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🏔 Language plateaus: why not improving is a positive sign 🏔
If every language learner understood plateaus, there would be far less frustration, quitting, or abandoning old processes. Even advanced language learners don’t understand the mysterious plateau. Language learning forums are full of “I haven’t improved in a long time” posts. Frustrated learners will write a multi-paragraph post that they got to A2 level, but haven’t improved at all in several months. Sadly, other language learners will recommend that they change their process.
I learned Finnish to A2 level in 9 months, and am currently halfway to B1. The advantage of putting 2–3 hours per day in is I know exactly when I’m up against a plateau. I can predict one week ahead of time when I will break through to the next level of understanding.
I always thought I would improve my Finnish gradually on a week to week basis. But I found that week after week, my Finnish level remained exactly the same. This was despite a crazy amount of immersion hours reading subtitles on / off for the same videos. But suddenly, every month and a half like clockwork, I would wake up one morning and magically understand 20% more than I did the day before. Plateau breakthrough days are so exciting. I go through every video I barely understood and suddenly “feel” the video rather than just “understanding” it.
