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Eventually, the gains made in conversation practice will diminish. First, there was improvement: more coherent sentences, better delivery, and a reduction of pauses. Then, it felt like there was no improvement: the conversations felt like they sounded the same as they did just a week ago, errors were repeating themselves, just differently. And that is when it happened, when progress feels as though you are stuck on a plateau. A plateau, which is common, occurs in the time in which your skills have reached a comfortable place but not a more advanced one. Learning how to move through a plateau is a skill that is more important than anything you have learned in the beginning.
There are many reasons why plateaus happen, though one common factor that may be behind it is comfort. It is too easy to get into a pattern that feels comfortable: you repeat the same types of conversations, you say the same sentence structures, and you are in the same types of situations. You can practice a lot and make progress, but if you stay in the same place, eventually it will feel repetitive and your skill level will not grow.
So when a plateau happens, you need to vary the difficulty of your practice slightly. Instead of repeating yourself, which you already know, challenge yourself with scenarios where you might feel a little more uncomfortable. You can repeat the task again, with an interruption, or if you have a scenario that allows you to challenge your answer to a question. The difference is that you are now asking yourself to engage in the conversation more and focus more intently, while you are at a point where you may notice some mistakes in your structure.
One way that you may not be as aware of as possible is that you may not notice when things are not going as well. At first you notice that there are mistakes being made because the skill is relatively new and there is something in it. But later, it may feel that you are making fewer mistakes because your focus is on the next sentence. It is important, therefore, to practice with a little more awareness of what is happening. If a sentence goes on longer than expected, or if you are not as concise, or any number of things can happen, there is an opportunity to learn from it. It is easy to say, I will just try that again and do that next time. But, if you notice, then you must ask yourself what you did. You may say, “How well did I understand that question?” or, “Where did I lose the point of what I was saying?” This way, you will become more aware and you will be able to identify when mistakes occur and not just let them pass.
Finally, if you are stuck in the middle of a conversation, you should stop trying to move on. You should take a different approach. If a pause occurs, try a different way of phrasing your answer. You may say, “Let me rephrase that,” or “Let’s talk about the bigger point first.” This gives you time to think and allows you to answer a question more clearly or concisely. A plateau may be resolved in different ways, but it can be broken by simply focusing on a different approach. You can improve by using fewer words or by slowing down your pace.
In a fifteen-minute practice session, you can use the first five minutes to reflect on the last time you participated in a conversation that you were not happy about. Maybe the other person did not say anything interesting, so you repeated the same point, and your voice did not go up or down, or you did not feel like you answered their question directly. During the next five minutes, you are practicing what you would say if you were in that position. This is a way to practice, by speaking aloud, and doing it a couple of different ways, with different intonations or different sentence structures. During the final five minutes, you should focus on your practice in some way that you have not previously. Maybe you practice a different type of sentence, maybe you change your pacing, maybe you focus on something you did not do before. The combination of all three things gives you different pathways, and they help you practice different things and you practice them in different ways. That allows you to learn, to improve, and to grow.
When you reach a plateau, that does not mean that you will not make improvements. Rather, it means that what you have learned, your habits, will not progress beyond where they are. You can learn to grow, but only if you can find ways to practice that will change the way you are practicing now. With enough time, attention, and some small changes in practice, you will make the improvement you need. And as that happens, you will be able to talk more easily and with more confidence than before.