How to Overcome the Intermediate Language Plateau

So you've been learning a foreign language for a while and you've got this horrible feeling

that you're not making progress anymore. Try as you might, there's a single thought

you can't get out of your head: I feel stuck. If you're in this situation, you might be

wondering "how can I get unstuck, and start making progress again?"

Lucky for you, I know just the solution! And even better, I’ve got a special surprise

for you that will help you implement this solution into your language learning, so you’ll

never get stuck again! Just remember to stay tuned to the very end of the video!

Hi, I’m Luca from LucaLampariello.com, I am an Italian language coach who currently

speaks fourteen languages, and I help people learn languages better, faster and in a smart

way. So, as I was saying, there's one point in

the language learning journey where even the most serious language learners get stuck.

A place where, despite their best efforts, progress just doesn't seem to come as easily

as it used to. This is a place most language learners call

The Intermediate Plateau. We call it a “plateau” because it’s

one of the first places on your language learning journey where progress becomes virtually flat.

It's not like the beginner stages, where you're seemingly learning new things every time you

sit down to learn. Nor is it like the advanced stages, where learning feels easy, like you're

just filling in the gaps. If you're stuck at the intermediate plateau,

learning feels difficult and slow. You're not seeing easy, daily progress, and you don't

feel competent enough yet to go out and make friends, read books, or watch TV shows or

movies comfortably. But let me quickly teach you something that

most people don't know about the intermediate plateau: it has a lot to do with your language

learning “comfort zone”. When you first started learning a language,

everything was fresh, and new. Because you were learning basic words and phrases, everything

felt risk-free, and relatively easy. As time went on, everything that once felt

"new" suddenly felt comfortable. You could understand a few things, say a few things—usually

just enough to feel competent at the things you wanted to do. And because you felt competent,

a certain range of learning activities became your "comfort zone".

This is probably where you are now. There's an expression that goes "what got

you here won't get you there". In a language learning context, it means that to move beyond

where you are now, you need to change how you do things.

And to move beyond the intermediate plateau, you specifically need to change how you go

about practicing your target language. You need to move beyond what I call "simple practice",

to a more challenging type of practice called "deliberate practice".

Deliberate practice is a research-backed form of skill development that involves breaking

down skills into their essential components, recognizing and addressing your weak points,

and then rebuilding that skill anew, stronger than it was before.

Language learning is, at its core, a set of skills, so if you can learn how to break down

and rebuild your skills in this way, you can learn to stretch your capabilities beyond