The difficulty of language learning #
Learning a new language is unreasonably hard.
I live in Zürich, in German-speaking Switzerland, and I work with lots of people who didn’t speak German when they moved here (myself included). Many get frustrated themselves while learning German, because they feel they should be making better progress. And I believe that’s due to unrealistic expectations.
In comparison to language learning, most skills we have to pick up as adults are much easier. With a bit of effort you can get to an acceptable level quite fast - for example, you can learn to drive a car safely and confidently in a few months.
Language learning is slow, and always painfully accompanied by how easy it is to use your mother tongue. When speaking in English, the words I need are on the tip of my tongue, and I think about expressing myself, rather than the words to choose. When speaking German, I have an idea of what I want to say, but I have to hunt the right word or phrase. I often make mistakes, or speak correctly but weirdly. (Like the difference between saying “I study at night” and “I study in the night” - the latter is not technically ungrammatical, but you sound a bit like a goth monk.)
And as with many ‘deep’ skills (chess, painting, playing an instrument), learning more mostly means discovering more of the breadth of your own ignorance.
How to get better at stuff #
Now, I am an unreasonably persistent person when it comes to learning new skills. Partially because I don’t like being bad at things (blame the fancy private school I went to). But my persistence also comes from hope , because I do believe that we can get better at most things, if we try in the right way.
About five years ago I read a great book called Peak: it’s a study of people who are excellent at stuff, and how they get that way. It’s all about “deliberate practice”, which you can apply to pretty much any skill. Deliberate practice doesn’t mean learning will be easy, but it makes progress possible.
Core concepts #
Deliberate practice…
- is goal oriented. My goal is to work in German. So I’ll need to be able to participate in nuanced conversations, and read complex material. But I also want to be able to chat to friends and strangers.
- focuses on what is holding you back right now. This seems so obvious. But this is very useful analysis: look at where you are at right now, and understand what specifically is blocking you from your goal.
- uses targeted exercises. More of this below.
- has a feedback loop. For things where there is a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, a ‘better’ or ‘worse’, you need to know where you stand, otherwise you can’t get better. A trap though: too much correction can be discouraging. For me, it helped earlier to focus on “just getting speaking”; I have more motivation to learn grammatical points off-by-heart now that I’m enjoying conversations.
Bad practice #
Just repeating something doesn’t mean you’ll get better at it. Some forms of unhelpful practice:
- Mindless repetitition. For example, if you were learning guitar and just played the same tune over and over, without noticing what’s wrong and trying to fix your mistakes.
- Staying in the comfort zone. I did this when I would watch German TV with the subtitles on - I wasn’t actually pushing myself to comprehend what was being said.
- Not targeted towards goals. Surprise surprise: practice that isn’t targeted to your current limitations, won’t help you overcome those limitations.
- No feedback. Eg: if you practise speaking phrases alone in your room, you won’t actually know if someone can understand what you said or not. Sometimes this doesn’t apply: for example, I want to be able to read faster, so I don’t really need a feedback loop to tell me if I did it correctly.
What’s worked for me #
Deliberate practice has been game-changing for me, and I wanted to share a few examples of how I’ve applied the ideas above.
The early days #
I didnt’t know any words: When I moved to Switzerland, I didn’t speak any German. And in those early days that was my biggest limitation: I just simply had no idea what speech or text was saying. I needed words.
What I did: German flashcards and spaced repetition via Anki. It was incredibly boring, but having a basic vocabulary at hand unlocked many other activies. It combined really well with exposure to spoken and written German: if I noticed a word from a flashcard in a podcast or some text, it stuck in my head.
Being in the world #
I didn’t understand when people speak to me: The flashcards helped a lot with reading text, but not with understanding what others were saying. In hindsight, this wasn’t a surprise. My practice was focused on recognising text, without any aural input.
What I did: Active listening with podcasts. Echo Der Zeit is a great news show and they articulate beautifully clearly; Beziehungskosmos is a show about relationships and psychology, helped me a lot with Swiss German.
I find that I really need to pay attention to get anything out of this; German is hard to take in so I switch off easily. I have three levels of listening I work on:
- Trying to grasp the overall theme of a conversation or podcast. Maybe I couldn’t understand the details, but I could work on getting the gist.
- Paying attention to specific words and phrases. I am trying to actively notice the words I’ve learned, or notice what grammatical forms the speaker is using, to reinforce correct usage in my head.
- Trying to notice literally every word, and repeat it to myself in my head. This is exhausting, but it’s making a big difference to my listening comprehension in the real world.
What didn’t work: I needed this to be ‘real’ material. Initially I tried listening to language specifically for learners, like “Easy German”. I quickly realised that this wasn’t going to help. I want to be able to understand real spoken German, not something slowly and carefully constructed for beginners.
Holding conversations #
I was lost for words: By about 2022 I had a decent grounding in German grammar and vocabulary, and my comprehension was okay, but I hated speaking. I was very self-conscious about sounding stupid and making mistakes.
What I did: 1-on-1 conversation lessons with an experienced tutor. We’d talk for one hour a week, about stuff that interested me: politics, philosophy, art, psychology. He would rarely correct me when talking, but he’d take notes, and at the end of the lesson would let me know where I was making frequent mistakes. This meant I could get better, but I wasn’t interrupted: so I was getting into the habit of speaking even if I wasn’t getting it right.
Written material #
I couldn’t skim-read, and get stuck: I give up quite quickly when reading long German texts. It’s still very effortful.
What I did: I get a daily newsletter about news and events in Zürich (tsri.ch), and I try to read this every morning when I pick up my phone. Right now I’m focusing on noticing unfamiliar words / forms and trying to guess their meaning, before I look things up. That’s because I want to be able to get through life without constantly referencing dictionaries or running text through Google Translate.
Texting and emailing #
I don’t know what’s idiomatic: Now, in 2025, my German is kind of okay, a solid B2 level. I can hold conversations, deal with most situations in life, I know all the basic grammar. But my speaking is weird: I know lots of words, but I say things a native speaker would never say (usually direct translations from English, like “Ich bin interessiert in Politik” rather than “Ich interessiere mich für Politik”). In a professional context I think things like this will be embarrassing.
What I did: LLMs have been great here. Whenever I write something in German, I’ll compose it myself first, then ask ChatGPT to correct it. Specifically I ask for 1) grammatical correction, 2) things that are not idiomatic, and 3) more natural ways to express the same ideas. Early days but I think it’s helping.
The Goethe course #
I’ve also just spent two weeks in Berlin at the Goethe Institut, on an immersive B2 German course. I’ve already gone on quite a lot, so I’ll have to write this up another time. It was great, and my German got a lot better - I can really see the benefits of immersion.
Where next? #
My goals are to be able to work in German, and to feel at home here in Switzerland. Right now I don’t feel the need to learn lot more grammar or vocabulary, but to master the basics that I’ve already acquired. B2 is enough to work in, if you do it right.
Right now, I’m focusing on:
- Slowing down, thinking before I speak
- Memorising more common and correct phrases, so they’re at my fingertips in conversations
- Listen and focus when I listen, so I pick up correct speech from natives
I’m in a bit of a motivational dip right now, because I can see how long the road ahead is. But knowing that this is hard, and that I can get out of this with applied effort, keeps my spririts up.