Does progress in English slow as you get more advanced?

Ian Wood
A young woman sat in a library with headphones around her neck reading a book
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Why does progression seem to slow down as an English learner moves from beginner to more advanced skills?

The journey of learning English

When presenting at ELT conferences, I often ask the audience ¨C typically teachers and school administrators ¨C ¡°When you left home today, to start your journey here, did you know where you were going?¡± The audience invariably responds with a laugh and says yes, of course. I then ask, ¡°Did you know roughly when you would arrive at your destination?¡± Again the answer is, of course, yes. ¡°But what about your students on their English learning journey? Can they say the same?¡± At this point, the laughter stops.

All too often English learners find themselves without a clear picture of the journey they are embarking on and the steps they will need to take to achieve their goals. We all share a fundamental need for orientation, and in a world of mobile phone GPS we take it for granted. Questions such as: Where am I? Where am I going? When will I get there? are answered instantly at the touch of a screen. If you¡¯re driving along a motorway, you get a mileage sign every three miles.

When they stop appearing regularly we soon feel uneasy. How often do English language learners see mileage signs counting down to their learning goal? Do they even have a specific goal?

Am I there yet?

The key thing about GPS is that it¡¯s very precise. You can see your start point, where you are heading and tell, to the mile or kilometer, how long your journey will be. You can also get an estimated time of arrival to the minute. As Mike Mayor mentioned in his post about what it means to be fluent, the same can¡¯t be said for understanding and measuring English proficiency. For several decades, the ELL industry got by with the terms ¡®beginner¡¯, ¡®elementary¡¯, ¡®pre-intermediate¡¯ and ¡®advanced¡¯ ¨C even though there was no definition of what they meant, where they started and where they ended.

The CEFR has become widely accepted as a measure of English proficiency, bringing an element of shared understanding of what it means to be at a particular level in English. However, the wide bands that make up the CEFR can result in a situation where learners start a course of study as B1 and, when they end the course, they are still within the B1 band. That doesn¡¯t necessarily mean that their English skills haven¡¯t improved ¨C they might have developed substantially ¨C but it¡¯s just that the measurement system isn¡¯t granular enough to pick up these improvements in proficiency.

So here¡¯s the first weakness in our English language GPS and one that¡¯s well on the way to being remedied with the Global Scale of English (GSE). Because the GSE measures proficiency on a 10-90 scale across each of the four skills, students using assessment tools reporting on the GSE are able to see incremental progress in their skills even within a CEFR level. So we have the map for an English language GPS to be able to track location and plot the journey to the end goal.

¡®The intermediate plateau¡¯

When it comes to pinpointing how long it¡¯s going to take to reach that goal, we need to factor in the fact that the amount of effort it takes to improve your English increases as you become more proficient. Although the bands in the CEFR are approximately the same width, the law of diminishing returns means that the better your English is to begin with, the harder it is to make further progress ¨C and the harder it is to feel that progress is being made.

That¡¯s why many an English language-learning journey gets abandoned on the intermediate plateau. With no sense of progression or a tangible, achievable goal on the horizon, the learner can become disoriented and demoralised.

To draw another travel analogy, when you climb 100 meters up a mountain at 5,000 meters above sea level the effort required is greater than when you climb 100 meters of gentle slope down in the foothills. It¡¯s exactly the same 100 meter distance, it¡¯s just that those hundred 100 meters require progressively more effort the higher up you are, and the steeper the slope. So, how do we keep learners motivated as they pass through the intermediate plateau?

Education, effort and motivation

We have a number of tools available to keep learners on track as they start to experience the law of diminishing returns. We can show every bit of progress they are making using tools that capture incremental improvements in ability. We can also provide new content that challenges the learner in a way that¡¯s realistic.

Setting unrealistic expectations and promising outcomes that aren¡¯t deliverable is hugely demotivating for the learner. It also has a negative impact on teachers ¨C it¡¯s hard to feel job satisfaction when your students are feeling increasingly frustrated by their apparent lack of progress.

Big data is providing a growing bank of information. In the long term this will deliver a much more precise estimate of effort required to reach higher levels of proficiency, even down to a recommendation of the hours required to go from A to B and how those hours are best invested. That way, learners and teachers alike would be able to see where they are now, where they want to be and a path to get there. It¡¯s a fully functioning English language learning GPS system, if you like.

Learn about the Global Scale of English learning objectives

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    5 of the strangest English phrases explained

    By Steffanie Zazulak

    Here, we look at what some of the strangest English phrases mean ¨C and reveal their origins¡­

    Bite the bullet

    Biting a bullet? What a strange thing to do! This phrase means you¡¯re going to force yourself to do something unpleasant or deal with a difficult situation. Historically, it derives from the 19th century when a patient or soldier would clench a bullet between their teeth to cope with the extreme pain of surgery without anesthetic. A similar phrase with a similar meaning, ¡°chew a bullet¡±, dates to the late 18th century.

    Use it:?¡°I don¡¯t really want to exercise today, but I¡¯ll bite the bullet and go for a run.¡±

    Pigs might fly

    We all know that pigs can¡¯t fly, so people use this expression to describe something that is almost certain never to happen. It is said that this phrase has been in use since the 1600s, but why pigs? An early version of the succinct ¡°pigs might fly¡± was ¡°pigs fly with their tails forward¡±, which is first found in a list of proverbs in the 1616 edition of John Withals¡¯s English-Latin dictionary,?A Shorte Dictionarie for Yonge Begynners: ¡°Pigs fly in the ayre with their tayles forward.¡± Other creatures have been previously cited in similar phrases ¨C ¡°snails may fly¡±, ¡°cows might fly¡±, etc, but it is pigs that have stood the test of time as the favored image of an animal that is particularly unsuited to flight! This phrase is also often used as a sarcastic response to mock someone¡¯s credulity.

    Use it:?¡°I might clean my bedroom tomorrow.¡± ¨C ¡°Yes, and pigs might fly.¡±

    Bob¡¯s your uncle

    Even if you don¡¯t have an uncle called Bob, you might still hear this idiom! Its origin comes from when Arthur Balfour was unexpectedly promoted to Chief Secretary for Ireland by the Prime Minister of Britain, Lord Salisbury, in 1900. Salisbury was Arthur Balfour¡¯s uncle (possibly his reason for getting the job!) ¨C and his first name was Robert. This?phrase is used when something is accomplished or successful ¨C an alternative to ¡°¡­and that¡¯s that¡±.

    Use it:?¡°You¡¯re looking for the station? Take a left, then the first right and Bob¡¯s your uncle ¨C you¡¯re there!¡±

    Dead ringer

    This phrase commonly refers to something that seems to be a copy of something ¨C mainly if someone looks like another person. The often-repeated story about the origin of this phrase is that many years ago, people were sometimes buried alive because they were presumed dead ¨C when actually they were still alive. To prevent deaths by premature burial, a piece of string would supposedly be tied to the finger of someone being buried ¨C and the other end would be attached to a bell above ground. If the person woke up, they would ring the bell ¨C and the ¡°dead¡± ringer would emerge looking exactly like someone buried only a few hours ago! Other stories point to the practice of replacing slower horses with faster horses ¨C ¡°ringers¡±. In this case, ¡°dead¡± means ¡°exact¡±.

    Use it:?¡°That guy over there is a dead ringer for my ex-boyfriend.¡±

    Off the back of a lorry

    This is a way of saying that something was acquired that is probably stolen, or someone is selling something that¡¯s stolen or illegitimate. It can also be used humorously to emphasize that something you bought was so cheap that it must have been stolen! ¡°Lorry¡± is the British version ¨C in the US, things fall off the back of ¡°trucks¡±. An early printed version of this saying came surprisingly late in?The Times in?1968. However, there are many anecdotal reports of the phrase in the UK from much earlier than that, and it is likely to date back to at least World War II. It¡¯s just the sort of language that those who peddled illegal goods during and after WWII would have used.

    Use it:?¡°I can¡¯t believe these shoes were so cheap ¨C they must have fallen off the back of a lorry.¡±

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