About a month ago after several years of consistent (min. 21 hours a week) of Russian study I felt that maybe I’d reached my limit - a plateau I might never surpass. For the first time in nearly four years I dropped down to bare minimum - 50 coins a day and I stopped speaking even to my Russian born wife in Russian. I was done - or so I feared.
At the same time I knew better than to force myself to keep up the usual pace. Anyway we were traveling during my wife’s winter break between teaching college. Would I pick up the baton again?
Ever so gradually my interest began to return, and lately we have had whole days of almost 100% Russian conversations. I have found new material to study and tweaked my approach to learning new vocabulary (using Lingq!!!). I feel refreshed and enthusiastic.
So no, not quitting. Just took a helpful break in the routine.
Sometimes a break is needed. If it’s important to you, the interest will pick up again. Also, I find, many times, that after a break of a week or two or more, I feel like I can understand more. Like the brain has finally consolidated all the information you’ve been overstuffing into it.
As my mother the piano teacher always said, “Learning occurs between practice sessions!”
During my break from Russian, YouTubers kept on making Russian-language videos. Now that I’m back, I’m starting to find the material on YouTube that I’d be watching anyway in English. More and more Russian-speaking high school teachers and literature majors are posting videos full of insights about their favorite books.
Professor Arguelles has a new video about coming back from a break, and making new habits.
In my case, I’m finding Russian much easier after taking a short break. But Professor Arguelles says if you find you can’t pick up where you left off, just get back into things gradually, and remember that the progress you make will be much easier than if you were starting from scratch.