I'll take it

hello and hello and welcome and welcome to Effortless English.

This is A.J. Hoag coming to you from San Francisco, California.

Let's get started straight away with our episode.

Today's episode is called the Dance of Learning.

When learning any difficult skill, there is a dance that goes on.

We do not learn in a regular, linear, methodical way. Learning occurs in spurts.

Sudden jumps and skill are interspersed with plateaus in which nothing much seems to happen.

Of course, we generally love the sudden improvements and become very frustrated

during the plateaus. It's easy to understand why. We were working hard. We were making fast progress. Then suddenly all progress seems to stop.

We keep working. We keep listening and reading. We keep reviewing.

We might even increase the time and reading. We keep reviewing. We might even increase the time and energy we devote to language

learning. Yet nothing much seems to happen. At such times it's easy to panic. We start having crazy thoughts like,

I'm never going to learn English. I'm not learning anymore. This is impossible.

If we indulge these feelings, we may start to lose our motivation.

We become frustrated and depressed and convince ourselves

that we will never again make good progress.

During such times, it's important to realize that this phenomenon is

universal. It applies to learning any skill, not just language learning.

Athletes experience the same cycles of rapid progress and

plateaus. At times, their strength, skill, and endurance improve quickly. At other times,

they train intensely, yet make only a little bit of progress.

...