Marina: [00:00:00] Hey there! Welcome to How to Language, a podcast about language learning for language learners. I'm your host, Marina, and with me is my co-host, Jeremiah. In this episode, we're going to talk about the intermediate plateau in language learning. We're choosing to start the show with this topic because it's a common experience that many learners face. And some listeners might have found our show specifically because they're experiencing a plateau and want to get out of it. 

So we'll chat about its effects on language learners, why some students experience it while others don't, and most importantly, how to overcome it. Whether you're a language learner or a language teacher, we're sure you'll find something useful in this episode. 

Lastly, we want to say up front that even if you're a beginner language learner, this episode is for you. For one thing, plateaus can happen at any level as we'll see. So, our hope is that this episode will be useful for people who want to avoid plateauing in their learning. Same goes for advanced language learners. And now that we've got all that out of the way, we hope you enjoy this episode on the intermediate plateau.

Jeremiah: Hi Marina. 

Marina: Hi Jeremiah. 

Jeremiah: What are we talking about today? 

Marina: So, I wanted to talk about the intermediate plateau or the language learning plateau. 

Jeremiah: What is the, uh, language learning plateau? 

Marina: Well, let me ask you this. What do you think the language learning plateau is?

 Jeremiah: Mm-hmm. Giving me the, the mom response. Okay. Uh, so. The intermediate plateau, I think is when, you know, say you're learning, I don't know Danish for some reason [both laugh].

And, uh, you're learning Danish and you [00:02:00] know, your university offers Danish courses, so you've been taking Danish for a couple of years and you're past the beginner stage. Like, you know what all the fruits are called and you know what all the colors are and you know how to say like, “where's my friend? He has blue pants.” Stuff like that. And you get to a stage, you know, maybe a couple of years in, or a little over a year in, depending on how intensively you're studying Danish. And you get to a point where you feel like you're not really making gains anymore. Like you feel like you might even be backsliding a little bit.

Marina: Yeah, exactly. So the intermediate plateau is this phenomenon that a lot of language learners, and I mean a lot of language learners report experiencing. It's called the intermediate plateau because that's usually the stage in which it starts, usually somewhere around the mid to high intermediate stage, but this can happen probably anywhere in the language learning process because of the reasons that we'll get to later. But I think that it's most evident and the most frustrating at this particular transition stage.

Jeremiah: Right. Because you feel like you've already come so far. And you start to wonder like, uh, has it all been for nothing? Like, am I just not good at learning Danish? Am I just not good at learning, learning languages? Like, is this not for me? And yeah, a lot of people just give up at that point.

Marina: Exactly. And that's one of the key symptoms of the intermediate plateau is frustration. This feeling of like demoralization, it's definitely not something that people look forward to. 

I think it has something to do with the fact that when you start learning a language, it's really fresh and exciting. And it's pretty simple in the beginning, because you're learning basic grammar and basic vocab and it's not too bad yet. And you think, "okay, I can do this. Like I'm, I'm progressing pretty well." But then as you advance, you start to realize how much you don't know.

Jeremiah: So true. [00:04:00] And actually, you know, this is interesting. Different languages can tend to have different, um, like effort investments at different stages. So just for example, some languages like Latin, for some people, can tend to be a lot harder in the beginning, but once you've made that investment, it starts to pay dividends later on. Whereas a language like English, it might feel really smooth sailing in the beginning because you're like, “oh, dog, cat, brrrrr-uh, I can just put those together.” I know the rules are pretty simple, but after you get a few years in, and this is especially relevant for us as English teachers, you can really maybe start to hit that intermediate plateau because the stuff that makes English difficult has a tendency to hide until a little bit later in the learning process. Which can, I think, be frustrating for, for some learners, maybe, you know, your mileage may vary. 

Marina: Yeah. Having to construct more complex sentences, getting nuance in meaning, synonyms, slang... 

Jeremiah: For sure. Which all languages have that. 

Marina: Oh yeah.

Jeremiah: But, but then, but then English has, like, you know, had you already have had, had, had, had, had, we had only had, have we, oh God. [Marina laughs] Do did they do you want, did, do, uh, stuff like that, you know, do had, have, have to have, do, have done. 

Marina: Yeah. Yep. Exactly. So, kind of segueing off of that, have you experienced the intermediate plateau? 

Jeremiah: Definitely, I feel like any language where I have put in sufficient time and effort to get to anything close to an intermediate stage. And often, you know, even before that, probably a lot. I feel like one kind of marker of it, or like maybe a cause of it, is that I guess with most languages, with all languages, you get to a point where the stuff that you've been doing is no longer sufficient to continue to make progress.

What it is like, is physical exercise. Because if you are starting out and it's your first time doing a lot of physical exercise and you're doing pushups, you do 10 pushups and you're wiped out. Um, and if you do that consistently, you might notice like, “wow, I'm getting a lot stronger.” But at a certain point you do 10 [00:06:00] pushups and nothing changes. You can do 10 pushups every day for months on end, and nothing really will change because you're past the point where that's sufficient to make you get stronger and you have to start doing something different, maybe something even harder. But if you don't realize that, and if you don't know what it is that you need to start doing differently, then you might just feel like, “wow, I've, I've peaked, I've maxed out.” Um, and yeah, get demoralized and give up. 

Marina: That's a good analogy. Um, another thing that I've noticed is that when people talk about the intermediate plateau, it's usually visualized as like a literal graph. Where you have like your two axes, and then there's a line that starts climbing up, and then at the intermediate stage it like flat lines, and then it goes, it continues to go back up after a little bit. And it's supposed to demonstrate the consistent growth from beginner to intermediate, this flattening at intermediate. And then, um, eventually continuing up towards like advanced. I think that's an oversimplification because for me and my experiences with languages, it's been less like a linear graph and more like an EKG monitor, where it's just going up and down and up and down and up and down constantly.

And I think that that's natural because. You know, like in my experiences with like learning Japanese and learning Spanish, there's always been like an upward trajectory. You know, usually through things like taking classes, but you know, there might be my Japanese might've like slipped over the summer when I didn't use it very often. You know, that would be, maybe you would consider that like a dip in my competence. But then it would go back up when I had to start talking to people in class again in the fall. Um, and then with Spanish, once I stopped taking classes, the same thing has kind of happened. And so I feel like I've hit multiple plateaus in, in my language learning experiences 

Jeremiah: For sure. That's, that's a really good point. Like, again, like you can, yeah, you can have multiple [00:08:00] plateaus and, um, I think the point about the EKG is really true because unfortunately, you know, plateau in a sense is almost a bit of an optimistic word because it comes with the assumption that, oh, at a certain point you just kind of level out, which I think generally is kind of true. Like if you average out all the points, but throughout a language learning process, really you find that you make progress and then you don't just level out until you put in more effort and then you make more progress. You make progress. And then even if you are putting an effort, and especially if you're not putting an effort, you will backslide.

Fortunately, that is supposed to happen. And as a matter of fact, that's how you learn a second language. You find that, um, you know, two steps forward, you might end up taking one step back and it actually has a name. It's called restructuring. And it's a thing that you do when you're learning languages because you have to, it's how your brain works.

Learning, and also even just knowing a language, is an ongoing process. It's not a fixed state and it's a process of growth, but also decay and transformation. And so as you learn, you're not just adding to your existing knowledge framework, like what you know about the language. It's not like you're just putting language facts into a box until you have enough of them to speak the language.

Really what you're doing is you're deconstructing your existing knowledge about that language and about other languages at the same time, and rebuilding it as you learn, restructuring it, as you kind of whisk in new knowledge, almost like making a cake, I guess. And that's why it sometimes feels like yeah, you take one step back for every two steps forward. 

Marina: I had to do a lot of restructuring when I learned the subjunctive in Spanish. 

Jeremiah: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And also, kind of a fun thing, building off of restructuring is it's not just that you're restructuring your knowledge about the language you're learning, whether it's Danish or Spanish or Japanese, you're also restructuring your knowledge of your first language [00:10:00] because as you're learning a second language, you kind of can't help making comparisons consciously or unconsciously to your first language.

And if your first language is the only one that you speak, then going into learning a second language, you're gonna have certain assumptions about how languages work. And invariably, those assumptions are gonna be challenged by the new language. You're not just learning a second language, you're also kind of reframing your knowledge of your first language.

It's really a really fascinating process, which is why we're doing a whole podcast about it. 

Marina: It's great to learn more about your first language, um, as a reference for acquiring other languages. Mm-hmm. You know, that metalinguistic awareness, like knowing how your language works, is really helpful for acquiring skills in another language.

Jeremiah: For sure. It's kind of the same, I guess, for your resources. Like if you imagine that you have, you know, your year one Spanish book and you're using it to learn Spanish, at a certain point, it's not gonna be useful to you anymore because you already know everything in it. And I think the difference between a language like Spanish and a language like Latin is that with Spanish you can usually find more resources to help you keep pushing the needle further and further.

Um, not to say that you won't get an intermediate plateau with Spanish because I think you have and I certainly have. Um, but there are maybe a few more things that you can grab onto to pull yourself out of that rut. Whereas with Latin, uh, at a certain point, you've learned a certain amount and you're like, “wow, if I could just talk to some speakers of Latin, then my Latin speaking skills would improve.” But, uh, that's gonna be kind of hard, maybe a little harder than finding speakers of Spanish. Um, and so I think the, the resources that you have access to can also play a, a role in how significant your intermediate plateau is, how long lasting it is, how hard it's to get out of, and stuff like that.

But again, that doesn't mean that you're not gonna have an intermediate plateau. If you have a lot of resources. You can buy every Spanish book that you can find, but you might still have an intermediate plateau with Spanish. 

Yeah. And I think it's, it's partly a factor of just [00:12:00] how many people there are who speak that language. Mm-hmm. I mean, obviously there's more to it than that. There's a lot of politics that goes into it. But for example, I think we both wanna learn some Icelandic for our trip to Iceland that's coming up, which is hard because there is not nearly as much material for learning Icelandic that's as widely available as there is for learning Spanish. And so, you know, that doesn't just make the intermediate plateau harder, it makes the beginner time harder as well, because you just have less that you can work with.

Marina: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That was kind of similar to when I was learning Japanese in the beginning. Well, first of all, I was coming out from Latin. I was recovering from Latin where everything had a case ending. Everything had a tense and a mood and an aspect and everything, and it was very difficult. I found it to be very difficult. And then with Japanese, you get a language that has, it has agglutination, but it doesn't have things like noun, gender. It doesn't have plurals even, or it does, but you don't use it very often. And everything was -- it felt a lot more straightforward. And in the beginning it was very smooth sailing. And then as you progress, all of the kanji start looking the same, and like --  

Jeremiah: That’s offensive. [both laugh] 

Marina: Well, I mean, you know, it's just, you know, they start -- They stop looking like things, um, like the kanji for tree looks like a tree, but then the kanji for depression does not look like depression.

Even aside from the kanji, like just the language, it starts to pile up. And because it [00:14:00] works so differently from my first language, English, it became really challenging. I don't know why I was so surprised, but I was, because it was so simple in the beginning. And so that's when I really started to hit the plateau where I was like, “ohhh no.” And I think that that's a big reason why I stopped, because I didn't feel like I was capable of continuing. I didn't feel like I was a capable Japanese learner anymore. And looking back, you know, I wished that I had stuck with it because I really regret stopping, and now I'm having to relearn everything. And it's easier because I, it's all in there somewhere still. But it's, it's very sad. 

Jeremiah: It is sad. We've told a lot of sad stories about our intermediate plateaus. I think we're making it sound like the intermediate plateau is like this combine that when you get close enough to it, it'll just suck you in and chew you up. So do we have any, like, before we move on, do we have any nice stories of times that we didn't get, you know, beat up by the plateau? 

Marina: Well, you, you, you managed to, you know, get into pretty advanced Spanish and Latin. 

Jeremiah: That's true. Yeah, definitely. I think with, with the Spanish, I had the advantage of, uh, of taking lots of progressively harder Spanish courses, uh, in undergrad. And so where I would've been hitting the plateau pretty hard if I had been, you know, studying alone, um, I was kind of like forced to keep going and just pushed through it because my grade depended on it. You know, I was getting into courses that weren't Spanish language courses anymore. They were courses about other things that were taught in Spanish. Um, and so this ties into what we're gonna talk about next, but like, my listening skill got pretty good, especially in an academic context, you know, my speaking skill was still not quite there because I just didn't do a lot of speaking [00:16:00] in, in those classes. But I think that helped. That helped me kind of get far enough into or over the plateau where I was like, “okay, this isn't forever. I can keep going with this. I can get better with this.”

I still feel like I'm kind of on the line between high intermediate, low advanced with Spanish. And so I still have a lot of plateau related issues with my Spanish. And then as for Latin, I think that one's more of a brute force situation where I was just like, “you know what? I don't care about the intermediate plateau. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna go for it.” Uh, and I, I think I had the advantage of obsession in that case where I was like, “intermediate plateau doesn't stand a chance against my hyper fixation.” 

As far as just really outlining what the intermediate plateau is from kind of an empirical standpoint or scientific standpoint. What exactly does it look like? What happens in the intermediate plateau that makes it the intermediate plateau? 

Marina: So one of the scholars who is most famous for working in this area of the plateau is this guy named Richards. I cannot remember his first name. It's probably John or James or something. 

Jeremiah: Maybe it's Richard. 

Marina: Maybe it's Richard. I don't know. But we're gonna call him Richards. And in 2008, he wrote this pamphlet that was a synthesis of a lot of previous research into this area that kind of summarized what he had learned from all of that research, what the plateau is, and its characteristic markers. So like how do you tell that somebody's in a plateau? And so these were some of the main ones that he, uh, identified. I'm curious to see what you think of some of them. 

Um, the first one is: the learner has strong listening skills, but not so strong speaking skills. When you get to that point, you've listened a lot, whether that's listening to your teacher or listening to media and you get [00:18:00] pretty good. You get pretty confident with your listening abilities and I feel like that's where I'm at with my Spanish. I'm at a point where I can listen to something, I can, I can, you know, get through a lot of it pretty, pretty well, but speaking competence is a lot lower 

Jeremiah: Definitely. 

Marina: The next one that he has is: the learner uses a lot of fossilized errors.

Fossilization is this process in second language acquisition where if you commit an error, and I don't mean just like, "oh, this sounds a little funny." It's like, no, it's ungrammatical. If you commit an ungrammatical error too often, or if you commit it too often without correction or anything like that, then it becomes fossilized, it settles and it sets into your grammar. And whether or not fossilization is an inherently bad thing is a different discussion. But even as you get more advanced, you're still committing that error. That's fossilization. And so he, Richards is saying that, you'll see more fossilization in learners who are in the intermediate plateau. They haven't, they haven't un fossilized it.

So the next one that he says is that the learner has a pretty decent degree of fluency, but at the expense of complexity. So they're able to speak pretty well at more of a quote unquote basic level. Like using simple sentence structures and simple words, but the complexity of those sentences is lacking according to him.

Jeremiah: Right. And if you try to ratchet up your complexity, then it'll come at the cost of your fluency. Whereas somebody who's a lot more advanced, let's say in the language, you know, they can, they can rattle off a subjunctive sentence and, and kind of stick it to the landing a lot, a lot better than maybe somebody in the plateau.

Marina: The next thing that he talks about is a limited [00:20:00] vocabulary, especially in terms of synonyms. So Richard says that somebody in the plateau will rely too heavily on simple and basic vocabulary and will not have a lot of synonyms for that vocabulary in order to diversify their speaking and production in general.

Um, which I guess, yeah, I mean, I, I kind of am finding that with Spanish where I will kind of resort to certain words because there are a lot more solid in my mind, whereas I know there are other words that might be more appropriate for what I'm trying to say, but I just don't. 

Jeremiah: Insubordinate and churlish! [Marina laughs]

Marina: And I think also kind of going back to that, to what we were talking about before, it really depends on your goals. Like, if you want to just be a person who exists and uses that language with your friends or your family or whatever, then you don't need to know crazy, fancy words. If you want to be a writer or a novelist, then yeah, maybe you would want to expand your vocabulary, but I don't think that's an inherently bad thing. You know, you can still communicate and get your point across. 

Jeremiah: Yeah, for sure. I guess like your reaction to all these points kind of depends on whether Richards is coming from a place of like, "oh, people are doing these things because they're in the inter intermediate plateau and like, that's undesirable or like that's bad" or whatever.

Whereas if it's, if you just look at it as more of a descriptive thing, like people who are in this stage tend to show these symptoms, whether or not they're good or bad, then I guess it's... 

Marina: a little less problematic. 

Jeremiah: A little less problematic. 

Marina: And the last thing that he talks about is that the learner in the plateau will sound too formal or too textbookish. They're speaking like a textbook, which is a common complaint among language [00:22:00] learners, especially in school, who are assigned these textbooks as part of a curriculum. And the language that is being taught in that textbook is not super accurate to how speakers really use the language.

I had that happen to me when I was learning Japanese. I was learning Japanese at our community college and I also had a language exchange partner who was a Japanese student. And we would meet like once a week and she would help me out with my lessons or whatever. And one day, I don't know. I came up to her and, and she was like, 「お元気ですか」(o genki desu ka) which means , "how are you?" And I was like, uh, 「元気です。あなたわ？」(genki desu. anata wa?) And and she started laughing and I, and I was like, “why are you laughing?” And she was like, "you sound like an old lady." [both laugh]

But that was like the, that was what our textbook taught us. How to, how to greet somebody is like, “oh, when somebody asks you this, you ask it back like this.” And she said that, that's just not really how people say that anymore. 

Jeremiah: So the first thing that I'm noticing about kind of all of these is that they seem to be describing just the experience of someone who's taken multiple classes in a language. Would this be as true for somebody who is taking, you know, a less traditional approach to learning the language? Like, I'm sure a lot of these would still apply, but like sounding too formal I think is, is definitely a symptom of the way that language is taught in schools and in class, and it's interesting, the way that, you know, the target language is represented in, in a class just by necessity, can never be the way that it is actually used. Almost in the same way that the way a language is written down can never be the same as it's actually used because the purpose and the medium and just everything about how the language is being used is different. And so you can't possibly [00:24:00] expect written language to be exactly the same as spoken language and you can't possibly expect classroom language to be exactly the same as the language as it's used.

And I think there are a lot of reasons for that, especially in languages where, um, and I guess this is true for everything, you know, because all cultures have ways of showing respect to other people. Um, but in languages like Japanese, which I understand have, has a pretty, um, I don't know, elaborate complex or just extensive system for how you're supposed to address people depending on like age and, and you know, how you relate to them. Am I, am I right about that? 

Marina: Yeah. The honorific system is baked into the language. 

Jeremiah: Right. And that's, that's definitely something not only that you need to know. But I feel like language classes in situations like that will often default to just a more formal way of speaking. Just so the student has their bases kind of covered.

Marina: Yeah, formality is a tricky thing in language learning, especially when you're learning in kind of a restricted context, like a class where in a class especially, or at least in Japanese, we would speak to our teacher in the, in the middle form or the -masu form, which was like kind of the polite one that kind of fell in the middle.

But you know, you don't use the informal form of speaking with your teachers. So we never really got a lot of practice with those forms. And then when I actually went to Japan, everybody I talked to was like, "oh, no, no, no, you don't have to use that with me." 

Jeremiah: Definitely. 

Marina: And I was like, "I don't know how to do anything else."

Jeremiah: Yeah, exactly. A class can't possibly prepare you for every situation that you're gonna encounter. And so I feel like what a class is, is trying to do is give you enough foundation in the language that then when you go out and have experiences and talk to real people, you can map the new things that you learn about the language onto the foundation that you already have. 

Marina: Yeah. 

Jeremiah: And that's kind of as good as it gets. And so I think, unfortunately, We're all gonna continue having to have those conversations with our language exchange partners where they laugh at you and then you're like, why are you laughing at me? And they're like, you sound like an old person. You know, it's kinda like [00:26:00] growing pains or par for the course, whatever, whatever that means.

I don't, I don't play golf. Um, where you kind of just are stuck with it. That's just how it is. 

Marina: So that was what Richards had to say about it and a lot of his suggestions for avoiding or fixing, quote unquote the plateau were focused on teachers and what teachers can do to help their students. So we're not really gonna go into that. Uh, but I did wanna talk about this other research project that I found. Again, this is a pretty complex topic and we could talk about this for hours and hours and hours and have tons of sources to talk about, but I'm just finding the ones that I found the most interesting.

So there was this other one that I found by this guy named Murphy, that's his last name. I don't remember his first name. And he did his dissertation on the intermediate plateau. And specifically he was looking at, well, why do some ESL English as a second language students experience the plateau and others don't? Because not everybody experiences the intermediate plateau. Some people don't. It's just the, the majority do. So like why do some people experience it and why don't others? 

And so, uh, he looked at, I think it was like around 18 Spanish speaking ESL students. They were all adults and some of them reported experiencing the plateau. They were all about intermediate learners by the way. And some didn't. Some seem to be progressing at a similar rate as before. They didn't seem to report any problems or difficulties moving forward. 

And so, he found a couple of patterns among those who did and didn't experience the plateau. And one interesting thing that he talked about a lot was acculturation, right?  So getting accustomed to the language, and we'll talk about this more when we talk about solutions to the plateau, but as far as like how this is, could be a [00:28:00] reason for experiencing the plateau is that in the particular case of ESL students, they're coming from a Spanish speaking context into a English speaking context, right? I think this was in the United States, and if you are just diving into a completely new context, a new language, new speech community, then that's going to take some adjusting, that's gonna take some acculturation, right? And for the students who did not prepare to come to the United States and engage in English on a daily basis, they struggled a lot more with the plateau than those who exposed themselves to English more before coming to the United States, or at least before starting classes, formal English classes.

Um, as well as also blaming the language for their plateau or for their difficulties with the language. So students who were experiencing the plateau chalked it up to English being too difficult or the pronunciation being just impossible. 

And so you can call a language difficult, you can call the pronunciation difficult, of course. Those are difficult things. Learning a language is always going to be difficult, but there's no one language that is more difficult than another. So blaming the language is not very constructive. 

Jeremiah: That's a contentious claim, by the way. Like, not among scholars obviously, but like for listeners who might be hearing that for the first time, that no one language is more difficult than another language, we might have to elaborate on that.

Marina: So what I mean by that is that the difficulty of a language is always going to be relative, you know, so if you're, for example, a first language English speaker, then languages that are more closely related to English are going to be more or less easier. Kind of, kind [00:30:00] of, um, you know, a lot of the VO vocabulary might be similar.

A lot of the grammar might be similar, but there is going to be new stuff. There's going to be new difficulties no matter what language you're learning. And so, yeah, no one language is more or less complex than another. Therefore, there's no language that's easier to learn than another. 

Jeremiah: Yeah. Objectively. 

Marina: Objectively. But um, for the purposes of what we're talking about here, it doesn't really make sense to blame the language for the difficulty because this is would be the case with any language.

Jeremiah: Exactly. 

Marina: It's not like, “oh gosh, I wish I was learning Japanese instead because this would be so much easier.” And it's like, well, yeah, maybe, but it would be difficult in another way. 

Jeremiah: Exactly. 

Marina: So, yeah, in the case of this study, the students were, who were experiencing the plateau, were chalking it up to the language, uh, instead of other factors that were at play. 

Um, so speaking of other factors, um, this other study that I was looking at that happened in Iran, uh, looking at EFL (English as a foreign language), Learners looked at a similar thing asking, well, why do students experience this plateau at the intermediate stage?

And based off of student narratives as well as teacher narratives, they managed to create these three categories that kind of helped explain what's going on here. And so the first category that they found was “learner-related variables.” So these are things on the part of the learner themselves, like things that come from the learner.

So things like affect, which is just a sciencey word for things like emotions and moods and feelings. So how do you feel? Um, are you feeling frustrated? It's gonna be harder to learn if you're feeling frustrated. Um, are you tired? Are you sick? Like, all of these things can [00:32:00] affect how you, how you're learning.

There's also things like cognition and metacognition. So you know, things like, just being able to understand what's going on. Do you understand what declensions are? Do you understand what conjugations are? And things like that definitely will have an effect. 

Jeremiah: And are you aware of your own learning process? Like are you aware of what you now know that you didn't know before? Are you aware of how you're thinking about these things and how you're, you know, filing them into your existing, you know, knowledge framework?

Marina: And also your knowledge of what kind of strategies you use. That's another learner related variable is what strategies the learner uses. Are they effective for that learner or are they not so effective for that learner? 

Jeremiah: Mm-hmm. Because you can definitely learn a language--uh, not as well—you can definitely try to learn a language kind of on autopilot, just doing what you imagine you should be doing. Like, oh, “I guess I'll just flip through these flashcards and now I guess I'll just do these grammar drills” without having a specific thought out strategy in place for how you're gonna go about it. And you will, you can learn things that way, a hundred percent, but it might not be as efficient. Yeah. Um, which is kind of what the strategies is about. 

Marina: Exactly. Yeah. Another interesting learner related variable was this idea of automati--how do you say that?

Jeremiah: Automatization? [both laugh]

Marina: Automatization? Automatization. 

Okay. So like, basically this desire to speak a language quote unquote automatically, which is something that a lot of students reported wanting to be able to do once they're past this plateau. Like they said things like, “oh, I want to be able to just say what I wanna say without really having to think about it or just have the words come out freely and smoothly.” And I think that's something that a lot of people strive for. That's I think what a lot of people consider to be fluency, is just being able to say what you wanna say without really having to think about it.

And that's fair. Like that's, that's a good goal. [00:34:00] Um, but it was interesting because that's something that they were, that they wanted to do so badly, but that desire might have been holding them back from actual progress towards that goal. 

Jeremiah: Interesting. So is it that the desire for automatization or like the feeling that they want it, but they can't attain it, like, is that kind of having a knock on effect with their affect and it's, and it's hurting their motivation, their mood, their confidence? 

Marina: Yeah, probably. Definitely. 

So like even in our first languages, that doesn't happen a hundred percent of the time. You know, we still stumble over our words and we say things wrong, and it takes us time to construct especially complex sentences.

And so just because you aren't a hundred percent fluently speaking a hundred percent of the time doesn't mean that you can't be a competent speaker. It definitely is a hit to your confidence and it's just sitting a completely unattainable goal, which is always going to set you up for failure or disappointment.

Jeremiah: So true. Two, two things. First of all, I guess it's just to summarize that it's like the perfect is the enemy of the good. And what people think “perfect” is, to kind of go into the second point, uh, which is just, I really want to agree with what you said and also just kind of reiterate it, just, you know, for the people on the back…

This idea that, and we don't have time because this is a whole other episode, how people think, you know, “native speakers,” air quotes, are, you know, experts in their language that they, always get it right, that they speak it a hundred percent fluently all the time. That is not true. At all. As you said, people in their first language stumble all the time. They make like malformed constructions. All the time. They say words wrong. And there's, you know, whole studies of that in linguistics that are just focused on the errors that people make in their first language.

And also, whatever you're comparing yourself to is an idealized version [00:36:00] of that. And that's not even how people speak their first language. So you can't expect yourself to be able to speak a second language that way.

Marina: Because it literally doesn't exist. 

Yeah. So those are learner-related variables. The next one that they identified was “instruction-related variables.” And this is specific to people who are learning a language in a classroom setting. Um, or even in maybe a tutoring context or a language exchange context as well. Anytime where there's another person who is helping to facilitate your learning. Usually a teacher. 

And so some of the things that are under this category are the curriculum itself. We were talking about formality. Things like the curriculum and the syllabus can dictate what you're going to be taught and sometimes what you're being taught isn't what you wanna learn or it's not maybe immediately useful to you, or not interesting to you, but you don't have control over that because you're not the instructor, you're not the one who's choosing the curriculum. And so that can be difficult as well, because maybe what you need is different material or different topics to talk about that invest you more in the language and help you get over that plateau.

Jeremiah: So it might, it's not the language's fault, but it might be your teacher's fault you can't learn the language. [both laugh]

Marina: Well sometimes the teacher doesn't have a choice either. 

Jeremiah: So true. 

Marina: Um, so that is a, a complex topic, but it's not like necessarily the teacher's fault, but it could be, uh, the government's fault or the school's fault. [Jeremiah laughs]

Uh, another thing is teacher action. So what the teacher does in the classroom. Does the teacher correct you when you make an error? Do they do it too little or too much? Because that's definitely a thing. 

And then, um, they also talked about like assignments and activities. So what kind of assignments are you completing in class and are they useful and relevant to you? Is it something kind of boring, like writing like a pen pal letter [00:38:00] to a hypothetical person that you're not even gonna send? Or are you writing like a cover letter for your, for your business French class or something? I don't know. Those types of things can also help or cause the plateau. If you're doing more activities and more assignments that. Are relevant to your goals, your language goals, then that's going to propel you forward as opposed to ones that you're not invested in.

 And the last one that they talked about was, they call it “going through problems,” um, which I thought was very broad – 

Jeremiah: Story of my life. 

Marina: Yeah. [both laugh] Um, and they kind of categorized this as like unpleasant learning experiences that could be caused by any of those above variables as well.

So feeling frustrated. Or feeling like you are a failure or feeling like, “oh, this is just too hard. There's no way I'm sparred enough to get past this. Then there's no way I'm ever going to be, uh, an advanced language user” or whatever. 

Jeremiah: I actually have a personal experience with this one. 

Marina: Oh, really?

Jeremiah: Going through problems, unpleasant learning experiences. So in my, I think it was like my second year of Spanish. We were having a class discussion about education around the world, I think, and my contribution to the class discussion, uh, you know, impromptu, so I didn't have time to prepare it, was something along the lines -- and this was in Spanish by the way -- it was something along the lines of like, “You know, education needs to be more, uh, more accessible around the world. We need to guarantee education to people around the world, especially for girls.” And the reason that I said that is because in a lot of places around the world, girls do not have access to education in the same way that boys do.

Marina: Mm-hmm. 

Jeremiah: And there're also a lot of places around the world where nobody has access to education. 

Marina: Yeah. 

Jeremiah: Obviously. Um, but you know, not to get too sidetracked, but like, expanding education for girls brings on all kinds of [00:40:00] additional just societal benefits that everyone benefits from, girls and everybody else. And that was kind of where I was coming from. And as you maybe can imagine, I didn't have the Spanish skills to explain all that. I barely have the English skills to explain all that. And somebody else in the class said, because I, I just said, “oh, we should, education should be more accessible for girls.” And somebody in the class said, “why just girls?” [Marina laughs incredulously] And before I could kind of think of an answer, the teacher was like, “yeah!” And kind of like just did like a weird thing. 

And just kind of put all the pressure on and I felt really, put on the spot.

Marina: Yeah. 

Jeremiah: And embarrassed because I felt like I had done something wrong, not just on a language level, but on like a, like a social level.

Marina: Mm-hmm. 

Jeremiah: Uh, and it was very ostracizing, and I don't really think I even talked in that, like out loud in that class for the whole rest of the quarter. And like, it, it, I still think about that sometimes. And it still makes me nervous to like, speak Spanish, just two people impromptu. 

Marina: Yeah. 

Jeremiah: So definitely, like, that that stuff can stick with you.

Marina: Oh yeah. Feeling uncomfortable or feeling like you can't speak in a language class or in any context where you're speaking a second language. An experience like that can shut it down for you. 

Jeremiah: For sure. 

Marina: Yeah. And that's, and that exactly, and that's what this kind of “going through problems” is. These unpleasant experiences can have a really lasting impact on your language learning journey.

Those types of situations raise what we call the affective filter in language acquisition. Meaning if you feel anxious or uncomfortable or even scared, then this filter goes up in front of you and then nothing can get through that filter, or hardly anything can get through that filter, making acquisition a lot harder. 

So these are some of the things that can cause the plateau. Let's finally end this on like a good [00:42:00] note. What are some things that we can do to get past the plateau or that's even just assuming that we're looking at the intermediate plateau as an inherently bad thing. You know, it doesn't have to be this dreaded thing that you are like bracing for, that you have to anticipate. First of all, it doesn't have to happen. 

Jeremiah: Mm-hmm. 

Marina: And even if it does happen, it doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. 

Jeremiah: Yeah. Cuz you know, look at it this way. Like, what is a plateau? It is the top of, uh, a mountain or a hill. 

Marina: Mm-hmm. 

Jeremiah: And it happens to be flat, but if you hike up a mountain or you hike up a hill and you reach the plateau, that's an achievement. Like you have hiked up this big, tall thing, which took a lot of effort and energy on your part. And even if you're not at the tippity top, even if you still have a ways to go, the fact that you've made it to this point at all is something to celebrate. Like, that's definitely something to go buy your favorite can of beans and have yourself a nice bean dinner. Or whatever you do to celebrate. I don't know how other people celebrate things. That's how I do it. 

Marina: And if you are, if you do feel like you're in the plateau of whatever language you're learning, you can also think of it as a sign that you're, you're, you're there. Like you're about to enter like an advanced stage. 

It's still gonna take work. It's not like you're just gonna sit back and do nothing. That's not the case with any stage of language learning, but that's a huge deal. Like Jeremiah said, that's a huge accomplishment. So this isn't necessarily something that we're framing as a thing to be fixed or a thing to be solved, but there are some things that you can do to make this plateau stage a little bit easier and a little bit less treacherous.

Jeremiah: Mm-hmm. 

Marina: But also going back to that study I was talking about earlier with the Spanish speaking ESL students and acculturation, if you're able to, doing some level of acculturation or exposure even before you start learning the language will definitely, mitigate a lot of these things as you get more advanced in the language.

And now, if you're in the plateau right now, this advice isn't very helpful to [00:44:00] you because, uh, that ship has sailed. [Marina chuckles] But in the future, if you begin to learn another language, this is something to definitely keep in mind, is to do some type of acclimation before you get started. But also, if you are in the middle of learning a language and you're not able to travel back in time, then there are some things that you can still do to slowly acclimate yourself.

So one thing that you can do, and this is something that I use a lot in my own language learning, is that when you're about to learn a new topic, let's say like a new tense in Spanish, right? You're about to learn the subjunctive or something like that -- that's not a tense, but you know what I mean [both laugh]. 

Um, let's say you're about to learn the subjunctive in Spanish and before diving in and, you know, going to lecture or reading that chapter in your book or watching that lesson on YouTube or whatever it is, get some exposure before you start, right? Whether that's maybe reading the chapter or the lesson, the PowerPoint slides before you go to class that day. Or maybe it's reading a passage that uses a subjunctive, um, before you watch a lesson about it online. 

That little bit of acculturation really helps for when you dive into it because then it doesn't feel so new. It doesn't feel like you're acquiring something new so fast in such an intense speed. It's, it's going to feel a lot less intimidating. It's almost going to feel like review a little bit.

Jeremiah: Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. I like to think of of learning new things in terms of hooks, where if you have something in your brain already that you can hook new knowledge to, it's more likely to stay. Whereas if you just try to slap it on there, like a wet towel, it’s gonna slide off probably. 

Marina: Yeah. 

Jeremiah: Um, and you know, yeah, inoculating yourself, um, acculturating yourself to this new [00:46:00] information before you actually have to encounter it is gonna give you a little bit more of a hook in your brain that you can then stick that onto. 

Marina: Exactly. 

Jeremiah: Especially if you can relate it to something you already know.

Marina: And that's another reason why at this more intermediate and advanced stage, acquiring vocabulary from sources like movies and books and readings and things like that is so much more useful.

Like, if you see a new word in a movie that you're watching, for example, having that context already of it in that movie and in that line and in that story, and then putting that word into your flashcard deck or whatever you use, is going to be more effective than just finding like a random word in a dictionary and just putting it in your deck because you have no connection to it.

Jeremiah: Absolutely. It's all about the connections. 

Marina: Yeah. 

Jeremiah: The links, the context.

Marina: Right. And so that's all part of the acclimation process. Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. Another thing that they found was that any degree of self-directed learning is a good idea, especially at this stage, because as you get more advanced, you are going to start prioritizing your specific goals. 

These are things that a class can't necessarily provide you because they're trying to cater to more than just you. And so you would need to step in for yourself and take control of your own learning wherever you can, whether that's consuming material independently, watching movies and reading books in your target language. In class, you know, not being afraid to ask questions and asking for clarification when you don't understand something. It might be acquiring specialized vocabulary for your industry. So, any kind of self-directed learning is a really great. 

Jeremiah: Definitely. And also I wanna follow up on how you started that with, with goals, cuz that's something that I would add to our list is having clear goals. It’s something that is really good to have from the beginning. [00:48:00] You know, knowing why you wanna learn a language, what specific thing you want to use it for.

Going in, knowing what your goals are from the beginning can really, it can make your task a lot smaller because you don't have to learn everything about the language. But even if you are at a more intermediate stage, and maybe you haven't done that kind of thinking about your goals yet, it's still something that you can do now, both because it can give you some focus and some direction for like what you want to do next, like you were saying. 

But you can also, if you have clear goals, like what you want to be able to do with the language, then you can, you know, like back with the hiking metaphor, you can turn around and actually see how much progress you've made towards that goal. Which is a lot different than being like, “oh, I know, like another tense that I didn't know before.” Like, that's cool, but not intrinsically valuable. Whereas if you know that you are gonna be, a novelist in this language, having learned the past tense is gonna be really helpful for getting you towards that goal. And so it's gonna be a lot more meaningful when you look back and say, “wow, I did that.” You know?

Marina: Yeah. So either set goals if you haven't already, or maybe revisit and remind yourself of your goals. If you feel like you've reached a plateau. 

This is kind of going back to self-directed learning, but part of that, you know, like I said, reading and consuming new material, material that is particularly relevant and interesting to you. There are a lot of benefits to reading, especially, it can help expand your vocabulary, which is something Richards would really like.

Um, it introduces more complex structures, which is also something that Richards would really like. And you know, depending on what you're reading, it can also expose you more to informal language. So if you are participating on maybe online forums or something like that, Discord servers, Reddit, these kinds of things, um, can ex help expose you to the language that people are really using and not just in the hyper polite forums that are found in [00:50:00] textbooks. Um, same thing with TVs and movies, that can help kind of expand the language beyond just what you're finding in your textbook. 

And then also that kind of goes into production as well. There's definitely something to be said for actually using the language, and this could be speaking and or writing.

Production is something that is really difficult for learners to engage in frequently. At least most of the time there are situations where, you know, you might have to engage with your target language on a frequent basis, especially if you're living in that community where that language is being spoken every day all around you. Uh, it's a lot easier to get in this practice, but if you're not, if you're learning it as a foreign language, then finding those opportunities can be a lot harder. Now writing -- yeah, writing you can do anytime you want. 

Jeremiah: You can keep a language journal.

Marina: You can keep a language journal, you can find a pen pal. Uh, you can just write random stuff to yourself, you know, just to get in that practice. Whatever, stream of consciousness is great. Uh, speaking is a little bit harder. Um, it definitely is, and it's a lot scarier too. Uh, actually using the language, especially with another person, can be very intimidating. But it can start with something simple like just talking to yourself. Talking to yourself in the shower. I do that a lot. Or just talking to yourself in a, in your head, imagining like a hypothetical conversation. Like how would you, how would you say these things? How would you have a conversation? 

Jeremiah: Definitely. And I, I have been given that advice and when I first got that advice I was like, “oh yeah, you know, okay. I can kind of see that. That's cool, I guess.” Uh, and I did it for a little bit and I kind of stopped, but it's good advice. Definitely do it. Um, I would add that, you know, talking to yourself, yeah, you're definitely gonna get that speaking production practice that you need. And it's not quite the same as like actually speaking with somebody else who speaks in the language because they're gonna say things that you aren't expecting and it's gonna force you to produce stuff on the fly and you're not [00:52:00] gonna have as much time to think about it.

So, super important. I also just want to directly address something that we're kind of talking around, which is the difference between reading and listening versus writing and speaking. And I'm actually gonna throw a little Latin at you right now. Um, one of my favorite Latin expressions, just cuz you know, talking about Latin, I'm sure people are like, “man, is is he gonna speak some Latin? That would be cool.” I am gonna speak some Latin. I'm gonna do it right now. Uh, and it goes: “scribere scribendo, dicendo dicere discis,” which means you learn to write by writing and you learn to speak by speaking. And basically what that's getting at is that all these different ways to use language, reading, reading it, speaking it, listening to it, uh, writing it are all really closely connected. But they're also different skills and you need all of them. 

Marina: But that's again, dependent on your goals. 

Jeremiah: So true. 

Marina: If the only reason that you wanna learn Japanese is to play Japanese visual novels, maybe not. Maybe it's not as big of a deal. 

Jeremiah: Absolutely.

Marina: But if you are trying to become a competent language user, right, “user” as in like producing the language yourself, then that's a different story.

Jeremiah: Just coming back to goals, and knowing what your goals are is super important because it's gonna tell you how much of each of these skills you actually need to invest in. For sure.

Marina: So I guess that just about wraps it up. So we talked about what exactly the intermediate plateau is, uh, as well as our own experiences with it. We talked about what according to some scholars characterizes the plateau, some of which are a little bit more problematic than others. There are just as many reasons for entering the plateau as there are language learners. It is very individualized, and very unique to you. but some of the solutions that we talked about I think can hopefully help you if you feel like you're experiencing a plateau right now, or if you're worried about entering a plateau [00:54:00] later. Hopefully this gives you an idea of some things that you can do preventative-wise and also to help you get past it.

Jeremiah: That's my hope as well. 

Marina: So like what's your, what's your main takeaway here, Jeremiah? 

Jeremiah: So I guess my main takeaway for one thing, like you said earlier, is that not everyone is going to go through an intermediate plateau. Um, not everybody is going to go through a plateau at the intermediate stage, or not everyone is gonna go through just one. It is very individualized for sure. 

Also, I think that plateau is k— not the best way to think about it, because you know, "What is a plateau?" It is the top of a mountain or whatever, and they tend to fall off and not go any higher. Otherwise, they wouldn't be plateaus really. I think. I'm not a geographer.

Whereas in language, if you keep practicing and you know, you, you try the solutions that we've talked about or find your own, you will eventually start to see your language skills continue to improve. You know, the plateau is not the end of the line for your language growth in the same way that it's the end of the line for the growth of the mountain.

I think in that sense it's a little more like a landing on a flight of stairs. Like, you know how with stairs, you know, you go up a stair, you go up a stair, you go up a stair and you're making progress, you're getting to the top of the building and then you hit a landing and you think, “oh, that's it. Uh, there are no more stairs for me.” With stairs usually that's a good thing. You're like, “yes, no more stairs!” With language learning, not such a good thing. Uh, but they're similar I think in the sense that if you just take a few more steps on that landing, you will find that there are in fact more stairs. And with language learning, you will find that there is more to go. There is more that you can improve. And, you know, maybe you will end up changing direction a little bit, but you will find that you've still got a ways to go. 

[upbeat electronic music starts playing]

Thank you for tuning in to How to Language. We hope you found this episode informative and that you came away with some more tools for preventing or escaping the intermediate plateau. If you want to keep in the loop regarding upcoming episodes or just want to [00:56:00] enjoy some language themed memes, be sure to follow us on Instagram at @HowToLang and on the platform formerly known as Twitter under the same handle.

Marina: Also, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us improve and it helps others discover the show as well.

Jeremiah: With that, see you next time! 

Marina: Bye! ​