It is the nature of a language learner to consistently review and analyse the progress made in the seemingly infinite journey to fluency. And yet, in the early stages it’s slightly less natural to consider how much may be lost over time. You’re often learning rapidly and feel like you’re taking in so much that what isn’t sticking isn’t as much of a concern. As you start to pack progress on top of progress though, there’s sometimes a shift in mentality. This is further exacerbated in situations where you may have been away from your studies for some time. Creeping doubts start to sink in as you dread how much you may need to relearn, all whilst still maintaining new vocabulary and grammar in tandem. The good news is that, while possible, it is rare that you’ll get any significant loss of progress. Time away can also be a good thing in many cases. So let’s take a look at the cause, the impacts and how to alleviate some of the stress around it.
For myself, language has been a mission of daily progress for close to 10 years. I’ve not missed a day of studying language. Even on my roughest and quietest days I have at the very least done my Duolingo (begrudgingly…), read a few notifications or emails and played a game or two. I have however been guilty of an extended hiatus over the last few months. This is actually my first post since about November of last year (8 whole months). For whatever reason, life got in the way and I was left unable to access this website. Nothing would load and I couldn’t add to something that I had loved and grown for years. The result, a spiral of emotional sub-par studying and, if I’m being really honest, gestating desires to throw in the towel. Now, I’ve always told myself that will never happen but we all get bad days (Right…?). While I’m back on the proverbial language horse, the impact of those months has left my Japanese rusty, further adding to the feelings of inadequecy. The slump was so bad for a time that even upon a second revisit to Japn I was still swathed in guilt and was getting hit hard by the perceived loss of all my hard work. Things have obviously improved recently otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this. I’ve got access to my beloved website back. I’ve been finding new study methods and I’ve even found some online speaking partners to ensure I’m as slick as can be for the next visit to Japan, trip 3 coming next year.
Whilst the loss of a website is quite unique to myself, something as simple as feeling like your progress has slowed is enough to cause people to step away from their studies. Sometimes even finishing a book, game or TV show can be enough to trigger a lull. Some people get the post-finale blues when watching shows in their native language let alone when they have finished off a TV show that also doubled up as an effective learning resource. If you’ve had these periods of low mood or motivation happen to you before then you’ll be aware that without frequent refreshers many words seem to fall out of your brain at an alarming rate. When you’re trying to pull yourself out of it this notable loss can be even more emotional. Imagine, you’ve stepped away or even considered quiting your language studies but when you finally muster up the courage to return you’re met with difficulty and tedium. It’s human to hate this. You may blame yourself. Quitting seems like the only option. This hair-pulling-ly strong frustration doesn’t produce an environment where you’d want to learn more or perservere through the struggle, and even if you did, the brain doesn’t tend to want to remember anything when it’s stressed or loathing itself.
There is an unusual flip-side to this feeling though. Either when you have had the time away you needed, or if you can find an alternative route to spark your motivational flame, you may notice that some things that you previously didn’t understand become more evident. I’ve had this happen a few times on my arguably far too frequent crisis sessions. I’ll read something that includes a grammar point that I’ve never fully grasped and, even though I haven’t revisited it since stepping away, I can now understand it at a glance. This isn’t magic, but instead is your brain settling and processing its learnt thoughts. Imagine your brain as a jar of rocks, sand and water (Sometimes it do feel like that). Trying to find anything while the jar is active and moving is not impossible, but the turbulence means scrambling for anything is tough. If your brain is left to settle however then you can gain clarity over time. The water is less murky, things are calmer and you can differentiate the detail from the building blocks. The brain is a sorter. It works on efficiency and will process things in times of rest. This is the principle by which spaced repitition works and, while it’s not a perfect science, it can easily be said that studying excessively every day isn’t the best approach (Forget what i said about my learning habits..). What I mean is that the only thing you’ll get from cramming all the time is burn-out. The rest is healthy and, as a workaholic that hates the idea of wasted time, it hurts me to verbalise it once, let alone twice but, rest is healthy. These period allow you to truly and naturally remember what you’ve digested.
Steve Kaufman is a brilliant linguist I have referenced on this site many times. One thing he advocates strongly is to not remember every single thing you learn, or be caught up in flashcard reviews and revision. Revision will always be helpful but it is much more valuable to get a mass of variety, forget a bunch of stuff and then, only if it appears frequently enough to be valuable, remember it again. It is better to learn 1,000 words and forget 800 of them than to remember 100 words perfectly. Part of this approach that I’ve noticed each time I paused is that I do comprehend more than I give myself credit for. That’s not me boasting or being arrogant. It’s commonplace for people in a slump to think things like “I don’t know anything” or “I can’t even do X, Y or Z”, and yet you give them a book or a game and they can read 70% of the text without issue. I will forever sing the praises of those who won’t do it for themselves. The things many of you can do so far is impressive. Even being able to read hiragana is an impressive feat and most people don’t look back to think how awesome it is that they learnt that. Take the time to notice not what you forgot but what you’ve remembered.
The human brain isn’t built to retain everything, in fact it’s built to do the opposite. By the end of each day your brain will purposefully forget 75% of what it has experienced, because it simply isn’t always of value. You can tell your brain that something is of value though. This revisiting of language in context is the best and healthiest trigger for your brain to go “Yep, I’ve seen this before. I’ll remember it this time”. By approaching variety you’ll see that certain words and phrases are useful, not because of their definition, but because of their application. If you’d forgotten it but see that it appears in various situations then you’ll know it’s worth commiting to memory, and your brain will do that automatically over time. The key message…
The language you’ve learnt to this point is only lost forever if you give up
Another vital point to all this, that is quite separate from memory and studying, is to check in with your peers. You will often feel inadequate if you don’t check in with your friends and see how they are getting along. All it takes is one of your mates saying “Oh yeah, I struggled to get that for months” and you’ll feel infinitely more human. Noone has this overwhelming expectation that you must retain everything. Only we hold ourselves to that standard, and your friends will agree with that. You know even now that if you told your friends some of the recent things you learnt they would think it was a super power, and if they don’t think that you either need better friends or you can come talk to me about it. You guys are doing well, keep it up and be kind to yourselves.
Games & Kanji 