Is there an upper limit to the level one can reach?

I can remember when I first started learning Russian, having had no previous success with languages, I was full of self doubt about the amount on progress I could make. It's easy to forget how magic a skill speaking in a foreign language can seem to those living in a monolingual culture. At some point the level of doubt began to subside, but I do still wonder whether I will hit a brick wall, and whether an advanced level is actually possible for me.

In the world of chess, where every player has a numeric score that quantifies their ability, eventually every player hits a ceiling in his rating - as I did after a depressingly short period of time. Also no matter how earnest you were in your training, unless you started as a young child you were destined never to reach a high level.

On the opposite side of the coin, when it comes to karate, pretty much anyone can get to black belt if they train diligently for long enough, sure some people might get there quicker, but it's pretty much obtainable for all if they can persevere.

So can anyone really reach fluency at an advanced level? What are the potential blockers that might stop you from getting there? If you feel you're on a plateau, do you wait it out, is there a problem that you can somehow diagnose, or perhaps you will be stuck there forever? How would you know?

It seems to me that the upper level would be something like what people commonly reach after living in a country for a few decades and trying to "assimilate" themselves as fully as possible to its culture and daily life (obviously people who either make no special effort to learn or actively avoid encountering the language are another matter...) -- reading plenty of books and magazines and newspapers, watching movies and TV shows, listening to the radio, traveling, working, making friends and having romantic relationships, all in that country's language. People who do this commonly have some trace of accent if they moved after their early teens, and they tend to make small mistakes influenced by their native language, but other than that their command of the language is to all appearances like a native's.

I knew a French guy who had lived in the U.S. for fifteen years and spent the vast majority of his time speaking English since he got here, and while his accent did sound a little "strange," I bet most people would have a really hard time telling where he was originally from. And aside from the rare "lag" in coming up with a certain word or idiom that would come to most native American English speakers right away, his vocabulary and "fluency" seemed simply perfect to me.

But for the rest of us, who don't have the opportunity to spend a few decades living in a country where our TL is spoken, I'm not really sure what the upper limit is.

Well yes, that is the question! But not only that, what are the factors that might limit one's upper limit, beyond where one lives or pure time spent with the language. What can the amateur aspire to, and what roadblocks must he look out for?

There's a lot here to address. Can anyone reach C-2 (fluency for these purposes)? "Anyone" includes a lot of people, for the sake of argument, let's assume an average person with a secondary school education and perhaps a year or two of university under the belt. Stipulating this pretty much takes intelligence out of the equation. What we're left with then are the intangible factors that often make the difference in successful language-learning. Some of these are- persistence level, level of consistency, willingness to sacrifice and willingness to leave the comfort zone.

When beginners ask about learning a language (in this case, let's say a major language) they often underestimate the amount of time necessary to devote to learning in order to advance. This ties into to consistency and persistence as well. Some people believe the hype and think they can learn "X" language in 10 minutes a day- not happening- or, by devoting weekends to it and skipping weekdays- also not happening. I don't know what the "sweet-spot" is but for me it's between an hour and two hours a day. Being consistent helps a learner to develop momentum. Being persistent helps the learner to keep the foot in the door when they can't be consistent due to all kinds of things that crop up in life. Many learners devote more time to choosing a course than they do in actually using it.

That being said, no course will lead a learner to fluency. Using the language outside of course-world is what will do the most for that. This means, learners need to face the fear of leaving the comfort zone at some point and stop overwhelmingly focusing on"studying". Some are quite good at courses and anki but tend to see language-learning primarily through this prism. The intermediate plateau is real. The longer a learner stays in course-world and avoids the real-world, the longer they will spend time on that plateau. A course, on its own, will only take you so far. It seems obvious but a some learners just won't leave courses.

The plateau is real. Continuing to do the same thing expecting a different result won't help. This is when the learner has to leave the comfort zone and challenge himself/herself. Some learners fear native materials and/or get frustrated because there may be large gaps in their knowledge and they may not understand everything or even most of everything. That's when the learner has to, as emk calls it, "cheat". There all kinds of ways to make the incomprehensible, comprehensible- parallel texts, subtitles, listen in English first- then the TL, etc. The key is to use this to learn and not as a crutch. One must wean one's self off of the crutches at some point or they will be forever hobbled. I find that if native (comprehensible) material is used from an early point in my learning, the intermediate plateau isn't as long. You'll know you're on a plateau when despite your "study" you just are not reaching the next level- having to look up too many words, not understanding without subtitles, struggling speech that is painful for native-speakers to endure. You'll know it when you see it.

Willingness to sacrifice comes in when one needs to use native materials more than courses to advance. I used to read a lot in English, not so much now. Entertainment-wise, while most major languages have a high quality of literature and media, a lot of really good stuff still comes from the English-speaking world. Are you willing to give up an hour a day to watch 150 episodes of a Mexican telenovela when there's something else on at the same time in your native-language to watch? What lengths are you willing to go to? I rarely listen to local radio in my car unless it's in Spanish (or I have a monolingual English-speaking passenger), for example. Also, I'll feed podcasts into my car radio in Portuguese and Haitian Creole. Some learners aren't willing to make those kind of sacrifices.

All that being said, when a learner is learning a language not present in the home area, they may be able to reach a high-level but it takes a heck of a lot of effort and sacrifice- effort in creating the opportunities needed to advance and sacrifice in making the time to do so. To reach the brass ring of almost native fluency, it is almost always necessary to spend a significant amount of time in a TL country. I am quite happy with "not bad for a gringo" and not being switched to English.

So, in my opinion, there are a lot of variables in place. Some of these variables are intangible and can be summarized by asking "How much do you want it?".

As well as time and motivation I'd add opportunities to use the language. That becomes a limiting factor when you start to reach a higher level, especially if you're not living in the country. As I've written here before, a lack of opportunities to use the language socially was what made me abandon my goal of taking my French to a properly advanced level (C1ish). And I know that emk has cited studies that show that a "peer group" (friends, colleagues, etc.) is crucial to reaching very high levels, and expressed frustration about how not having that seems to limit his progress.

In a situation like mine (not in country, limited social opportunities, limited free time to dedicate to languages), I think a solid B2 in a few years is a realistic goal in "easier" Romance/Germanic languages. I can't speak for more difficult languages as I don't have the experience; my guess is that B2 is still quite achievable but the time-frame would be longer. To get into the C levels I reckon I'd need to change my situation. Living in the country, or at least freeing up a whole lot more time for input, socialising, work with a tutor, etc.; currently not sacrifices I'm keen to make for something that I'm just doing for fun.

This is interesting. Does the training involve studying and replaying various chess matches?

I can imagine a true upper limit on any skill. It's harder for me to imagine that if one continues to study and train and practice, that won't won't continue to advance, albeit at a slower rate as one approaches their limit.

One question or thing to quantify would be what is slope or form of the learning curve? With language learning, it seems to me that if one continues to study and challenge oneself, one will tend not to plateau completely.

If one gets to a certain level of mastery and no longer struggles to do those things that are just out of reach but still attainable, it's easy to see how stagnation can set in.

There is some research on chess, which shows it's more about experience. Which is probably similar to languages.

...skipping a bit...

Thank you for posting that. It seems there's a lot of applicability to language learning. The points that stood out to me.

1) There's a difference in "chunk" levels between the Grandmaster and City Champion.

In my mind, I immediately thought of how FSI drills are designed to teach one to perform certain important chunks of the language with automaticity - without effort. That was the big one. One could in a similar way say understanding all the words one reads or hears without effort is another big chunk.

2) There's a lot of time and effort involved, whether one is a Grandmaster or just a runner-up in the city tournament.

That seems to apply to language learning as well.

3) Talent makes a difference.

At the Foreign Service Institute and Defense Language Institute (DLI), they give potential candidates apptitude tests to get a good idea of whether the candidate has exceptional talent or not.

Since the neofight78 is just talking about learning one language, Russian, I think it's possible. I think you can improve any language you set out to.

Time and effort. Make one chunk out of previously seemed like two or more pieces. Time and effort. Keep going.

This was from the book The Sports Gene by David Epstein.. There is a little bit about automaticity:

The last paragraph is also encouraging as far as using FSI style drills for developing automaticity in recognizing and speaking. It also downplays genetics, which is helpful for the language learner since that's something we can't really change.

Thanks guys, plenty of interesting stuff there to think about.

Regards spending time in the country or at least having a peer group who speak your target language, I have two further questions. Assuming one is not already in such an environment, when is the optimal point to pack your suitcase and head off for some immersion? How much benefit does any prior learning afford you? And, how long does one need to be surrounded by the language to reach a high level?

As for the quoted research, I am familiar with most of it (in a second hand non-academic kind of way). It doesn't seem to be particularly controversial that skill is based on pattern matching built up by lots of experience. The interesting part is the variance in the speed in which some patterns are learned and when people hit a limit.

I take the point about pushing oneself out of the comfort zone with native materials. Certainly failing to do this, will forever limit you, but does that necessarily mean doing so will guarantee you reach that higher level?

Just spending the time is certainly a prerequisite to high performance but not sufficient in itself, just ask the many amateur chess and golf players about that. Again, certainly in chess, age is undeniably a big factor and I definitely wouldn't rule out a genetic factor. In short, this research doesn't seem to lead to anything particularly actionable. Perhaps one could infer one's rate of pattern accumulation by how many hours it took to go from A1 to A2 for example, but how would that relate to your maximum possible level? Can the rate change, why and how?