Take the quiz: Are you on the intermediate plateau? [+ what to do about it]

- You understand YouTube videos in English, but not movies.

You can express yourself in English,

but you don't feel totally comfortable doing it,

and you've learned English for years,

but you feel like your level just isn't good enough.

Why?

I'll explain in today's lesson.

Hi, I'm your English coach, Christina,

and welcome to "Speak English With Christina",

the best place to become more confident

speaking business English step by step.

And this is lesson one of a special mini series,

Get Off the Intermediate Plateau with Virtual Immersion.

To be sure to get the next lessons in this episode,

please subscribe to my channel

so that we can get you off the intermediate plateau.

Now I've mentioned the intermediate plateau

in several past lessons, but if you're new here,

let me maybe just clarify what the intermediate plateau is.

Now, when we learn a language

we imagine, we wish that our progress was like this,

like a continuous straight increasing line,

and in the early stages, when you're a beginner is,

it's fun and it's exciting

and it's where I'm at with my German lessons right now

and I love it.

But then you reach this level

where you can express yourself enough,

like others can understand what you want to say,

even if you confuse the tenses and the vocabulary,

maybe your English is a little simple,

maybe you hesitate when you speak, but you can do it,

you can communicate

and that's when your progress seems to stop,

and this means that you have hit the intermediate plateau.

(upbeat music)

You've reached a milestone in your learning,

and you should be proud of that.

But because now maybe you feel like you don't have the time

or the energy to work on your English,

or you're not sure what to do,

you're stuck on that plateau.

Now, how do you know if this is the reason

that you don't feel totally comfortable speaking English?

Here are some symptoms that indicate

that you are stuck on the intermediate plateau.

You feel like your English is not improving much,

even though you listen to lots of podcasts,

you watch lots of movies in English,

and you're exposing yourself to a lot of English,

but you're not really improving.

You have difficulty remembering new vocabulary

and you often use the same old vocabulary

that you've been using for years.

You have the intelligence, the motivation,

the desire to improve,

but you don't know what to do to get to a better level.

And yes, you can communicate your message,

but, you feel something is off

and it makes you uncomfortable and shy

and maybe even ashamed.

That's you, congratulations,

you have hit the intermediate plateau.

Now, why am I saying congratulations for this problem?

Because if you have these feelings,

it means that you are getting closer

to a more advanced level of English.

It feels like you're stuck now,

but you just need to change your approach to break through

to a more advanced level.

And you know,

I went through this too when I was learning French,

like I reached a pretty good level

with my school lessons and my university lessons,

and I had really good school French,

academic French, let's say,

but not fluent, real world advanced French.

So to reach that higher level and feel comfortable,

feel like myself speaking a different language,

I had to change my approach.

And that's what you need to do now

to reach that same comfortable level speaking English.

So, you know,

it's totally normal to hit the intermediate plateau.

You're on the intermediate plateau,

I've been on the intermediate plateau, we all do it,

but we can get off the intermediate plateau.

Here's what we're going to do

to help you have a more advanced level of English.

We're going to take two different approaches,

there's natural learning.

This is like absorbing the language

through living in English.

And there is deliberate learning,

and this is like working on English, studying English,

like doing English, as we say.

And for both natural learning and deliberate learning,

it's important for you to use

resources and topics that are important for you.

That part is really important.

You know, I'm a neural language coach,

so I know what helps your brain to learn a language better.

So don't try to focus on everything,

don't try to learn everything, you'll get overwhelmed,

but focus on the topics that are relevant for you

and the topics that you want to talk about.

You'll learn faster, you'll remember better

because you're using what you learn more often

and that means it's gonna stick in your brain.

Now, what kind of activities can you do

for natural and deliberate learning?

Well, natural learning,

it's things like listening to podcasts

that you find interesting,

reading books or magazines on topics that interest you,

watching TV or watching movies,

using your English on social media,

having just normal conversations in English.

It's basically living your life the way you normally would,

but in English, that's like natural learning.

And then deliberate learning,

this is activities like reading transcripts of podcasts,

highlighting new vocabulary, creating flashcards,

doing grammar exercises, listening exercises,

working with a teacher.

And if you want some resources to help you do this,

natural learning and deliberate learning,

I'll put a link down below the video to my blog

and an article that has lots of links

to some of my favorite resources

that I recommend for students

who are trying to immerse themselves in English

and get off that intermediate plateau.

All right, so the next step

is for you to subscribe to my channel

so that you can get the next lesson in this series,

get off the intermediate plateau with virtual immersion.

And in the meantime,

watch this lesson to stop translating in your head.

This is a problem that a lot of you have.

So go ahead and watch that lesson

to help you to start thinking directly in English,

and I'll see you there.