Make Progress Beyond the Plateau with Engaging Activities
As a Spanish teacher, I have seen many students plateau in our classes, and they can be the most challenging students to teach. The curious thing about these students is that they shared the same characteristics that led to a plateau in their studies. They did not challenge themselves, kept doing the same activities and talking about the same topics, or did not learn effectively because they just used textbooks or apps, read stories, and listened to music. The good news is that there are ways to overcome the language learning plateau and take your language learning to the next level.
How to Break a Language Learning Plateau
If you are feeling stuck in your Spanish studies, here are a few things we recommend you to do:
First, you must know if you have reached a plateau because you can have good and bad days when learning Spanish, and this does not necessarily mean you are plateauing. One way to realize if you have hit a plateau is to rate your progress. You can start by reading a Spanish short story and highlighting the words and sentences you know, or listen to a Spanish song and write the words you understand. You can do this for two weeks, from Monday to Friday, and rate your progress from one to ten. You can download this template to help you evaluate your progress.
These scores are entirely subjective, but they help you see the big picture. If you rate your progress with a two on Monday but with eight or nine every other day, you’ll begin to understand that you should not judge your progress with Spanish based on a single day. However, if, after a week or two, you’re only seeing low ratings and still feeling like you’re not making any progress, then you’ve hit a plateau.
If you have plateaued, it shouldn’t be hard to determine what it is that you struggle with. It is time to work on those things specifically to strengthen those weaknesses. This method can consist of focusing on short-term goals to keep you motivated and make progress. These are some examples of weaknesses and what you can do to improve them:
- An insufficient vocabulary. According to linguists, understanding 75% of a language requires learning about 800 words of everyday speech, but if you want to speak fluently, you will need between 5000 and 10000 words. As a short-term goal, I suggest learning 50 new words every week. You can use apps like Quizlet to memorize them and test if you achieved the goal.
- Poor use of grammar and bad writing. Although writing is not an essential skill in language learning, grammar does. Sharing your writing with teachers to ask for constructive feedback or joining a language forum like WordReference to ask about grammar rules can be a short-term goal to improve both skills. In the case of writing, dedicate a week to learning about and improving one aspect of your writing, such as sentence structure, punctuation, or tense consistency. To review specific grammar rules you find challenging, spend one hour a day finding information and exercises to help you understand and apply them correctly. With Lingolia, you can revise grammar topics, learn about sentence structure for free, and have access to lots of interactive exercises for a ridiculous price. We use this resource with our students, and they love it.
- Weak listening skills: Listening is one of the most challenging skills to master when learning a language. In the case of Spanish, this language is official in 21 countries, so it is difficult to understand all the accents. A short-term goal can be to focus on specific accents; for example, you can look for podcasts, apps, websites, or videos that feature the accents that are more challenging for you or that you enjoy more, or you can listen to music or watch TV in Spanish. Doing this daily will familiarize you with them and improve your listening comprehension. During listening sessions, pause the audio every 10 or 15 minutes, reflect on what you have heard, or even shadow the speaker to mimic pronunciation and intonation. Another thing you can do is to vary the listening speeds, so start with slower speeds for better comprehension and gradually increase the speed as you become more comfortable. Last, but not least, remember to use transcripts and choose a topic you are interested in to make listening more understandable and engaging.
- Unable to have a fluent conversation. Speaking is another skill that people usually find difficult. These are some things I recommend doing as short-term goals to improve your Spanish speaking skills. First, commit to speaking Spanish for at least a few minutes daily. Then, do some activities to make progress in your conversation; for instance, record your spoken practice sessions and listen to them to identify areas for improvement, such as pronunciation, vocabulary, verb or grammar usage. Before every class or meeting with a language exchange partner, choose a specific topic and learn the vocabulary to improve your ability to discuss different subjects or practice role-play scenarios to enhance your ability to express yourself in everyday situations. If you do not have anyone to practice with, create flashcards with questions and answers and use these cards to practice speaking.
Once you have realized you are plateauing in your Spanish learning, it’s time to start challenging yourself. It doesn’t mean you’ll have to give up everything you’ve been doing, but you’ll have to make room in your schedule for more challenging activities. You can set up a regular study schedule and practice one language skill daily or weekly. There are a wide range of activities I recommend:
- To increase vocabulary. Make your flashcards with Spanish definitions instead of translations, and record the correct pronunciation of these words.
- Improve your writing skills and grammar usage. Write a daily journal and try to be as specific as you can with the details so you can use words and grammar structures that are new to you.
- Learn new words and expressions and practice your pronunciation skills. Read one of your favorite books in Spanish. Take notes of any new words, learn the definition of these words instead of their translation, and read them aloud to retain them and practice their pronunciation.
- Test and perfect your listening skills and reading comprehension. Immerse yourself in Spanish as much as you can. Listen to more Spanish songs with easy lyrics to understand, watch movies or series with Spanish subtitles, and even change the language from your phone and computer to Spanish.
- Practice your conversation skills. You can do this with a teacher or a native speaker via a language exchange app like HelloTalk or Tandem. In most cities, there are Hispanic markets you can go to. Go buy some salsa, tortillas, and peppers and converse with someone there! The possibilities are endless; you can even find local or online language meetups or clubs to meet other Spanish learners to support and motivate yourself.
Creating good study habits takes time and effort, but it’s worth it. You can break out of your plateau and achieve your learning goals by following the tips above. Academic plateaus are a normal part of the learning process. Don’t let them discourage you, and handle any obstacle in your learning path to reach your full potential. For a more in-depth and comprehensive study program in combination with structured Spanish classes, visit our Spanish language school and schedule a one-on-one lesson with me. You can get to know me better by clicking on my video below.
