Why Does it Feel Like I’m Getting Worse At My Target Language?

Everyone reaches a point in their language learning when they start to feel like they are not making progress and very often it can actually feel like you are getting worse.

You might feel like you are forgetting things, or making really stupid mistakes that you shouldn’t be and this can be extremely frustrating.

This feeling is very real, but luckily you are not actually getting worse. There are a few different things that can make you feel this way, which I will go through now.

You Might Be Suffering from Burn Out

Probably the most likely reason for feeling like you are getting worse is because you are suffering from burn out.

This is when you basically get exhausted from learning. This happens over a long period, so it can be hard to notice, but it can cause you to lose motivation, focus and just general mental sharpness.

If you have ended up with burn out, you may have been doing too much and have basically run your brains fuel tank down to zero. To overcome this you need to take a break and rejuvenate yourself.

This will allow your brain to relax for a minute and more importantly allow you process things and recalibrate your knowledge.

You will find that after a break you are back to full power and you are not struggling like you did before, it’s almost like you got better at the language, by just stepping away for a while. 

(You can read more about – What Is Language Learning Burn Out?)

You Are Becoming Aware Of Your Skills

Another very likely reason for your current problem is that you are just becoming self aware.

This is rather strange phenomenon that you will experience when you start to get more advanced in the language.

You will reach a level where you can actually start to see where you are in relation to other speakers, and usually you won’t be too impressed with what you see. You will be able to compare yourself to natives and start to understand the huge gap that lies between you and them.

Instantly all your believes about how much progress you have made are crushed. Yes, you are probably well above most beginners, but you are still so far from the natives. You will realise that what you thought was a lot of language, is actually nothing.

There is a famous quote from Einstein that sums up perfectly – “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.” 

Realising that you actually know very little of the language can knock your confidence and make you feel like you are awful, but really you have not got any worse, it’s just that the goal posts have moved.

You are comparing yourself to natives now, not other learners, so that in itself should be a sign to you that you have actually made progress and haven’t gotten worse.

You Are Studying Material That’s Too Advanced

You may also feel like you have gotten worse at your language if you jump up to a harder level too quickly.

I suffer from this a lot, I will be understanding everything and feeling awesome, only to move up to some harder material and be very quickly humbled.

This doesn’t mean I have gotten worse at my language, even if it feels like it, it just means what I am studying is significantly harder. If I move back down and try something easier I will have no problems again, which just shows I was not ready for that jump just yet.

Struggles like this are actually beneficial, give it time and you will adjust to this higher level of difficulty and you will start to eventually feel like it is too easy.

How Do you Overcome This Feeling?

If you do feel you are getting worse, just let me be very clear, you are not. It is just a feeling and I will try and give you some tips to help you overcome this:

Take A Break

The first thing you need to do is a take a break. Even if you don’t feel tired, just do it anyway. Give yourself a few days to rest and recuperate and then see how you feel after that.

Even if you were not burned out, a little rest will always do you good. You may find after this your brain is a little sharper and you stop making the silly mistakes that where making you feel like you where getting worse. 

You may have just been tried from other things in your life, so allow yourself to have a break. 

Reflect On Your Progress

While you are resting, you should take time to reflect. This should help you overcome the problem of suddenly being self aware.

Think about when you started your language and how you knew nothing, everything was confusing and you couldn’t say a word. Now compare that to what you can do now. Think about how you can understand things and communicate.

Of course you are still a long way off, especially compared to the natives, but you can see the path to get to where they are. You also need to remember that they have been “studying” the language non-stop for their entire life. It’s normal that they are so far ahead of you.

You still need to appreciate that you have made a lot of progress in the language, even if you know you still have a lot to do. You are always going to have a lot to do, the learning never ends, so just try and comes to terms with that, you are still doing great.

Keep Pushing

The most important thing you can do to overcome this feeling of getting worse is to keep pushing forward and to keep trying to improve.

Hopefully after a little rest and reflection you are reenergised and ready to conquer the language again. Just keep trying to make progress and most importantly, keep immersing yourself in the language.

So long as you keep going with your studies you will eventually push past any plateaus or dips and will improve.

It’s a long hard road, but with persistence you will get the results. 

(You can read more about – How to Keep Motivated When Learning A Language)

Conclusion

Feeling like you are getting worse at your language happens sometimes, but it’s just an illusion. You are not actually getting worse. If you feel this way, take a break, reflect on how much progress you have actually made and then try and work even harder to push through and actually see some improvements.

You will get better, it just takes time and hard work, but it is totally possible. 

(You can read more about – What Is Language Learning Fatigue?)