Roadblocks in Language Learning
The name of this blog, "La Vie en Rose" comes from the title of a French song. Its literal translation is "life in pink" but its metaphorical translation, or meaning, is something along the lines of "looking at life in an optimistic way." It's also the name of an IZ*ONE song (라비앙로즈).
But, to get back on topic, learning a language is no easy task. Anyone who has tried knows that it usually takes several years, and even then, native proficiency is uncommon. Whether or not you're learning on your own changes the experience and the difficulties, and I'll cover both cases as I've had experience in both. Learning a language is akin to building a bridge between cultures, but placing each individual brick is a grueling process.
Vocabulary
Regardless of whether or not you have instruction from a teacher or another person, learning the vocabulary of a language is no easy feat. There's a plethora of words to memorize, and synonyms can get confusing. For example, in Japanese, 変わる, 代わる, and 換わる are all pronounced the same ("kawaru"), but they have ever-so-slightly different meanings. 変わる means "to change", 代わる means "to replace", and 換わる means "to exchange." In Spanish, I specifically remember struggling with feliz vs alegre and grande vs largo. Regardless, synonyms are distinct in ways obvious to native speakers, but often less so to language learners, which makes them tricky.
I've also found that it's quite easy to fall behind on vocabulary. Classes offered by schools (I can only speak from elementary school to high school) rarely focus on vocabulary beyond the occasional list of words to memorize and forget in a few weeks. Either way, it's very easy to set aside the list of hundreds of vocabulary terms to study later. However, it takes discipline, or genuine interest, to not only get through the list, but to make the vocabulary stick. Remembering the vocabulary that you learn is hard, but I cannot stress how helpful a spaced repetition system, or SRS is. Personally, I use Anki and while it's boring, it's effective if you set aside time each day to study. I doubt that the method used to study vocabulary matters too much, and anything you do, as long as you do it routinely, should be functional.
Grammar
The process of learning and studying grammar is completely different from the process of learning and studying vocabulary. While vocabulary is plentiful and somewhat tedious to learn, grammar is generally much harder to understand, but there's much less to learn. With that being said, it's also easy to neglect learning grammar, because each individual point doesn't improve your understanding by much. What I've found extremely helpful, and what most students and self-learners neglect, is natural input. For instance, the subjunctive in Spanish is confusing to understand for many, and when it's taught, it's usually supplemented with example sentences in which the subjunctive is used. While this certainly is helpful, it may be more helpful to see it used in natural language, such as in books, shows, or movies.
Casework
For self-learners, I'd say the greatest roadblock is motivation. It's surprisingly difficult to review vocabulary every day, or to constantly learn while staying on top of other responsibilities. I find it helpful to think about why I started learning. Additionally, I find that dreaming about the end result, being fluent in said language, is harmful to my motivation because it serves as a replacement to the satisfaction gained from organically learning.
Another problem I've found is that sometimes, I don't know what to learn. For instance, if you're learning Japanese, then the obvious first steps are memorizing hiragana (ひらがな) and katakana (カタカナ). But what comes next? Do you learn about sentence structure, kanji, vocabulary, conjugations, or particles? A similar thing applies to Korean. After learning hangul (한글), what comes next? Having a clear learning path can save so much time and uncertainty.
For students, I'd say the greatest roadblock is false confidence. If you want to truly become fluent in a language, years of classes in a traditional classroom setting won't make you fluent. Yes, you'll be decent at the language, but if you don't put in time outside school to consolidate the information or keep learning, then chances are, you'll be mediocre at best. I can speak from my experience with learning in Spanish, because while I'd say my Spanish is somewhat fluent, or conversational at least, I have huge gaps in my knowledge, especially in vocabulary.
The bottom line is that the most important factors are consistency and direction. Worrying about the pace of learning is usually pointless unless you have a deadline to learn the language, so if that's not the case, then learn at your own pace. Who cares if it takes you a month to memorize 92 characters?
Life Update!
I've decided that I'll include this paragraph in every blog post. Schoolwork has been piling up, and I've found that I needed to pause much of what I've been doing over spring break. Hopefully, I'll have more time over the weekend. Other than that, I've been telling myself I need to stay on top of things. Number theory is fun but challenging, and still somewhat foreign to me, so I'm trying to solve some practice problems. We'll just have to see how it goes.
WOW JAMES
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