Join 10,000 readers (and counting!)

Dear Reader,

It's soppy, but I have to do it, so bear with me: the newsletter has officially hit 10,000 subscribers (10,025 actually), so I have to say...

I know it's not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but that's good because I'd be a really subpar influencer. I'm extremely content serving the needs of this relatively small but growing community, and let me thank you again for reading this newsletter every Sunday, or some Sundays, or whenever you can/feel like. It means the world to me. If you have a friend you'd like to have on board this Sunday newsletter train, you can send them this link to subscribe for free. Hopefully it won't ruin their Sunday.

With the thanks out of the way, it's time to tell you what I've been thinking about this week: my knitting.

You may think I've finally lost my marbles, but actually, it's very much in line with this month's theme of "new perspectives on things you (kind of) already knew".

Yes, because my knitting is only an example of a skill in which I have hit a plateau. I was initially super excited by my progress, but after a while, I've not really been moving past the same few techniques.

Which is fine because my livelihood doesn't depend on my knitting... but what if, instead of knitting, I had hit a plateau in learning English?

Today, I will tell you about:

• a short, badly illustrated story of my knitting
• what the plateau stage is (in language learning, not knitting)
• how to move past it

Got a coffee? Let's get started, let's get unstuck 🚀

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Why on earth I'm talking about knitting

When I think about learning, I find it very useful to draw parallels to everyday life. In our everyday lives, we do more learning than we realise, and our brains go through very similar processes to learning languages.

One of these parallels is, as you could have guessed, with my knitting. The starting point for me was that my beloved, late grandma was a master knitter and crocheter¹, so I always had this image in my mind that I would have liked to emulate. Which, if we transpose it to language learning, reminds me of the concept of the ideal L2 self.

So, a few years ago, I decided to take up knitting. I joined a club at the university I was working at, with a friend who was also a complete beginner.

From this experience, I gained much knowledge:

1. If I'm trying to work with my hands on something completely new, I am absolutely rubbish at listening to a teacher giving me instructions. I'm much better at following self-paced instruction materials, like videos or text. This helps me remember that sometimes, learners can become overwhelmed when facing multiple sources of input and might be better left to their own devices (a little bit).
2. Observing my friend pick knitting up approximately 150 times faster than I did was a humbling, if somewhat frustrating, experience. But I bring that feeling back to my mind whenever I have learners who experience the same thing. It helps me empathise with them.

Now, the first few weeks of knitting were exhilarating: look at what I could make with my hands! All of a sudden, none of my family members was safe from being gifted a scarf or a blanket.

As I progressed, I moved onto slightly more complicated things:

By the time I'd made this pencil case, I was really proud:

But then... you know that motivational saying that "you haven't come this far to only come this far"? I'm sorry to say, but it really didn't apply to my situation.

I had hit a plateau: I tried (not with too much effort, but I tried) my hand at more complicated techniques, but I always seemed to give up and revert to the comforting ones I knew. It's been years, and to this day, I'm still sticking to these (few) techniques I know. They work for me, they don't require mental energy, and I'm perfectly content being a mediocre knitter.

But the stakes couldn't possibly be lower: this is a hobby and my future and livelihood don't depend on it. However, had it been English, if I had stopped once I hit the plateau, I would have done none of the things I've done in my work life. That's why it's so important to understand the plateau and how to move past it.

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What is the plateau stage?

Much like in the beginning stages of my knitting endeavours, when learners (or we) start learning a language, they can experience a great deal of satisfaction: everything is new, so with every new thing they learn, they feel a sense of progress.

But once they reach that lower intermediate stage (around A2+/B1), the jump to the upper intermediate and advanced stages starts feeling super difficult: they've hit a wall, or "plateau", as it is commonly referred to.

In this fascinating post exploring the plateau stage, Scott Young explains one of the ways in which the plateau manifests itself when it comes to learning vocabulary. When you start off, you're likely to learn words that occur very frequently in language, like "the", "do" or "of". So the effort you put in offers a great return on investment, because you'll see and hear those words often.

But once you've got those basic words under your belt², you'll start learning words that are used less and less frequently, like "foggy" or "calf". It will still take effort to learn those words, but, unless your teacher recycles them often (a point we'll touch on below), you'll get less satisfaction because they appear less frequently in everyday language.

So, despite trying to learn (if that is even the case, which we know isn't even true for a lot of our learners!), you find yourself apparently unable to progress beyond your intermediate level.

Why is that? To explain it, we're going to rely on the wise words of Professor Jack Richards.

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The 5 key features of the plateau

In his aptly named booklet Moving beyond the plateau, Richards explains the 5 features that characterise learners at the plateau stage. Can you see yourself or your learners in any of these?

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1. There is a gap between receptive and productive competence

The learner may have made considerable progress in listening and reading comprehension, but still feels inadequate when it comes to speaking skills.

2. There are persistent fossilised language errors

Errors that are typical of lower level-learners have not disappeared and they reappear in certain circumstances despite the amount of time and effort devoted to correcting them (missing -ed in the past, anyone?)

3. Fluency may have progressed at the expense of complexity

So the learner may well speak, but instead of trying to say more complex things, they limit themselves to safe grammar structures and vocabulary - much like I limit myself to the simple garter stitch.

4. The learner has a limited vocabulary range

Vocabulary development has not progressed sufficiently. The learner tends to over-use lower-level vocabulary and fails to acquire more advanced level vocabulary and usage. A simple example of this is saying I'm going to go to a club tonight instead of I'm going clubbing tonight.

5. Language production may be adequate but often lacks the characteristics of natural speech

The learner’s English may be fluent and grammatical but sounds too formal or too bookish. With Italian speakers, this is often the case because in the same situation, the level of formality is often higher in Italian than it is in English. Plus, there's the use of latinate words instead of their more Anglo-Saxon equivalents (commence/start, encounter/meet, assist/help), which albeit technically correct, can contribute to a higher but unwarranted level of formality. An evergreen favourite of mine: I remain at your disposal at the end of an email.

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Strategies to move past the plateau

If any of the points above resonated with you, you might be wondering: OK, so how do I move past this plateau?

Here are a few important strategies to try:

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Fostering "noticing"

In order for learners to really learn new words, they need to consciously notice something about them. Indeed, there is a difference between input, which is everything learners hear/read, and intake, which is what learners notice. Intake is obviously a sub-section of input, and it is the basis for really incorporating new language and later being able to use it productively.

According to Richards, activities that promote noticing include those where you go back to a text after a listening activity and:

• Identify differences between what students heard and a printed version of the text
• Complete a cloze version of the text
• Complete sentence stems taken from the text
• Check off from a list the expressions that occurred in the text

I'd also suggest that when new language arises, or is introduced by you, you need to offer your learners multiple chances in your lesson to practise it (massed practice) and then make sure you recycle it in subsequent lessons (distributed practice).

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Carefully distributing the cognitive load

We all know that our cognitive bandwidth is limited: I am living proof of this since I was apparently unable to concentrate on listening to instructions while learning to knit. When learners are faced with a task, they have many simultaneous demands on their attention: if we want them to focus on improving their language production beyond that plateau stage, we can facilitate this by decreasing other parts of the cognitive load.

For example, learners may be preoccupied with working out the mechanics of a task, how to manage the interactions, what tools to use, etc. This will likely steal some of the cognitive bandwidth at their disposal. To decrease the impact of this, provide them with a chance to rehearse the task or demonstrate how the task is to be done before they do it. Give them time to plan the activity and work out the kinks before they sit down and do it, so that they can devote their full attention (or what passes for full attention in 2025...) to producing better language.

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Rephrase, upgrade, praise

One of the best things we can do to build our learners' language in a natural way is to build on what they produce, i.e. their emergent language. At this intermediate level, our learners can likely express themselves and convey what they want to say: what we want them to do is develop even better, more complex and idiomatic ways of expressing themselves that can smash through that plateau stage.

When your learners say or write something that's correct, put it on the board and feed how to say it even better. They said "it was very easy"? You say "it was a walk in the park". They said "it cost a lot of money"? You say "it cost an arm and a leg". Give them the opportunity to practise these (distributed + massed practice, as I mentioned above), then praise them whenever you hear them say them spontaneously. Fun fact, I once taught a class "better late than never", then a student showed up outrageously late to class but said "hey, teacher, better late than never"... and I seriously couldn't help chuckling and praising him. So you may want to watch out what you teach them as it may backfire!

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There are a lot more activities you can do to smash through the plateau stage, but I sense you have a Sunday to-do list³ to get to, so: if you want to learn more, here is Richards' booklet.

And that brings me to the end of today's newsletter! Are you at the plateau stage with learning a foreign language? Are your learners? What activities have you tried that have worked to move past the plateau? But more importantly: are you a fellow knitter? Send me pictures of your mediocre and non-mediocre works and make my Sunday.

I wish you the best for a lovely day.

Take care, dear teacher ✨

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¹ I had to look this up - I knew the word "crochet", but not the noun for the person who crochets. And let me share with you this engaging terminological discussion that came up in my search. Reddit really is the gift that keeps on giving.

² Estimates vary, but I'd suggest at a B1 level, you'll have learned approximately 2,000 to 3,000 word families.

³ Which I'm hoping looks something like this:

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P.S.: My weekly suggestion for things to listen to/watch/read to improve your English while relaxing: Looking for an earworm that can get stuck in your head on repeat like it did in mine? No? Tough, because you're getting one anyway with this morning chant from a US teacher that recently went viral. It's not exactly my style but I think there's quite a lot we can learn from it.

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