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Showing posts from September, 2020

Reaching the plateau

I used to go hiking as a teenager. I remember huffing and puffing my way up the mountainside, the summit just up ahead and the sight of it encouraging me to push on. But on reaching the spot that I'd believed was the top, I felt my excitement turn to disappointment. What I'd thought was the summit was just an illusion and there was more mountain left to climb. Photo by Wolfgang Hasselman on Unsplash *** In the beginning, when you were just starting to learn the language, your progress was fast and perceptible . You jumped from zero knowledge to 20 new words in a week. You kept on learning and suddenly you could pick out familiar words you heard in a conversation, menus gradually lost their mystery and you were using 'yes' and 'no' with the confidence of someone who means what they say. Your speedy development motivated you to keep on learning. The more you could feel yourself breaking through the language barrier, the hungrier you were to learn. Fluency was ju