If you are a language teacher, or a language learner, you must be very well
acquainted with that feeling of being stuck in the learning of a language. There
is nothing wrong with you (or your students!) if you feel that there es
absolutely no progress going on. In fact, this situation is so common, that it
has been studied for years by language learning specialists, receiving the name
of “plateau effect”.
Most people are very motivated to learn at first, and great improvement can be
seen in little time. However, since learning is a gradual process, progress is
not continuous or steady, and sometimes we get stuck or even seem to retrogress
a little. This supposed setback should make us reflect on our mistakes, build up
strength, and move forward with our learning.
In Moving beyond the plateau,
Richards (2008) identifies five reasons why students reach this plateau, namely:
- A gap between their ability to understand language and to produce language
- A lack of lexical and grammatical complexity yet a high fluency
- A limited vocabulary range
- An adequate though unnatural language production
- A presence of persistent, fossilized language errors
These issues need to be addressed in
order to go past the barrier and further develop the students’ language ability.
One of the strategies to overcome this plateau is to focus more on output than
on input, as Mirzai, Zoghi, and Davatgari (2017) maintain. This can be done
through roleplaying activities and other types of activities that require
students to produce language at the desired level. Such activities push learners
to use more complex lexical resources and grammatical structures.
It is also
important to guide students in the use of appropriate learning strategies that
will help them overcome the learning plateau (Mirzai, Zoghi and Davatgari,
2017). Just learning vocabulary lists by heart will most certainly not help the
process. However, a more hands-on approach to learning, in which students
experiment with the language and put their language to test will result in a
more positive outcome.
References
Mirzaei, M., Zoghi, M., Davatgari Asl, H.
(2017). Understanding the Language Learning Plateau: A Grounded-Theory Study.
Teaching English Language, 11(2), 195–222. doi: 10.22132/tel.2017.53188
Richards, J. C. (2008). Moving beyond the plateau: From intermediate to advanced
levels in language learning. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Originally posted on Medium on February, 2nd 2020.
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