Sometimes it’s hard to see your own growth day to day.
That’s natural.
Just like when kids are growing it’s hard to see them changing until you suddenly notice their shirt is too short or tight and it’s time to go back to the store to replace their wardrobe again.
Similarly, language growth can be difficult to observe, particularly in upper levels. Whereas in Phases 1, 2 and 3, you saw a huge leap in who you were able to be after every 100 hour milestone. You advanced because you were learning high frequency vocabulary. In Phases 4 and 5, however, this slows down; it often takes 300 hours of growth in sessions to see a significant difference in our abilities, particularly in speech development. In these upper levels of Arabic, have to find better ways to measure our growth week to week to remain encouraged. One way to do this is to consider cultural learning as progress as well. Learning Levantine Arabic should not be separated from a deepening understanding of culture.
Make a list each week of all that you know now, that you didn’t know last week. What are the things you can say this week, that you couldn’t say last week?
Another good way to remind yourself of how far you’ve come is to go back to easy recordings and listen again. Looking back over your shoulder can really help remind you of the distance you’ve gained. Try retelling a Phase 3 story in Phase 4 or listen to a recording for feedback you made weeks ago. See if you can retell it even better than you did last month until it’s easy for you.
