Beyond Bounds Blog

Language acquisition can be broken down into phases.  There may be many ways to differientiate phases, but I find stages of frustration the most revealing.   Each stage is frustrating in a different way based on patterns in language learning, and thus requires adjustment in focus.   While the entire process will always have you continuously reading, listening, writing and speaking, one aspect should take preference over others at particular times.  If you pay close attention to what is most frustrating during the process, you will be able to get a feeling of which stage you are in and your language learning will go more smoothly.

Perhaps other people have experienced language learning frustration in a different pattern, but the theme holds true - when you feel that something is frustrating, you should put your efforts into that area rather than avoiding it.

Here are the phases as I’ve experienced them.

In this stage, the language looks like scribbles on paper.  What are these scribbles?!  Are those pictures?  What does the “circle” mean?”   In this phase you know nothing about the language and probably haven’t listened to it much.  This phase will be the most exciting, and thus probably not the most overwhelming.  When everything feels new, things usually are easy and your motivation is probably still high.

I call this phase 0 because language skills are not acquired at this stage, i.e. you are not able to use the language.   You start to notice patterns to the scribbles and put sounds to those patterns.    This stage gets you from complete ignorance to being able to start formulating expression in the language, but most importantly it helps you understand exactly what it is you are going to be learning.

The focus here is to learn how to draw the characters (letters, words etc) in proper stroke order, how to speak the sounds (and later words), and to learn the rules (grammar).  After this stage, the rules of the game should be tightly understood and need only referencing later.  This is the take off point.  It should only take a few months to pass this stage, and it can be done in relative isolation, although you will need the help of a native speaker for pronunciation.

You can’t understand anything.  The sentences, words, tones, and sounds all come out as a long stream of garbled mess.  In this phase you can’t tell the difference between a name and an action when a native speaker slings it at you at full speed, and probably not even at half speed.  Frustration really starts hitting you in this stage, as this is the stage where you feel like you just landed on Earth from outer space.

While obviously you still have everything left to learn, phase one is mostly about making sense of this mess of sounds and separating it out into words, phrases, and hopefully finally sentences.  Your ability to listen and understand the language will be the biggest frustration during this period as without the ability to hear clearly what others are saying, learning will feel impossible.

After a year of basics in America I thought that I was ready to start talking to people - and I was right, but in the wrong way.  I could talk to people, but when someone talked to me I couldn’t understand.  My listening ability was far behind my vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.  I literally couldn’t even catch when someone was telling me their name if they said it at a normal speed.  Classes were taught solely in Chinese, and while the work wasn’t particularly hard, the fact that I couldn’t understand what the teacher said gave me a daily headache.

Listen to anything you can, and often.  Read out loud, listen to movies (as in pay particular attention to speech and try to match it with subtitles.  The focus is on listening, not watching), listen to music and podcasts, and just listen in on people speaking the language.  Divert as much focus and attention as you can to your ears - you won’t be able to continue forward in a balanced manner without them, and once you get over this hurdle, language learning will suddenly become so much more rewarding.  Once you can easily make out the words that people are saying, then you will probably find yourself a new frustration below.

Phase one was about the ears, and phase 2 is about the mouth.  At this point your ears will have finally caught up to your other abilities, but now you will find out that the basics are no longer enough.  You are now more comfortable in the basics of the language, but you will become very frustrated when trying to express any complicated ideas.  Compound sentences will get you breaking your grammar and you won’t have the vocabulary to cover even a small portion of things you might want to say.

While vocabulary is always important, the most important part of phase 2 is getting acclimated to producing the language.  This is where conversational fluency is achieved.

You do not need a lot of vocabulary to be fluent: I once met a Japanese girl that could speak her mind with probably only 50 words.  Did I enjoy listening to her speak? No.  Did I understand what she was trying to say at all times? Yes.  She spoke quickly and a lot.  Do I recommend you stopping at 50 words?  No way; but you can achieve conversational fluency with a limited vocabulary.  Don’t obsess over vocabulary.  Pace yourself and learn new words daily, but don’t make memorization the focus.

Talk, talk, talk.  This is the only way to reach conversational fluency, and is your main focus.  Talk about anything and don’t worry about using the correct words - just get comfortable with speaking.  I don’t care if you use the same 10 words over and over again, the goal is to gain confidence and fluency in speech, not perfection.

Phase 3 is where vocabulary suddenly becomes a focal point.  Your understanding is excellent and you are comfortable speaking, but sometimes those words that you use just aren’t the right ones.  Even in everyday speech you stick to your basic vocabulary a little too often instead of trying to stretch and use more appropriate words: while I just used “appropriate” you would have chosen “better”.

This phase is as frustrating as it is seemingly endless.   Being able to effectively use vocabulary takes a lot of exposure and a lot of practice.  I’ve seen many a good man stuck in this phase, where every other description word is “good”, every verb “want” or “get” or “do”, and every noun is replaced by “that thing”.   You’re able to describe things using very long sentences, but it would be easier to just use a more fitting word.

While the practice of using appropriate and effective vocabulary never ends, there will be a point where the majority of the words you use will be fitting, and you find that in most cases you use the same vocabulary that a native would.  This phase is sort of nativizing yourself, but only on a basic level.

The solution is not as straight forward as it may seem: simply studying vocabulary lists will not necessarily improve your ability to use vocabulary.  You need to pay close attention to not only what other people are saying anymore, but how they are saying it.  Understanding is no longer enough.

First:  Read a lot of casual writing, especially blogs.  Most bloggers will write the way they will speak most of the time, so you will get a better feel for how people express themselves.  Just be aware that many bloggers make language mistakes in their writing.  While you are reading, be conscious of ideas that you might also want to express, and see how you might have expressed it in a different way.

Second:  Write, write, write, and have a native correct you.  Simple, but effective.

There are always new words you need to learn, and once you’ve started expressing yourself in the appropriate manner, you’ll start to realize that your vocabulary goes as deep as a puddle.  Your language skills are not colorful, and when others speak in a colorful way, you find it hard to follow. Those TV shows that you “understand” suddenly seem more confusing than before.  How is that possible?  Previously you were focused on understanding, but the laws of the universe plague us by showing that the more we know, the more we know we don’t know.

I remember the first time that I watched “奋斗” , a popular Chinese TV show:  I had my dictionary in hand and paused during scenes that I didn’t understand, but I would let a lot of vocabulary go by as long as it didn’t affect my understanding.  Just weeks ago I was watching re-runs of it on TV and felt uneasy with my comprehension.  It turns out that before I was just understanding the story, but now I’m trying to understand all of the language, including all minor details.

Phase 4 is frustrating because your vocabulary is too shallow.  You can speak well, but so can a robot.  I must admit that my Chinese is somewhere between Phase 4 and phase 4.5.

Conscious exposure.  Note the word conscious.  It’s important to be very focused during all of these phases, as focused learning is much more effective than otherwise.

The only real “solution” to this frustration is lots and lots of exposure.  If you are only watching TV in this language once a month, then you will find your improvement slow, and probably 5 years from now you will still have trouble understanding all of the language used in the script.  The same goes for reading.

This is where long vocabulary lists come in.  Constantly take note of new words and try to use flash cards to memorize them, but even still rote memorization isn’t as important as constant daily exposure.  Getting past this phase is no walk in the park; it will take a lot of time and a lot of effort.  The more time you spend daily immersed in difficult to understand material, the better off you will be.

I label this phase 4.5 because it may come just after you begin feeling frustrated with advanced language usage.  I am currently working to professionalize my Chinese, which means learning business and technical vocabulary, but from a literary perspective I still feel uneasy about my skills.  There is no way that I could write a worthy piece of literature in Chinese, for example.

I venture that most of you that have reached phase 4 are probably looking to use your language skills in your career.  It can be very frustrating at the beginning, such as learning to use correct tone and politeness in your speech, translate, interpret and so on.  All of these require different skills and will stress your language further than you ever before.

You can start by paying attention to the language used in business scenarios on TV shows or read a professional magazine, but ultimately the best way to professionalize your language is to get a job that requires it.  With a dictionary you should be fine if you’ve already made it this far.  With fluent intermediate language skills many companies will be willing to take you on, as they understand that it will only take a short time to make the professional leap.

I don’t know exactly what frustrations lie ahead, but I can imagine that if I want to take my language ability further than it currently is, I will have to change strategies again.  I assume that if I do continue to the next level, it would be composition, and most likely journalist like articles, native sounding blogging, and music lyrics.

Many of you might be wondering how long each of these phases should take, but that is really hard to say.  The time depends on too many factors, but what I can say is that each new phase takes a lot longer than the phase before it.  Phase 0 may take as little as 3 weeks, but phase 1 will probably take 3 months, and phase 2 could take another 6 months to a year.  I am not the most dedicated language learner, and did not do even close to everything that I could have done, and after about 2 years I was somewhere within phase 3, but not very far.  I’ve been in China for 2 years since that point, and I am on phase 4.5 (as in phase 4 and phase 4.5 are not complete).

This article is just a piece of how to learn a language, so considering it alone will not mean much.  This article hopefully helps you better understand your own frustrations and lets you know that these difficulties are normal.  The more difficult and frustrating something seems, the more important it is to focus on it.

I’m curious to know if others who have become fluent in a second language have also experienced these same frustrations and in this order.  To me, these frustrations seem to come at logical times, and create a very smooth flow to the process.  I never planned to take my Chinese this deep, but the lessons I am learning now in these later stages of the learning process will surely be useful for learning future languages.