Setting realistic expectations for language learning
Preventing frustration and being kind to yourself
Learning a new language is something I find myself talking about with others a lot(I know, what a shock). I love to use that opportunity to find out which methods they use, but mostly I just want to cheer them on.
My most heartbreaking observation is how harsh people are on themselves. I often hear shame-stricken confessions that someone’s “language level is not where it should be”, that they “are just not good at language learning”, and many other beliefs that push smart, competent folk into resignation and eventually quitting the process. But are we setting the right expectations for ourselves?
Where did we learn how fast we should learn a language, how perfect it should be, and why does that process reflect so deeply back on us?
Before we go deeper into the science of learning, if you are acutely struggling with this, a short reflection beforehand could be beneficial. Below is an exercise to make what you think about yourself as a learner or the process of learning, and making these thoughts explicit.
Exercise: Consider your beliefs about language and language learning or yourself as a language learner. Write how each limits and/or supports you on your journey.
A few questions that might aid the reflection:
What comes first to mind when you think about your language-learning journey?
How would you describe yourself as a language learner?
What are some of your core assumptions about the learning process? Where and when have you learned them?
Critical periods
You might have heard how easy it is for children to acquire language, and if you’ve been around small children yourself, you might have seen it first-hand. That effortless language acquisition is possible until a certain critical period, after which a language must be actively learned.
The difference between first-language acquisition and learning isn’t subtle, but a function of brain development. Up to the dawn of cognitive control at around 4 years, young children can acquire language by observing and interacting with other humans and the world around them. During these early years, the control over switching attention and the intentionality about giving it are absent or emerging. The brain development that leads to cognitive control also coincides with about the same timeframe that enables cognitive flexibility. While we gain the ability to focus our attention at will and more easily adjust to the task in front of us, we lose the other modes of learning that were available before1. This signals the end of the effortless acquisition era.
While the critical periods are marked as cutoff points, they don’t mark the end of a learning possibility. Critical periods represent a time when learning a type of information is easier, but it is certainly possible after.
The study pictured above focused on subtle, complex grammatical structures. Participants listened to recordings of English sentences with related errors, and their ability to detect them correlated to the age when they started to learn the language.
The critical period of learning a second(+) language as fluently as a first language is sometime around the onset of puberty. In some textbooks, I have seen 8 years, in some 10 years of age.2
A few more critical periods or age cutoffs follow, each meaning a further decline in “perfect” acquisition success.
It isn’t excluded that some rare individuals differ from the average population because of genetic lottery(auditory skills matter3), training or exceptional tenacity could defy those statistics. However, most of us will still be somewhere around the average age vs language perfection ratio pictured above.
To summarise, learning a new language in your 20s, 30s and beyond won't be effortless and fast like acquiring your first language. It will need focused attention and consistency, yet perfection might not be achievable even with a lot of effort over many years.
Does this sound demotivating? I personally find it freeing. It frees me of the expectations of perfection.
There is, however, an undeniable outside pressure coming from the wider society in the case of immigrants and self-induced pressure driven by comparison with exceptions pictured in the media (more on this below).
Comprehension, production and the intermediate plateau
Along the learning process, we inevitably reach the stage when we understand more than we can say. Language comprehension and language production are two different processes, although interwoven rather than separate4. Language production is more challenging than comprehension and often doesn’t immediately follow or mirror your level of understanding.
There are multiple reasons for this: the time spent practising each skill5, the interdependence of the skills, comprehension being a precursor for production6, the kind of input we are consuming as learners, the brain areas involved7 and so on.
A big part of the reason for this lag is also emotional and social8. A crucial component of communication is confidence9. The nagging feeling of not knowing how to express yourself flawlessly can be crippling and hold you back from making new friends, having life-changing conversations or even buying bread. It is a vulnerable, sensitive, courageous endeavour to put yourself out there to communicate your needs and to give your best efforts to an impatient, not-always-so-well-receiving audience. A safe space to practice language production with other humans is a huge confidence booster and a necessity. It is also not something that everyone has. As practice is necessary for building language production skills, this has a tremendous impact on progress.
The stage between reaching a decent level of comprehension and basic production and being able to use the language for comfortable social and communication purposes is often called the intermediate plateau.
It is the curse of the B1 stage. You have galloped through the material to reach an intermediate level, and it all seemed to move smoothly. Progress was palpable. However, since learning has slowed down, the lessons aren’t rewarding anymore, and you still can’t “speak” (as many people I chat with about this say). A lot of learners drop off at this stage and never reach fluency. This can be quite an issue for immigrants trying to build a life in a new country and have a tremendous impact on the quality of life.
While I could spend time writing several posts on each of the details about this topic specifically, my goal for this one is to bring awareness. I hope that seeing everything that goes into understanding others and expressing yourself can help you appreciate how hard the brain and you work each day you show up to learn a new word or say a sentence out loud.
So, to summarise: we both need to work on our comprehension AND production skills, avoid sinking into the intermediate plateau by proactively looking for safe spaces to engage in conversations, expand our learning horizons and cultivate confidence by knowing that this stage is normal, expected, and not a personal failure.
Adjusting our expectations accordingly is also important.
Here is some extra reading that can practically help:
Etiene Dalcol on why she created Polygloss, an app for the intermediate stage and her paper on the topic.
The owl from DuoLingo on what to do when you reach the intermediate plateau.
I have my own way of handling this stage, and I will write a post about my strategies when I get there with Italian.
Personal circumstance and dealing with pressure
Above, I linked two YouTube videos and some articles. I am cautious when I link anything, as the Internet is filled with people showcasing extraordinary skills and abilities and promising “that you can do it too”. Most of the time they are selling something, or ramping up views on sensationalism.
Even if we know that what we see on the Internet is not always true, we are still impacted by it. Think of the perfect depictions of people’s lives you see on Instagram or everyone’s overachievements on LinkedIn. The language learning community and material on the Internet aren’t safe from this culture either.
Before comparing yourself to someone who seems to have effortlessly achieved fluency in your target language within a short amount of time, ask yourself if this comparison is fair:
How much time can that person invest in learning a language?
Do children, a full-time job, or an aching body or mind(or all of it together!) compete for the same limited resources they need for learning?
Does their first or other languages they speak have a closer linguistic difference to the target language(read more here and see10)
What kind of opportunities do they have for language immersion and learning support, including their financial realities that could enable more of it?
Our learning journeys are unique to us. Setting our expectations based on other people’s experiences, especially people we don’t know personally, is unfair to our striving minds and bodies.
Our motivation might be unique, too.
While necessity is a great driver for people to keep moving beyond the challenges, it is a double-edged sword. Necessity means we are pressured to go through a learning process that cannot be sped up. Combined with unrealistic expectations, it can have devastating effects both on our overall mental health and self-worth, but also build resentment and negative feelings towards a specific language or if situated within, even culture and place. This is a common occurrence among immigrants trying to establish a new life in a foreign place. I am currently writing an article about “the language experience”, or how we exist in a language and I will talk about this in detail.
So, unfortunately, we sometimes cannot rely on necessity alone to push us forward. Language learning requires the same discipline and persistent motivation as any other long-term endeavour. There is a lot of science about habit-building offering a plethora of advice, but I find none of it as important as finding your unique reason to keep going.
What will open up for you after you reach your target level? Will it be attending any locally offered class for your hobbies, consuming untranslated art of any kind, being in spaces without a barrier, a job, the studies of your dreams, or a way to show up for your kids? Who could you speak to, get to know and let them get to know you? Only you know.
Lastly, the person commenting “how can someone live in a country for X years and not speak the language” has likely never attempted to learn a foreign language as an adult. At least, not at the level they are expecting you to speak theirs. They haven’t walked a day in your shoes. Don’t let yourself be judged by someone who has not existed in your (language) reality.
TL;DR to take with you
If you start learning a language late in life, you will most likely never learn it as well as someone who speaks that language as their first. You can be fluent, but complete perfection is very likely a goal too high. And that is ok.
Working on both comprehension and production skills is important.
Confidence is crucial in communication. Please, have the audacity to attempt to say that imperfect sentence. It will go much better than you think, and the next time even more.
You are very likely asking too much from yourself. Take the time to evaluate your role models and rethink who you compare yourself with. You are almost certainly doing much better than you think.
You might need more than necessity as a motivator to help you show up every day and do the bit. Look into what could be the reason that keeps you engaged day after day.
Here is how I am learning a language with little available time.
As always, I am looking forward to chatting about this. Curious about your experiences, but also questions and comments.
Peak ahead
Next week we are talking to Etiene Dalcol, founder of Polygloss, about building an app for overcoming the intermediate plateau. The week after we discuss “language experience (Spracherleben)”.
A bit more information and links to materials regarding these other modes of learning in my previous post.
It is important to note that critical periods aren’t an exact science, and various contradictions in the literature suggest slightly different timelines, albeit in the same ballpark.
Mueller, J. L., Friederici, A. D., & Männel, C. (2012). Auditory perception at the root of language learning. PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109(39), 15953–15958. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1204319109
Pickering MJ, Garrod S. An integrated theory of language production and comprehension. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 2013;36(4):329-347. doi:10.1017/S0140525X12001495
Hopman, E. W. M., & MacDonald, M. C. (2018). Production Practice During Language Learning Improves Comprehension. Psychological Science, 29(6), 961-971. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618754486
1. Burling R. Comprehension, Production and Conventionalisation in the Origins of Language. In: Knight C, Studdert-Kennedy M, Hurford J, eds. The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form. Cambridge University Press; 2000:27-39.
Jahanaray, M., Jahanaray, A. and Zohoorian, Z. (2022) “Brain regions involved in speech production, mechanism and development”, Neuroscience Research Notes, 5(4), p. 178. doi: 10.31117/neuroscirn.v5i4.178.
Sampasivam, S. & Clément, R. (2014). 3. The Dynamics of Second Language Confidence: Contact and Interaction. In S. Mercer & M. Williams (Ed.), Multiple Perspectives on the Self in SLA (pp. 23-40). Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781783091362-004
Ghafar, Z. N. (2023). The Influence of Self-Confidence on English Language Learning: a Systematic Review. International Journal of Applied Educational Research (IJAER), 1(1), 55–68. https://doi.org/10.59890/ijaer.v1i1.452
I haven’t explored the scientific validity of the findings in-depth, especially from a global perspective. These findings are based on research and statistics from the Foreign Service Institute of the USA.
Love this (and the links you share)! I've never heard about the intermediate plateau but I definitely went/am going through it--so insightful! Can't wait for your next post!