Why High Achievers Struggle Most With Language Learning

I work with so many wonderful people who are determined to learn another language, and they're ready to work hard and put in the effort. Many language learners are high achievers, and they get so much right when it comes to commitment.

If you're a little bit like that and you've dropped off your language project, I want you to know that it's not you. After more than a decade of language coaching, I've observed that my high achieving clients can slip into some damaging mistakes and end up losing most of their progress.

You might already be guessing that I am talking about excess ambition here. To be safe from this kinda self-sabotage, let's see where it tends to creep in first.

The Real Problem: Your Expectations

The biggest mistake I see, across every kind of learner, is setting targets that were never fair to begin with. Not too little ambition. Too much, too fast, with no room to breathe.

The classic culprit: deciding to learn 50 new words a day. Or even 20. Approach the task at a realistic pace and look for materials that suit your level. The best level is one where you understand what's happening without having to work too hard.

Here’s how I explain the problem in my course Your Solid Vocab Memory:

"How many words?"

Some people like to have a specific number of words to aim for. When creating your routine, consider any numbers-based goal carefully and break it down into daily activities. But remember that regular reviews are what will anchor any words in your long-term memory. Cramming 1000 words in 10 days might be possible if you have an intensive project on your hands...but most learners forget those words very quickly.

Aim for a realistic level. In numbers, A1 level is usually considered to contain 1500-2000 words. But you can communicate with much less.

Fluency in speaking is about mindset and attitude. Confident and creative language learners have full conversations with way less than 5000 words.

Aiming for Fluency on a Deadline

The same thing happens with timelines. You do not have to become fluent in a very short period of time. Learning doesn't have to be a sprint. But plenty of learners set an ambitious deadline, miss it, and quietly decide they're just not a language person.

They are actually fine and talented, but sometimes life gets in the way or you just cannot control how fast your brain remembers things.

More about memorizing and how it works here

What Unrealistic Standards Actually Do

Impossible targets don't motivate you. They hand you an excuse to quit.

When something doesn't instantly click, and plenty of things won't, the distance between where you are and where you expected to be starts to feel like proof of something. That you're not cut out for this, everyone else finds it easier, and you probably left it too late.

None of that is true. But the target you set made it feel true.

What Actually Helps

Get honest about your real goal. Not the glossy version. If you want to muddle through a holiday conversation, you don't need to sound like a native speaker. If you want to connect with someone you love, showing up and trying counts for more than perfect grammar ever will.

And then bring in something the language learning world chronically undersells: self-compassion. The learners who go the distance aren't the ones who flagellated themselves into fluency. They're the ones who were decent enough to themselves to keep going when it got hard and a little boring and slow

How to Start Learning a Language (And Actually Stick With It)

Good news first: Starting is one of the hardest parts of learning a language! And starting isn’t that hard with this guide, so you’re already set up for good progress.

It’s not easy to feel confident that you’re starting “right”. There are so many different approaches out there, and the sheer number of options can stop you before you've even begun.

Here's what I actually recommend for beginners in language learning:

Start With Your Goal (But Not The Way You Think)

Early on in your learning progress, I recommend thinking about your goal. This does not have to be your big life goal for learning a language, but it helps you clarify what you really want out of it.

Some people want to speak to loved ones. Others want to enhance their career opportunities. Those are people who are probably going to be studying for years because they want to become fluent. Some people just want to have a chat on holiday, or they just want to understand more of what people are saying. Those people will practice different things.

And sometimes it helps to remember you do not have to have a goal. Sometimes it is simply, “I’m curious.” I LOVE ❤️ intellectual curiosity as a reason to learn a language. A lot of the languages I've learned started with nothing more than curiosity about a pronunciation, a greeting, a writing system. A few of them stuck, and I'm now conversational (for example, I fell in love with Welsh). With others, it didn't happen but I still know the basics. You are never wasting your time.

In my Language Habit System™, I recommend recording your Vision Goal. Record it at the start, and then get a little more practical.

Try Everything

Once you know your direction, explore properly. Don't stop at just downloading Duolingo and playing with it.

Go to your library. Have a look at textbooks. Download the apps. Get yourself on YouTube. Change a few parts of your social media feed and get your algorithm showing you things in that language. Very soon you'll be picking up little bits here and there.

Then it's about putting it all together, and that's where a group class can be great, or a tutor for the first three to six months, especially if you're new to language learning.

Follow what is fun. Follow what is exciting. That is how you stay motivated, and it helps you remember what you are learning for.

Think About All Four Skills

When you're planning how to spend your learning time, think about how you're going to get some listening, speaking, reading, and writing — all of them. Each skill informs the next. Writing, for example, can genuinely improve your speaking and listening once you understand the pronunciation rules of a language. They work together.

Grab my book about the four core skills 📘

Don't Overlook AI

I want to make a particular case for involving AI in your language learning, because I've been exploring and experimenting with it seriously, and I think it has the potential to be much more effective at teaching natural language — or letting you practise natural language — than apps alone.

It fulfils a slightly different purpose. Apps have their place. Tutors have their place. AI has its own place too. But that place is a genuinely valuable one, and it's worth exploring early.

The Most Important Thing

Language learning is a beautiful and enriching lifelong process if you let it. Allow yourself to enjoy it, even when you're not the best yet.

You don't have to become fluent on a tight deadline. You don't have to master fifty words a day. You just have to keep going, follow what interests you, and trust that every bit of it counts.

Learn a language with one of my self-paced courses.

How Do You Learn Best? A Guide to Language Learning Styles

I was brilliant at languages in school.

Well, sort of. I loved languages. I did not love sitting through forty-five minutes of someone talking at the front of the classroom while my brain quietly wandered off to think about what was on telly later.

Here's what actually worked: making notes. Lots of notes. Colour-coded, reorganised, rewritten until they made sense. And listening to the same English language songs over and over until I knew each word by heart.

If You're Stuck, It Might Not Be the Language

A lot of intermediate learners hit a wall and assume they've reached their natural limit. You've got the basics down, you can hold a simple conversation, but somehow you still feel like you’re on pause.

Often, the issue isn't what you're learning. It's how you're trying to learn it.

You might be forcing yourself through podcasts when you're someone who needs things written down. Or grinding through textbook exercises when you'd actually thrive with conversation practice. Or watching endless YouTube videos when what you really need is to get your hands dirty and do something with the language.

VARK: A Useful Learning Framework for Language Lovers

There are about seventy different learning style models floating around (academics love this sort of thing). But one of the most straightforward and genuinely helpful ones is called VARK - which stands for Visual, Auditory, Read/Write, and Kinaesthetic.

image credit: Preply Images, Creative Commons BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

I love how discovering your learning style can build confidence and encourage you to try out something new. But quick disclaimer: No need to be a bit too attached to your "type" and start assuming you can't learn certain ways, or that you should avoid input that doesn't match their preference. That's not the point. You can still benefit from listening practice even if you're primarily a visual learner. A lot of people are multimodal, meaning they will work well with a mix of elements.

Let me walk you through each VARK style, with actual practical ideas you can try this week.

🔵 Visual Learners: You Think in Pictures

If you need to see something written down even after someone's explained it, or if you naturally organise things with colours and diagrams, this is probably you.

What to try:

• Mind map your vocabulary by theme with drawings and colours

• Watch films with subtitles in your target language

• Use charts to track verb patterns

• Stick illustrated Post-its around your space

🟣 Auditory Learners: You Process Through Sound

You remember song lyrics from years ago. You talk things through out loud to make sense of them. Rhythm and repetition work for you.

What to try:

• Listen to podcasts even if you only catch half of it

• Read texts aloud to yourself (no one's judging)

• Join conversation groups or find a language partner

• Make up silly rhymes for grammar rules that won't stick

🟢 Read/Write Learners: You Need to Get It Down on Paper

You like organising, rewriting, making lists.

Take Sarah, one of our AI Language Club members. She'd been learning Spanish for ages but felt stuck until she realised she's a read/write learner. Now she keeps running notes, makes checklists for what she wants to practice, and writes out her own explanations of tricky grammar points.

What to try:

• Keep a language journal

• Rewrite grammar explanations in your own words

• Make glossaries and vocabulary tables

• Write summaries of things you've read or watched

🟡 Kinaesthetic Learners: You Learn by Doing

You need to move, touch, make things. Sitting still and "studying" feels impossible.

What to try:

• Cook from recipes in your target language

• Use gestures when practicing phrases

• Try cultural crafts or activities

• Give yourself real tasks - write an actual email, order something, follow instructions

Here's What Changes When You Know This

Once you understand how you naturally process information, you can stop fighting yourself.

You stop forcing yourself through methods that were never going to work. You stop comparing your progress to people whose brains operate completely differently. You build learning habits that actually stick because they're designed for you.

And here's the brilliant bit about AI Language Club: we create different types of activities and tools precisely because we know people learn differently. Some members love our image generation games. Others prefer the structured exercises. Some people thrive with our reading materials, others with the audio content.

There isn't one "right" way to learn. There's the way that works for you.

What Now?

If you're stuck at intermediate and suspect your learning approach might be part of the problem, AI Language Club gives you the variety to experiment and find what clicks.

We've got visual materials, audio practice, written exercises, and hands-on activities. Different tools for different brains. And a community of people who get that there's no single path to fluency.

Come see what we're building →

It's a free app loved by millions. Is Duolingo wasting your time?

Whenever I hear that someone new is starting language learning, I get excited.

But then, they mention Duolingo and I know how this is going to go.

I’ve spent years teaching, learning, and experimenting with language tools, and the little app with the Duolingo owl has always felt like a toy version of what language learners really need.

Using the app feels like language learning. You’ll pick up a few phrases. Cartoons cheer you on.

But deep down, it’s cosplay. Why?

What’s Good About Duolingo

This app felt like a revolution when it first came out. Here’s why:

• Free-ish, easy access to language learning from your smartphone. Nice.

• Lovely design with lots of fun illustrations

• Gamified learning keeps you coming back!

• It gets you from zero to somewhere in language learning, and officially works for getting people to do well on tests. (research sponsored by Duolingo itself though 👀)

The Downsides of Duolingo

Duolingo telling me what my problem is.

You probably know about a lot of these issues by now, but let’s recap:

• You have to learn endless nonsense sentences.

• No flexibility about how you express yourself in your new language, so you’re not learning how to communicate.

• The feedback is too easy to ignore.

• Of course it’s not really free. Duolingo is now an ad-packed freemium app, and their business model has always cost teachers and learners. (Want the back story? Listen to this podcast about the hidden cost of cheap & easy language learning.)

• Zero nuance, extremely limited explanations, no culture context.

Language learning should make people curious, but Duolingo doesn’t do that.

You don’t become a communicator. You become a really good Duolingo user.

What I Wanted to See Instead (So I Built it)

As a language teacher, AI has blown my mind. This endless resource of natural languages is easy to access, like a rich practice playground.

From the start, I wanted to build a community-driven, AI-powered space that actually helps people make progress:

• Fresh, exciting ideas developed for real learners

• Tools that help you learn with freedom, explore and have fun

• Real-time personalised feedback, not just error messages

• Content rooted in culture, context, and actual conversation

• And most importantly: a support system. Other humans. (Plus AI that doesn’t sound like it’s dying inside.)

So I opened AI Language Club, where we create and experiment with fresh, interesting language learning ideas in ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI tools.

If you are just getting started with a new language, don’t sleep on the big possibilities of AI, because it can do so much more than Duolingo!

What to Read Next

• Where to start with AI chatbots like ChatGPT

• 3 Tutor-Approved Ideas for Improving Your Duolingo Experience

• Podcast: The Hidden Cost of Cheap & Easy Language Learning

• Finding the Button That Makes AI Easier for Language Learners

If you are ready for fun, exciting language learning with fast results, come and join our club!

👉 Meet AI Language Club