On being intermediate in a foreign language
So idk I’ve wanted to write a rant/discussion about being intermediate for a while now so yeah here we go. I hope people can relate.
I think this is quite difficult and will vary depending on the individual’s approach; but for those familiar with the CEFR levels, B1 & B2 are intermediate. I would class myself as a “comfortable” B1. Check out a Reddit thread here about this.
Why being intermediate is great!
Seems kinda obvious right? Once you’re intermediate you find it much, much easier to enjoy native materials in your target language, you’re no longer taking 20 minutes to form the most basic of sentences and you feel that you actually have a decent range of vocabulary. You can use the language to explore your interests in an entirely new language, you find it a lot easier to guess meaning based on context and you finally feel like you’ve made solid progress!!! ;D
Why being intermediate is also not so great :(
Intermediacy comes with its downsides though; we’ve probably all seen many jokey tumblr posts about the pitfalls of being intermediate and there’s definitely an element of truth. Here’s a few reasons why it sucks:
- You feel like you hit a plateau and aren’t progressing anymore.
- Any progress you do make seems to take forever
- Whilst you can enjoy native materials you do with a lot of dififculty; so many words are still unknown and being able to understand about 85% of every sentence (with the 15% being the most crucial) is irritating.
- You don’t know how to explain to people where you are learning-wise - people literally expect a “I’m a beginner” or “I know [fluent] X”.
- Going from lower to higher intermediate [or higher to advanced] takes a lot longer than it does to go from beginner to intermediate.
- Trying to have a conversation is still a battlefield and whilst you’re used to hearing native speakers speak, tis still very fast and difficult to comprehend.
How to overcome these downsides?
The most important thing is - please don’t give up. Spending hundreds of hours to get to intermediate and quitting because it’s hard will be very silly. I have a few tips for how I’ve been managing my intermediacy woes:
- You MUST work harder. You must be prepared to work a lot more than you were beforehand, it sucks but it’s worth it.
- Progress WILL be slower. This chart HERE shows what I mean - with the first couple of thousand words learnt (to get you to intermediate) progress is very quick and can be noticed within a timeframe of a day/few hours. This is because the most common couple of thousand words will make up about 95% of all words you are going to encounter, to bridge that 5% gap you need to learn 10,000s more (unless your language has a small vocabulary set). So you ARE STILL MAKING PROGRESS IT JUST TAKES LONGER. Which means..
- Look back at your progress every few weeks or so. Ask yourself what you can do now that you couldn’t do the other month, think about all the words you’ve learnt or grammar or whatever it is you’ve improved. Don’t expect progress to happen at the fast pace it did beforehand.
- Aim higher. It’s very easy to get comfortable at B1/B2 level and not challenge yourself (if that’s your aim then fine) but you need to try things that are above your level. Stop using English subtitles (or any), start reading teenage books, listen to your language spoken at natural speeds not lower ones, actually work on the areas of your language that are most difficult for you etc. Just aim to work harder and yes it sucks and yes you might find it complicated but it is SO worth it when you overcome that barrier.
- USE. NATIVE. MATERIALS. Stop relying just on Duolingo/Memrise etc. don’t work just from a textbook or grammar book, don’t just use sites aimed at English speakers. Watch the TV shows, read the books, listen to the music etc. that the native speakers would.
TL;DR Give me the best way to deal with being intermediate
Challenge yourself. Try and transcribe a natural conversation, turn off the subtitles, read a novel, write short stories etc. Don’t get comfortable and challenge yourself - the only way you’ll improve is by focusing on the areas you struggle with.
Ok so this is just a personal post so people might have different ways of looking at intermediacy which is fine but this is my experience with it.
If there’s anyone reading this who feels like they’re stuck at an intermediate plateau; trust me, you’re not and as you go through this stage many things will start to “click” and lord is it amazing when that happens.
