What's Your Plateau Busting Advice?

[Shelley]

It would be good to hear people's strategy for breaking the inevitable plateaus and dips that we all (?) experience during our studies.

 

Do you have a motivational story, or just something you remember that gets you back on the right track.

 

I think back to my first real bit of text that used about 50 characters that I read through without having to reach for the dictionary, the feeling of accomplishment had me walking 6 inches above the ground for about week and then I hit a plateau (something to do with grammar I seem to remember)

 

I persevered and managed to get through it and now I think of that text when things get tough.

 

It would be good to hear your ideas on this.

[Silent]

 

walking 6 inches above the ground for about week and then I hit a plateau

To me this sounds more like a landing then a plateau. You get exited because you achieved incidently something unexpected but after a while reality sets in and your emotions dip again. I think there is little you can do about it then just keep going and sticking to your routines.

 

To me a plateau is when you reach a point where you can study as hard as you want, but (you feel) there's no progress. This is somewhat tricky situation as sometimes you do make progress, you just don't notice. Often times however you're grinding through a routine that used to work (well) but has lost it's power. Then the trick is to recognise it and to change the routine. E.g. change from a focus on reading to listening or from grammar to vocabulary etc. I think progress is best in a balanced approach where you primarily focus to address your weaknesses.  When progress stalls despite putting in the effort that may very well be a sign that your weakness has been addressed and you should move on to focus on another weakness.

[Shelley]

To me this sounds more like a landing then a plateau.

 

Yes, I guess you are right here, but what I meant was after landing and expecting to now make good progress, hitting a plateau and finding myself working hard and making no progress for awhile.

 

Then breaking the barrier and surging on again till hitting another plateau and so on.

 

The fact that you may be making progress but just don't notice, is interesting, hadn't though t of that.

[Touchstone57]

A plateau is somewhere where you can have no conceivable improvement. I find it hard to believe that any language learner can reach a plateau - if you can pick up a piece of text or listen to some audio and there are items you don't understand, then there is always something to learn and improve on. I was often suprised to find English learners or Chinese say they can't reach any improvement. Unless you have reached a state of perfection, of course there is improvement! As a native English speak I can still improve my English (if I wanted to). There is a wealth of literature, cinema, poetry, music and games out there all in our target language that we can use!

 

i imagine everyone has experienced dips, where our motivation drops, and we feel like we haven't made any progress and we couldn't understand a simple sentence. After passing my HSK3 I decided I should start watching more televisions shows and that I would make a concerted effort to learn the vocabulary and sentences, but I found the tasks very difficulty and it was still hard to follow - I was very discouraged.

 

One thing I realised is effective goal setting is important - making sure you have both long and short term goals set which are achievable. The second one was patience - once I slowed down to focus on individual items, I made more progress. I realised there is no rush, and I have a whole lifetime to learn Chinese, why do i need to do it in a year like these celebrity bloggers and polygots, if I'm happy with my own pace and progress? 

 

Consistency is another - My friend has been learning Chinese for a while, and knows about 400 characters, but feels demotivated because he doesn't find it that useful. It takes years of consistent study and practice for the benefits to really pay off. It does get better, trust. I feel with Chinese, the more you know, the quicker you can learn! 

[Shelley]

I use the term plateau to mean a point in your studies where you don't seem to make progress, not that there is no more progress to make.

 

I agree with you Touchstone57 about having a lifetime to learn Chinese and there is no rush, its not about rushing its about progressing however slowly, it feels as if I should be making continual progress. Maybe this is over hopeful?

 

Constancy is an excellent point.

[Angelina]

I remind myself how I still can't fully express myself in Chinese.

[Xiao Kui]

To me a plateau is when you reach a point where you can study as hard as you want, but (you feel) there's no progress. This is somewhat tricky situation as sometimes you do make progress, you just don't notice.

 This is what I have experienced as an advanced learner of Chinese.  You get to a certain level where the law of diminishing returns kicks in and you feel like although you are learning new words all the time you are not making any progress. I still have difficulty understanding portions of radio news broadcasts or choosing the right near synonym for a particular situation (Usage has always been my greatest challenge!).  I took a break from learning which definitely helped. When I started studying again I convinced myself that if I kept going I would soon reach the tipping point and experience my next significant breakthrough. Over the past 2 months I have faithfully read an article and watched 20-30 minutes of China news or documentaries every day and I have seen significant improvements in my comprehension and usage.  I recently took a mock ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview and scored Advanced High. I had not had a Chinese conversation in over 6 months so I attributed that success to the past two months of passive learning. 

[wushucrab20]

I would say don't jump from one type of material to another or even one text to the next. Stick with something and do it repeatedly, sometimes it really just takes drilling and repetition for something to sink in, but I think for a lot of people that the end result is very good if they stick to a certain method. I think the amount of information, new characters etc that are out there at the intermediate level seem incredible overwhelming and it is easy to jump around trying to find something that works or that will stick.

 

My advice is to pick one or two good resources (preferably ones you already know well or have good recommendations from someone who can give you good advice) and just work through them until you can read everything, understand all of the listening material, and use a lot of the language when you are speaking. You will find in the end that you cover a lot of ground this way and the things that you learn stay with you. Of course you can also watch movies, tv shows, read novels, watch the news for fun, but you don't need to rely on it as a way to learn, just to reinforce what you are already learning and pick a few things up along the way.

[gato]

This points out that it's important to make an honest assessment of your weak areas and tackle those areas head-on. Spend regular and sustained amount of time on your weak areas. If you are weaker in speaking, for example, spend more or even all of your study time on practicing speaking. If you are weaker in reading, then do that.

It's often too easy to spend all our time on those things we are most comfortable with and therefore already strong in. That's why we need to learn to live with discomfort and do things we don't like. It's what athletes learn to do when they train. They learn to like the pain.

[Angelina]

Advanced learner is such a misnomer. Yes, we can communicate with people and we are reading Chinese books, but honestly, if we were having this conversation in Chinese, would you feel this free to express yourself? I wouldn't and I am not afraid to say it.

The key to overcoming plateauing is honesty, be honest about how free you feel when speaking Chinese. Maybe there is some pride getting in our way, especially after we realize "wow, I can speak Chinese". You can never rest, even after you achieve native-level fluency, native speakers are native speakers because they have been using the language not because they were lucky to be born in China.

[Xiao Kui]

Advanced learner is such a misnomer.

I wasn't saying it to brag - just to acknowledge that a plateau after 10 years of study may look different than after 10 months of study, but it's a real experience nonetheless. Advanced just describes one's progress relative to a that of a beginner - I don't have a problem with that term. I am, however, much more cautious with the terms "fluent" and "near-native" ;)

[Angelina]

Maybe a plateau after 10 years of study can be more dangerous than a plateau after 10 months of study. It's easy to comfort yourself by saying "I am not a native speaker after all."; "How many foreigners can speak Chinese more fluently than I do, 大山?" .

[J_HF]

When I feel like I'm reaching a "study plateau", I try to remember why I started learning Chinese in the first place - to communicate with people (specifically, Chinese people!)

 

In general, a conversation usually leaves me feeling successful ("I expressed myself well!") or frustrated ("I couldn't express myself as clearly as I wanted"). Both outcomes encourage me to study more.

[li3wei1]

If by 'plateau' you mean a place where you can't fee/see the progress, and you feel like you're wasting time, and you are discouraged, then I would change your strategy. Stop doing flashcards, or start, if you're not doing them. Find an easier book, or perhaps a harder one. Switch from reading to listening, or the other way. Work on your writing. Change language partners or tutors. Do something different, but keep doing something. You will find an area where you can feel the progress, and when you go back to whatever you were doing on your plateau, you will probably notice a difference. I went on a three-month Skritter binge, to the exclusion of everything else, and when I went back to reading it was a lot easier. Whatever you do, you'll make progress. The enemy is the discouragement that comes from the lack of noticeable progress.

[roddy]

Perhaps we need to reconceptualise the 'plateau' as a 'long imperceptible upward slope'...

[Shelley]

Perhaps we do roddy, that is actually a good description of how it feels.

 

Plodding along and the goal seems to be no closer.

 

It seems there are 2 ideas here, keep at it with your usual routine or change something. Considering a change is a as good as a rest I would think changing something may be the key to progressing. Even if its only a temporary change, it is probably a way to shake things up. Perhaps its more like getting stuck in a rut than not progressing. I also like the idea of sticking at your normal routine. So it may be a combination of both.

[Silent]

 

 

It seems there are 2 ideas here, keep at it with your usual routine or change something.

I think these two opinions exist for a good reason. If you have a fixed routine for a long time and are just grinding through the routine a change is good. shake it up a bit and start with a refreshed attitude. However you should not expect miracles, it's unreasonable to expect huge progress from just a couple of study sessions with a new approach. It's a balancing act between stamina/discipline to keep going also when the going is tough and some variety in approaches to maintain a balanced development. There's no point in learning advanced grammar when your vocabulary is only 100 words or to keep learning new vocabulary without an inkling of how to use that vocabulary. 

[Pingfa]

What Silent said is what I thought you were referring to when I saw the thread title. I think there is inevitably that plateau in a language where one simply isn't making quantifiable progress, and I don't think this is necessarily down to method; I think there just comes a point after you've progressed so far, the results of your perseverance will only become apparent after a lot of time has passed. 

 

As for the 'landing', my suggestion would be to put it on the backburner, so to speak. Don't stop learning, but go at a more leisurely (but persistent) pace until you are inclined to push yourself.

 

I'm not sure I would recommend this, but I personally found it helpful to take a 2-3 day break from it altogether every 3-4 weeks. When I was maintaining a constant immersive environment, eventually I would find myself burned out and fed up with the language altogether. The problem wasn't so much technical but psychological; it's not that I wasn't making progressive, but that I was becoming resistant to Chinese on the whole. If I forced myself to keep going despite this growing resistance, it would just exacerbate the problem.

During those times I found cutting it off for 2-3 days allowed me to come back refreshed and with a revived interest in the language.

 

In any case, persistence is key. You just have to know your limit.

[Shelley]

I do find that the natural course of life causes me to "take a break" for 1-2 days every 2-3 weeks, I find this works out well.

 

Even on those days off though something Chinese goes on, watching Chinese TV or browsing around on Chinese Forums trying to answer questions or learning from other peoples questions.

[OneEye]

A friend of mine in Taiwan, who has lived there for 30 years and whose Chinese is indistinguishable from a native speaker's (and who has worked as a conference interpreter for 15 years), used to say "when you feel like you're not making progress, change your situation." Do something new in Chinese. Pick up a new hobby, or start going to a new meetup group, or make some new friends. Whatever it is, you'll have to pick up the relevant vocabulary. If you don't have the luxury of having a Chinese-speaking community accessible, apply the same principle to your study. Most of what I read in Chinese is related to palaeography or historical phonology. If I were to suddenly start reading business-related news, or tech blogs, or sports websites, I'd learn a lot of new vocabulary just by virtue of having changed my situation a bit.