Why Do Most English Learners Stop at the Intermediate Level?

By Dr. Jeff McQuillan, Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics and Education, University of Southern California

Fewer than one out of every four learners who reach the intermediate level of a second language go on to an advanced level (McQuillan, 2019). Those learners stop making progress because they are not getting enough English they can understand. Some learners call this stage the "intermediate plateau."

I reported the one-in-four figure in a 2019 article on how few people finish language courses (McQuillan, 2019), using completion data from Nielson (2011). Enrollment studies in United States schools and universities show the same pattern of learners quitting early (Dupuy & Krashen, 1998, Furman, Goldberg, & Lusin, 2007, and Draper & Hicks, 2002).

Your age does not cause the plateau, and neither does a lack of language learning ability.

What is the intermediate plateau?

The "intermediate plateau" is the stage where progress in a second language seems to slow down after fast early progress. Most learners at this stage can read some English and understand it when it is spoken slowly.

But many intermediate learners cannot understand an American speaking normally or quickly on the telephone. When asked to tell a story without stopping to think, they cannot do that, either.

Learners at this stage often blame themselves. Dr. Lucy Tse asked students to write about their own language classes, and she found the same "self-blame" again and again in what they wrote (Tse, 2000). Research indicates, however, that the problem is not you. It is the method you are using.

Why does progress seem to slow down at the intermediate level?

The main reason progress may seem to slow down is that learners can no longer find enough English they can understand that still has enough new language to keep them improving.

Adults learn a language by understanding messages in it, through listening and reading, which is what Stephen Krashen named "comprehensible input" (Krashen, 1982). Beginner materials supply this easily. Slow lessons and simple dialogues give the beginner plenty of English to understand.

Then, the beginner materials end. Content made for native speakers, such as movies, news, and fast conversation, is still too difficult. The intermediate learner who understands 40 percent of a podcast is far below the 85 to 95 percent needed for learning to happen. Learners at this stage mainly hear and read English they are unable to understand.

Another source of difficulty is that intermediate learners can typically recognize many more words than they can actually use. The difference is largest for exactly the words needed to reach the advanced level (Webb, 2008). Learners understand those words in a text, but do not yet know them well enough to use them in speaking and writing.

Learners stop at the "intermediate plateau" because they are not getting enough English they can understand that has just enough new language to keep them advancing.

Does more speaking "practice" move you to the advanced level?

Speaking is a result of getting more comprehensible input (Krashen, 1998). Doing more speaking "practice" will not improve your fluency because speaking is "output" and you need more "input."

Most schools, apps, and tutors give the opposite advice. They tell the intermediate learner who has stopped making progress to get a conversation partner and start speaking. Yet, forcing yourself to speak before you are ready does not improve proficiency, and studies of "output" practice have not shown this approach to be effective in improving fluency (Krashen, 1998, and Krashen, 2003).

Speaking fluency depends in part on your "productive vocabulary," which is the words you can use when you speak (Tong, Hasim, & Abdul Halim, 2022, and Uchihara & Saito, 2019). Productive vocabulary increases when you meet words again and again in comprehensible input. Recognizing a new word reliably takes about 10 to 15 encounters in your listening and reading (Pellicer-Sánchez & Schmitt, 2010), and being able to produce the word takes more encounters than that needed to simply recognize it (Webb, 2007).

How do you get past the intermediate plateau?

You get past the plateau by getting large amounts of English you can understand, for hundreds of hours, over a long period of time (Green, 2022). As long as you are getting English at a level you understand that still contains something new for you to learn, your proficiency will improve (Krashen, 1985).

Learners who reach the advanced level find material they mostly understand and keep listening to and reading it for months. Learners who stay at the intermediate stage are usually listening to material far above that level and/or studying grammar rules and word lists. Studying rules and lists does not give you the understandable English that learning a language requires (Krashen, 1985).

~ Dr. Jeff McQuillan, from beautiful Los Angeles, California