What exactly do people mean by "intermediate plateau"?

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iguanamon
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Re: What exactly do people mean by "intermediate plateau"?

Postby iguanamon » Sun Jul 25, 2021 4:47 pm

To me, as a veteran of the forum, the intermediate plateau is after a learner finishes a course or two and then no longer can use courses to improve. It's the bell curve of rapid advancement at the beginning to moving to the flatter curve of much slower improvement. I've seen several members over the years manage to finish their courses only to get stuck over what to do next to strengthen their skills and improve their language. Some don't know how to utilize native materials effectively. Some seem to want a course to tell them what to do and teach them what they need to know.

Those who have read my "multi-track approach" know that I advocate a gradually increasing use of native materials from early on in the learning process. This means starting with a short tweet or a few paragraphs of a news item which may be familiar, or a Bible verse or two with a few sentences; an Aesop's fable of a paragraph or two; a song lyric- basically something short and simple that is comprehensible by means of a translation or look-ups. Doing this while going through a course or two also allows for synergistic learning. A learner sees/hears something in their use of native materials and then sees it in their course or vice-versa. Along the way, the learner sees how to learn from native materials and that doing so is valuable to their learning. They see the practical result of their learning and know what to do after their course is finished.

The problem comes in when learners are mostly just doing their courses, expecting the course to do all the heavy lifting for them. Then, when the course is over, they are hit with the reality that reading is hard, listening is hard, speaking and writing are hard too. To some learners this can be overwhelming. They don't know what to do and they give up. Some will move on to a next language- maybe even making the same mistakes again with the new one that they did with the old one. Some will just slowly fade away. I see this most commonly in people whose motivation for learning X is not strong or from those who may be trying to learn multiple languages as a monolingual beginner.

This is the time where native material consumption at the beginning means doing everything one can to make it comprehensible- reading translated from L1 books with which they may be familiar; watching dubbed series from L1; listening to podcasts with transcripts; making parallel texts; using an e-reader with a built in dictionary or a pdf dictionary on a tablet for quicker look-ups; reading synopses of episodes in a series to give themselves an "edge" (even if only a slight edge); it means taking notes in their own shorthand while listening; it means having L2 materials to hand to use "hidden moments"throughout the day to good effect. I've used parallel texts, study guides, familiar books and short book reviews to help me at times when I was tackling a new language. It also means a certain amount of perseverance. Sticking to it despite frustration; using a grammar book or grammar exercises to make the language clearer; writing- even if just for one's self; speaking when possible; not giving up.

PeterMollenburg's 365 Day Challenge and the Super Challenge work in tandem to get people doing something in the language daily and reading and listening a lot. I look at what Radioclaire is doing every day in Russian on her log. She's making it happen (yet another reason why members should read logs of learners whose TL's are different than their own). She's reading, watching, listening, doing a course and grammar exercises- making it happen!

Maintaining momentum is an important part of language-learning, especially at the low intermediate level, despite the frustration. The curve rises more slowly at this point, but by putting in the effort and the time, by not giving up, it does indeed rise. Sticking with it "90% of life is just showing up" -attributed to Woody Allen.
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Re: What exactly do people mean by "intermediate plateau"?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jul 25, 2021 6:16 pm

On Richard Simcott's weekly videocast (just earlier) he said there is no intermediate plateau. Anyone interested in why he said so can have a look at the video which should be available now or later.

I can't add anything original or new to the good analysis that has already been posted here, though I would say the self-reported plateau hits different learners at different times. So I suspect different people have a different slant on how they recognise and define the word for themselves. E.g. a person halfway into A2 feeling things slow down a little isn't 'plateauing' but rather passing into just another learning stage which requires more effort. If you add another ball to your juggling before you've mastered two balls...well.

Iguanamon's post diagnoses what seems to me a truth about some people not being able to guide their own learning (but being assured they should be able to by books and websites) and also not meeting with native materials of any kind soon enough. With the first one if a person really can't guide their own learning, they should follow a course and later perhaps structured classes. Native materials is a tricky one because you look at native materials early on and it might as well be Mount Everest; it's enough to discourage anyone. The solution is to not expect to master the ability to understand all that tomorrow, or next week or next year. That impatience curse again. I'm not immune to it, I know the frustration, but I can pace myself and have tolerance for not understanding every last word in a text/video/podcast.

So what is a 'plateau'? It's the middle part of something when you've opened a lot of doors and are a bit overwhelmed about checking out all the rooms and the doors between them, learning the route. You need a guide and some patience and to pace yourself in an organised way. The middle of school when you're 13/14 is like that, but no-one calls it a plateau. A journey can't have just a triumphant beginning and end with no middle, and the middle has an element of the unknown about it. It's normal. 'Plateau' is not a problem like 'totally stuck and making no progress at all' is a problem. Perhaps what happens is that a person doesn't stop to take stock of where they are, see what they know and don't know and fix any problems before moving on. It's easy to think 'I've been at this two years! Why can't I watch native Spanish TV?!' Not enough words, not enough exposure to speaking, massive holes in grammar, expecting to understand a large amount of slang.

One last thing: even native speakers don't understand stuff in their own language (or variants of it) so why should a learner? It's easy to assume that you should understand every last thing if you 'know' a language, but that's not true.

I rest my case (because it's heavy).
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Re: What exactly do people mean by "intermediate plateau"?

Postby devilyoudont » Wed Jul 28, 2021 11:12 pm

I've always found it interesting that this plateau gets so much discussion, and other ones don't. My experience watching other learners is that there are plateaus at every level, and as Iversen said, there may be separate plateaus for separate core competencies. To me, the worst plateau is definitely the beginner plateau, which occurs when a student gets frustrated because despite time invested, they are still not able to do anything in the language. Being unable to take breaks where they focus on only enjoyable activities in the language, they burn out completely and stop studying entirely. This resets their progress to zero because it seems that beginners lose whatever they have acquired much faster than other learners. Some learners wind up in a cycle where they keep learning the same three hundred words and 12 grammar points over and over and over again. Some put the idea of learning a language behind them.

Yet another type of intermediate plateau which I didn't see covered yet, is a plateau caused by overconfidence. These students have achieved a conversant level in the language and think that they are basically amazing because they can't detect their own errors. They may stay at this level for quite a while because, not detecting their own errors, not detecting the accommodations native speakers are making for them, they feel satisfied with their level.
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Re: What exactly do people mean by "intermediate plateau"?

Postby thevagrant88 » Sat Jul 31, 2021 10:15 am

You decide to learn Zulu. You learn your first ten words.

Fantastic!

Now you know a hundred. You learn ten more. Now you know a hundred and ten.

Pretty cool still seeing progress.

You now have a base of 3000 words. You learn ten more. Now you know 3010.

Oh, that doesn’t feel as significant anymore.

Apply that same logic to every other aspect of language learning and boom, plateau. Many stop at this point because the biggest thing that will make any meaningful difference is time. Lots and lots of time. Without that instant progress feedback, it’s hard for most to stay motivated.
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Re: What exactly do people mean by "intermediate plateau"?

Postby einzelne » Mon Aug 09, 2021 11:39 pm

I agree that the intermediate plateau hits different learners at different times. Depending on your purposes, it can take different forms (for instance, if you need to have good speaking skills, fossilization is a real problem). Training your ears, definitely, takes an eternity (I still remember how after several years of watching American TV series and classical cinema, I decided to watch The Last Picture Show and, hell, I got so depressed because it felt like all these years were for nothing).

And then, of course, the problem with the long tail of vocabulary learning is real. Even at the pace of 1 book per week, it's hard to acquire a vast vocabulary to read comfortably almost everything. Extensive reading alone doesn't work (or may be work, but it takes decades or it has to be a relatively closely related language). Then you need to implement some system for repetition which quite quickly turns into a real chore. It's fine to review your first 5k words at the chilly pace of 15 per day (although I prefer to work through Routledge Frequency Dictionaries as quick as possible), then via regular reading/listenting you can get the second 5k frequent words via exposure only. For the majority of leaners it is more than enough. But what if you want to read almost everything in your target language? 10k won't be enough for that. And quite soon you'll discover that each new book will 'favor' with hundreds and hundreds of words (may be a couple of thousands). Which of them to review? Well, you might tell to yourself: use your intuition and common sense. It doesn't make any sense to learn all these description words for architecture, furniture, plants etc, right? And then one day you decide to read someone like Alain Robbe-Grillet only to discover that his books are packed with such detailed descriptions and ignoring them is like speed-reading of War and Piece ("I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.") And the only thought you have after that: "[lots of curse words in all languages you know] I didn't start learning French just to read YA novels or Marc Levy! I want to open a random Pléiade volume and enjoy it! Will it ever happen?" (Sorry for this rant)
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