The Fluent Mind ESL Podcast Topic Talk | 3 strategies for overcoming a plateau in your language journey
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In this episode of The A to Z English Podcast, Xochitl and Jack provide three good strategies for overcoming a plateau in your language learning journey.
Transcript:
00:00:00
Jack
Hey A-Z listeners, this is Jack here.
00:00:03
Jack
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00:00:23
Jack
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00:00:42
Jack
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00:00:44
Jack
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00:00:52
Jack
Now let's get on with the show.
00:00:56
Jack
Welcome to the Ages English podcast. My name is Jack and I'm here with my co-host social. And today we are doing a topic talk episode and social the topic for today is I've I've pulled up three strategies for overcoming.
00:01:13
Jack
A plateau in language learning and a plateau just means that you reached a certain level and then you're not improving anymore. You're kind of stuck and you're you're kind of flatlined.
00:01:25
Jack
Know.
00:01:26
Jack
And yeah, so I'll, I'll.
00:01:27
Xochitl
I'm.
00:01:29
Jack
I'll tell you the strategies.
00:01:30
Jack
And then you just, you know, tell me what you think about them and and and share your your your your view on on these.
00:01:38
Jack
So the first one is.
00:01:40
Jack
Diversify your learning methods, which means changing the way you engage with the language can re energize your learning process. So incorporate different activities that target various skills, such as reading, listening, writing and speaking.
00:02:00
Jack
You can for reading, you can choose a variety of materials such as books, articles and blogs to expand your vocabulary. You can listen to podcasts. You can follow YouTube channels and again that's right in our that's what we're doing here.
00:02:18
Jack
UM to listen to different accents and slang, and we do a lot of slang episodes. So the 80s, the English podcast is really a great way to improve your listening by writing, journaling, writing essays, or replying on online form.
00:02:35
Jack
Things. And by joining language exchange programs, finding a conversation partner or participating in speaking clubs. Or you could even join the world English Google meets class, which is something that I started with.
00:02:56
Jack
Another another teacher here in Korea and students can for $10 a month, they can join and just have a one hour conversation. Actually, if you become a VIP, it sometimes students will talk for two or three hours a night.
00:03:13
Jack
Every night. Every day. Yeah. So. And then there are multiple classes and what we have multiple teachers teaching different lessons as well. So you know. So there's a lot of things you can do. What what do you, how do you feel about this like?
00:03:13
발표자
Yes.
00:03:28
Jack
Diversifying learning methods.
00:03:31
Xochitl
I think that's really good. I I actually was one of the first things I would have suggested right off the bat, especially with reading. It's really great to read varied content like you can try.
00:03:44
Xochitl
Thing old English literature and you can try reading science articles and you can try reading the horoscope in a magazine or a celebrity news thing or and and you can try reading a fashion article just because you're gonna acquire a lot more different, diverse vocabulary that you don't see in every day and.
00:03:53
Jack
Right.
00:04:04
Xochitl
That really helps be able to get you from just a proficient level to really a distinguished native speaker level.
00:04:14
Jack
I'm gonna throw. I'm gonna throw a plug for something I'm not related to it at all. I have no connection to it.
00:04:21
Xochitl
Yeah, do it.
00:04:21
발표자
But.
00:04:22
Jack
It's called Breaking News English and what they do is they take an article and they kind of scale it down so that it's more understandable for second language learners.
00:04:35
Jack
And they put a new article up every single day, and you can read the article and answer some comprehension questions, some true or false questions, vocabulary matching. They've got lots of little exercises there, and I think that's just such a great.
00:04:51
Jack
Website I I've used it many times for my classes and I I love breaking news English. So if you're in, if you're looking for somebody to read and the articles are all different, you know it's a science article. It's a sports article. It's a news article. It's all just a bunch of different things. And like you said.
00:05:10
Jack
If you read a variety of of material, you're gonna pick up a variety of vocabulary. If you stay in one specific area like sports only, you're gonna get a lot of sports lingo, but you may.
00:05:24
Jack
Get exposed to science or yeah.
00:05:24
Xochitl
You'll be lacking in several social studies, sociology and all history, yeah.
00:05:30
발표자
Right.
00:05:33
Jack
Exactly, exactly. #2, the second one is set specific, achievable goals. Breaking down your learning into smaller manageable goals can help you stay motivated and measure progress.
00:05:48
발표자
Yes.
00:05:49
Jack
How do you feel about that one?
00:05:51
Xochitl
I think that was good. I mean for example, you could say your goal is to improve your pronunciation, but that's extremely vague. But for example, let's say that you struggle with pronouncing the R or R.
00:06:06
Xochitl
R sounds so which is really common. Then you could practice a few words that are L&R heavier that alternate between L&R within the same word.
00:06:18
Xochitl
And record yourself every day and you'll see your progress from the beginning of the month to the end of the month. And that will really inspire you to keep going and keep practicing and improving.
00:06:30
Jack
That's right. That's right. I think students tend to like, try to bite off more than they can chew. You know, you you you set your goals as like I wanna. I wanna sound like a native speaker. What does that mean exactly? You wanna sound like a native speaker? Well, I mean, it's it's kind of like a a a child saying, you know, I want to be Michael Jordan.
00:06:35
Xochitl
Yeah.
00:06:44
Xochitl
Right.
00:06:50
Jack
Well, there's a lot of steps that you have to take to get to that high. The highest level of of basketball or whatever sport you.
00:06:50
Xochitl
Yeah.
00:06:57
Jack
Might be playing.
00:06:59
Jack
You you have to, you know, set you small goals. Yeah. Yeah. Well, right.
00:07:01
Xochitl
Pick an accent.
00:07:05
Xochitl
Pick an accent for 1A neutral English or some kind. The easiest one that though, or the one that you like, or the one that you resonate the most with and there's just so many small goals from there. Just start with short words or the one you know, ones that you have a little bit of a hard time.
00:07:22
Xochitl
Announcing and then build up from there and gain your confidence, yeah.
00:07:26
Jack
Absolutely.
00:07:28
Jack
And #3 is immerse yourself in language and immersion is one of the most effective ways to push through a plateau. And what does immersion mean?
00:07:39
Xochitl
Immersion means when you are fully surrounded by a language, in a lot of aspects. So when I was living in Korea, I was immersed in Korean because it's only foreign teacher. So all day, every day, all that I would hear were people speaking Korean around me. And I would say this is this. And patients were the biggest keys to my breakthrough and speaking Korean.
00:08:00
Xochitl
Because at first when I got there and I would, I would hear a word and I'd.
00:08:05
Xochitl
I wouldn't know where a word began in another one and another began.
00:08:08
Jack
Yes, that's a hard thing. You create a yeah, yes.
00:08:11
Xochitl
I was like, what's going on? Because so where is there so many it might be?
00:08:16
Xochitl
A sentence with only two or two words or three words, or even one word. But it has many syllables, so I was very confused. I was very confused and then with I said I said I'll never learn Korean. I'm I've gone crazy on. I don't know what I'm doing here with patients. Within a couple of weeks, I could. I could begin to distinguish where.
00:08:36
Xochitl
Words ended and and began.
00:08:39
Xochitl
And every month it just got better and better. And then I would feel like I hit a plateau of understanding, or sometimes I would even regress a little bit and then I would improve. And so it it's another thing is that learning of any type and especially language learning, it's not necessarily a linear improvement, is not going to be linear. You might do really well for a while, you might regress.
00:08:59
Xochitl
After a little bit and come back down. But overall the trend is going to be that you're improving. So you just have.
00:09:04
Jack
Yes.
00:09:05
Xochitl
To have faith, yes.
00:09:06
Jack
Absolutely. It's a, it's a. It's a long process and it's very detailed and or tedious we say detailed.
00:09:16
Jack
And it takes a long time to to to grow your language skills. And yeah, I mean, like, So what social did what I did travel if possible. So that's one of the ways you can do just throw yourself right into the fire. You know, so that you have to use.
00:09:29
Xochitl
Yes.
00:09:35
Xochitl
Thanks.
00:09:37
Jack
The target language you have to use English to survive. You know survival English, you know, right? But that's expensive and that's not available to everybody that that's not available. But you can do a version of that online like that. Google meets class that I was talking about.
00:09:42
Xochitl
Sometimes people.
00:09:53
Jack
On is a kind of a version of that where we have a number no native language rule. You have to speak English and so no matter what your skill level is, you've got to find a way to communicate some ideas and you just have to figure it out and you're there's no, there's no guide or anything necessarily.
00:10:07
Xochitl
Yeah.
00:10:13
Jack
You just, you know, you can ask questions, people will help you. But it's a great way to grow because it's a stress. It's putting stress on your.
00:10:22
Jack
On on, on you and forcing you to perform.
00:10:25
Jack
Form.
00:10:26
Jack
And.
00:10:27
Xochitl
In a real.
00:10:27
Xochitl
World environment that you don't. Only you wouldn't have access to otherwise. It's really like, OK, this is crunch time kind of behavior which I think really helps. And yeah, I would say that. So that's a great way. Jack. Sorry. Did I?
00:10:41
Xochitl
Cut you off. Go ahead. I.
00:10:42
Jack
No, no, that's it. I'm. I'm good. Yeah.
00:10:45
Xochitl
I was going to say that's really good.
00:10:46
Xochitl
And another way I know a lot of people learn another language is through playing video games with people that speak that language. As native speakers, you'll pick up things that they're saying, and you'll begin to understand things through that context.
00:11:01
Xochitl
Another way to immerse yourself is by joining like a Facebook group for that. For a hobby that you like in English, or watching a YouTube channel in English, or listening to our podcast or watching Netflix or English movies.
00:11:21
Xochitl
I have a friend who moved from Brazil to the US when he was around 7 and he said the biggest way he learned English was through movies and I think that that was a really big help when I was trying to learn Korean is just a lot of listening.
00:11:35
Xochitl
This and and sometimes I would watch something with subtitles and I would rewatch it without the subtitles, yeah.
00:11:42
Jack
Yeah, that's that's the incremental element to it, right? Start with the easiest and then move a little bit more challenging, a little bit more challenging. That's the way you.
00:11:50
Jack
Grow so yeah.
00:11:54
Jack
Right on.
00:11:55
Xochitl
All right, listeners, if you like these tips or if you're curious or have any English learning language tips of your own to overcome a plateau, make sure to leave a comment down below at A-Z englishpodcast.com shoot us an e-mail at AZ englishpodcast@gmail.com and join the WeChat and also groups to join the conversation.
00:12:12
Xochitl
And if you have $1.99 to spare, make sure you support Jack and I and our exclusive podcast content. It really helps us create more content for you guys and we really, really appreciate all the.
00:12:22
Xochitl
Support so far.
00:12:23
Xochitl
Thank you again and we'll see you guys next.
00:12:24
Xochitl
Time. Bye bye bye bye.
00:12:25
발표자
Go back.
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