The English learning plateau

Audio: 5 min. 28 sec.

Learning a new language is a long and difficult journey.

If you want to understand as much English as possible, write clearly, and speak fluently, you will need to invest a lot of time and effort into developing your abilities.

Like most journeys, you will encounter obstacles, and one of the most difficult to overcome is the language learning plateau, a point in your studies where you feel like you are not learning anything new and you are losing motivation.

This blog will help you identify if you are stuck on the plateau, and give you some tips on how to break past it to achieve your English goals.

Am I stuck on the plateau?

When you are self-studying, it can be hard to tell if you have reached a point where you are stuck and making no progress.

The most obvious sign is that you are losing motivation and enthusiasm.

This often happens when you reach an intermediate level, but can also occur when you have spent a long time studying English. You might also feel like you are stuck in a “rut” - a repeated routine that is not stimulating.
Hitting the plateau can also happen if you have no clear goals for your study.

If you are not working towards a particular result, such as a passing grade for a specific exam or understanding vocabulary regarding a certain topic, it can feel futile to study.

Alternatively, you may have had a goal that you recently achieved and now you are not sure what to do next.

You wanted a 5.5 in IELTS and you got it, but you want to continue improving and have doubts about the next step.

Finally, you may have reached the point in learning English where progress slows down.

This is not your fault; development naturally slows as you get better at a language but it can be discouraging to feel like you are not learning as much.

How can I break past the plateau?

Luckily, everyone encounters this problem, and so there are clear solutions and strategies to get past this obstacle and keep improving.

Set goals

It does not matter if you have ambitious plans or if the goals you set are more moment-to-moment ideas, but having a target in mind does wonders for motivating you to continue your studies.

Goals can be aims like reaching a specific score or percent result in a test, learning the necessary vocabulary to talk about a certain subject, perfectly spelling a set of words, or speaking on a topic without hesitating or making pronunciation mistakes.

It can help to write these goals down so you have something physical that reminds you of the next course of action. 

Try new materials

If you are using textbooks to study, take a look at books at the same level by different publishers.

There is significant variety in how different companies present ideas, and seeing similar information stated in a new way might be what you need to give you a push forward. 

This also applies to your other sources of English content.

If you use a lot of audio such as podcasts, YouTube videos and radio shows, try shifting your focus to more textual content like novels, magazines and newspapers. 

Try new study methods

Everyone has a different learning style, and if you have been studying English for a while, you probably feel comfortable with your approach.

Making yourself uncomfortable by doing something outside your comfort zone activates your brain and forces you to think in a different way.

For someone who does mostly solo self-study, this means putting yourself in social situations to utilise your English, whether online or in clubs and classes.

If you mostly develop your language by having conversations, now might be the time to refer back to textbooks and dictionaries to confirm your ideas, or to make an effort to record vocabulary in a notebook.

Teacher not student

A particularly effective strategy is to see if you can teach what you have previously learnt to family and friends.

By putting yourself in the position of teacher rather than student, you will see English from a new angle and further develop your understanding of the language.

It can be really challenging to break through the learning plateau but don't worry; everyone goes through this at some point when learning a second language.

Don't give up and you'll climb over this obstacle the same way you climbed over all the others!