focused on the topic of speech more than the language used for it. The thing that interests you the most is the one you learn best. This has happened to me. The world is full of interesting things that are not available in my own language. For me, it's not a big loss because I am old and already retired. But it slows down my language learning.
Makes a LOT of sense!
Great video. I just have to say that progress does not slow down while in the intermediate plateau. It's true that it seems like it, because the words you come by are less common, and the words you learn makes less of a difference based on how many words you know (as a beginner, a single words takes up 1% of your vocab, but as an intermediate it can take up 0.1%-0.01% so it seems less). However, I am currently in the intermediate plateau in Serbian, and I notice that I learn new words so much faster now. Because of all the words I already know, and all the patterns in my brain, I pick up words like it's nothing. In the beginning I forgot very common words because I had nothing to base them on. And now I know most of the context of what I read because I know 90% words or more, so I will automatically know what words mean just because of where it is in the sentence. The curve is steep at this stage, but it just doesn't feel this way. It's like having a million dollars and then earning another $10k, it feels like less compared to what it would if you only had $100 to start with, but it sure as hell is not "nothing" :)
Hi Robin! New subscriber... Easy German sent me 🙂
I enjoyed this video
This is a dialectical idea that a change in quantity eventually results in a change of quality.
Very helpful, thanks Robi.. I subscribe to James Clear via email and find his quotes very inspiring.
That was wonderful! I do think I have reached a new level in German, although I am not intermediate. I am bored with the chapter I am on, even though I need the lesson. Maybe I am bored with the presentation. I will have to try a book. I hate to give up German so early. I am nowhere near the intermediate level in German.
My favourite polyglot. I said what I said
I guess, it also comes down to allocating focused time. I've noticed a decline recently in my English skills, because I'm focusing on other languages, even though I'm putting countless hours into English, as I'm reading/watching everything in English to maintain the language. I've reached C1 in English maybe ten years ago and didn't really make progress since. And I'd say the reason is that I don't sit down and learn, but try to do it "en passant" if that makes sense. Just a theory, though. Some suggest, you need to change something in your approach when you hit the plateau. That certainly seems to be the case for me, as I didn't do that with English lately and I'm noticing a decline. Interesting.
The analogy with the ice cube fits perfectly, I think, but it seems, there's more to it. I for one seem to really need to change the approach, once the plateau hits and put that focused time in and be persistent, as you suggest. That could be the key. Thanks for your advice :)
You're goddamn right!
Woohoooo thanks Fito!!! 🙌🏼
Amazing
If enough people believe in something does it make it exist ? I think it's quite destructive to get hung up about this plateau. Perhaps it does affect many people but it's possible to make this feeling worse than it actually is.
Archimede’s Principal
If you do what you like the plateau does not exist.
Agreed 😊
Do you think it's easier to get over the intermediate plateau or to achieve an intermediate level?
This is where I’m at lol
Unless you’re learning czech.
If you can explain to me WHY you need to shake every book you recommend, I will be so happy. Anyway except this tentative to try to transform books to flying objects your videos are quite interesting .