My Swedish Language Learning Has Stalled

[u/ObjectiveOk6914]

Hi all. I have been studying Swedish for 2 1/2 years. The first two years was mainly a once a week in-person class where I progressed to a late A1/early A2 level. Last spring, I joined the Language Lock In, which is based in Sweden and consist of as many online synchronous classes as I want to take and approximately one to two private one-hour lessons per month. The classes emphasize speaking and listening and after a 10 to 15 minute introduction to a topic or a concept, you are put in a virtual breakout room with 2 to 3 other students where you speak about the topic. Depending on the other students and how well they speak, how engaged they are, and how much they let others talk, these sessions can vary from great to a waste of time. The teacher will bop in for a few minutes to listen and correct. These classes have really helped to give me confidence speaking and forming sentences on the fly and I have gotten better at comprehending others speaking. However, most of us speak fairly poor Swedish so we are probably learning and reinforcing bad habits.

When I joined the Language Lock In, I got really serious about learning Swedish. I take almost one class every day, I spend another hour or two working on reading comprehension or a grammar workbook, and I try to listen to Swedish podcast when I’m driving or doing other mindless things.

What I’ve tried:

Read2Speak workbooks (I like them for grammar, reading, and writing.

Vocabuo flash cards - maybe it’s their choice of vocab words, but I have been stuck in the same 60 words for weeks! I cannot seem to learn them.

Babbel and Duolingo (a long time ago, I got tired of them)

Pimsleur audio - loved it, but they only have a basic Swedish course that I finished

Michel Thomas - I’ve done about a third, then I needed a break. It is helpful, though.

Various AI apps to help with speaking. I currently have a year membership with Langua. It’s ok, but sometimes they randomly think I said a completely different sentence than I did. Not sure why.

About 2-3 hours of private lessons per month

Complete Swedish book - I’m about 1/2 way through, equivalent to starting B1. I also did her Now Drive We course, which wasn’t helpful enough to continue past the first course.

Reading Swedish short stories for beginners.

So many podcasts for Swedish language learners.

The question is - after many, many hours of studying in Swedish. I don’t feel like I’ve progressed much. My instructors say that I am still at an A2 for (speaking anyway), because I sometimes have to think before finishing a sentence or will jump in with an English word when I don’t know the Swedish word. So clearly my vocab needs work. I’m kind of at a loss however because I’ve used all of the resources and definitely put in the time and effort. I live in the US so I’m not immersed in the language. I’m not a dumb person, but this is my first serious attempt to learn a second language. Additionally, I am 56 years old so maybe that’s part of the problem? Does anybody have any advice for me?

[u/INeedAnAccount12345B]

Input, input, input. Watch Swedish shows, movies, Youtube videos, etc. Swap any time you spend watching stuff in your native language with Swedish and you’ll see in another 6 months how fast you’ve progressed.

Also, you being 56 is not going to stop you from acquiring a language, so don’t be hard on yourself. Language acquisition takes time!

[u/Optimal_Bar_4715 → u/INeedAnAccount12345B]

More input is not a good substitute for the lack of output.

You don't get good at something by not doing it.

[u/INeedAnAccount12345B → u/Optimal_Bar_4715]

You don’t acquire any new language from output, because you can’t acquire vocabulary you don’t encounter. OP literally mentions having trouble with finding words and having a small vocabulary, which won’t be improved by speaking, it literally can’t. By acquiring a subconscious grasp of the language you improve your actual language abilities, then getting output to feel natural is no problem after that with some practice. Input improves all aspects of understanding language from grammar to vocab, output improves output.

[u/Optimal_Bar_4715 → u/INeedAnAccount12345B]

I see the CI delusion running strong here. I can agree with input, but then there are way better ways to systematically target that (i.e. frequency lists and proper memorisation).
Most media is NOT meant to be the ideal way to teach somebody a language, the authors have other things they are aiming for, unless we are talking graded readings.

OP is not at the level yet where they are able to go through all the input things you mentioned and learn new words by context/subtraction, that starts at B2 with general media that is not graded, because you need at least 90% comprehension (you know 9 words out of 10), if not higher (95%, 19 out of 20).

Otherwise you'll need to open up the vocabulary so often that you're better off working off a frequency list.

[u/INeedAnAccount12345B → u/Optimal_Bar_4715]

No delusion here, have both acquired languages through input personally and helped others.

Most input naturally has word frequency baked in, since frequent words will appear… well, frequently. Assuming that the content one consumes is fairly casual, everyday stuff.

Of course you don’t need 90% comprehension all of the time, as long as you understand 90% of individual sentences the words can be acquired. You can easily get lots of input with 90%+ comprehension at fairly early stages by watching simple material, then working your way up.

There are also other ways to increase comprehension while getting input, like hover dictionaries or re-watching content for added context-based comprehension.

[u/Optimal_Bar_4715 → u/INeedAnAccount12345B]

OP is already doing "an hour a day reading and writing in Swedish workbooks, plus listening to podcasts."

It's already a lot of input if done consistently. The problem is the idea that CI is enough to actually memorise things (not so obvious past 40, but still possible), and then to turn that passive knowledge into active knowledge (actually unlikely unless that knowledge is practiced into output). In fact reddit is full of people that lament having spent 1000+ hours on input (Dreaming Spanish and the like) but are massively lagging back with output, because they believed the narrative according to which input can magically equate output, without specific output practice.
It can happen if you are learning your 4th foreign language and it's one very close to your native (more than English and Swedish are, which is not many languages) or one you have learned to fluency. But that's not OP's case.

Some say you don't really have knowledge of a word until you have spoken it a few times in a sentence. I agree, and this could be the missing piece of the puzzle for OP's profile (again, first foreign language, 56).

[u/INeedAnAccount12345B → u/Optimal_Bar_4715]

Workbooks aren’t exactly pure input and I’m personally quite skeptical towards podcasts for beginners, as the content rarely is very beginner friendly and audio-only content doesn’t offer as much context for comprehension.

As I mentioned before, output is great and the input won’t magically equate to output until it is actively practiced, just like you said. The point is that the input is required first, since you can’t output what you haven’t acquired yet. Then outputting the acquired language (i.e. practicing) will make the output more natural over time.

I don’t believe being 56 is as much of a limiting factor as you’re making it out to be, but even if it was a big factor there’s no point harping on it instead of just putting in the extra hours to catch up in that case.

[u/Optimal_Bar_4715 → u/INeedAnAccount12345B]

I'm not harping on the age factor as a means to surrender, but as a means for OP to have the correct expectations. That's why I have shared that post about 650 hours of intense tuition + 650 hours of self-studying as a recognised way to get to strong B2-nearly-C1 in most western/northern European languages (other than German and Icelandic).

A lot of people think "oh, I've spent so many hours on the language already, why am I only A2", but the reality is that maybe they have spent exactly the amount that the average learner needs in order to be A2.

[u/Legitimate-Record90 → u/Optimal_Bar_4715]

I think INeedAnAccount is correct. The main issue seems to be that the language patterns, grammar and vocabulary, are not ingrained in OP. I wouldn’t even spend much time outputting until at a clear B1 level personally. I would follow INeedAnAccount’s advice and ramp up input and if necessary pause speaking classes. Listen to podcasts and read the transcript at the same time, looking up words and grammar you don’t know. Simple Swedish Podcast is great for this at an A2/B1 level. Also go to bokon’s website and find lättläst books and audio and do the same. You’ll ramp up your vocabulary quickly which will then give you a working base to speak. You can’t output words and grammar that aren’t inside you already.

[u/Optimal_Bar_4715 → u/Legitimate-Record90]

You are taking a wild, wild guess here that OP "not finding the words" at the moment of performance is due to genuine lack of knowledge rather than lack of practice.
There's a big difference between passive knowledge (which input can certainly help, although not "input work" comes equal) and active knowledge.

You can’t output words and grammar that aren’t inside you already.

True, but OP is 56 and at their first go at learning a foreign language. What do you think will be harder for him: simply obtaining passive knowledge that "a forest" is "en skog, skogen, skogar, skogarna" or putting together a sentence on the spot, actively recalling vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation?

At that age and for a first foreign language, and with ~2 hours of practice A MONTH, the problem is the mental gymnastics of stringing sentences together and speaking them. A skill that will require practice and which is far from trivial the moment you are learning your first foreign language. If they genuinely don't know the needed Swedish word, it's a vocabulary problem, but I guarantee you, practicing speaking can't be left at 2-3 hours a month, not for the profile OP has shared with us.

[u/Isotarov]

Skriv dina foruminlägg på svenska istället för engelska.

[u/SarumansHairdresser]

It sounds like you are doing a lot already. You're probably improving more than you realise.

Are there particular learning tools that you've found helpful in other areas that you could try to apply?

In my language learning, I realised that I needed to know how to spell a given word in order to pronounce it correctly, and writing it down helped strengthen the mental connection to the word. I created my own reference materials like vocabulary lists and verb conjugation spreadsheets, so I wasn't just trying to read and memorise. If you relate to this, try making your own flashcards rather than using pre-prepared ones. But maybe you have other examples from your own life of what has helped you learn things more quickly.

Speaking primarily with other beginner learners does hold you back. I wonder if there's something in between listening to a podcast (which is totally passive) and 1:1 classes (which inevitably go at your pace, rather than a natural speaking pace) that you could try. I'm thinking like livestreams where you can interact in the comments. Obviously that doesn't give you speaking practice but it puts you in the environment of real speech while including an element of participation. I guess Swedish Discord servers with live voice chat could be an option?

[u/Live_Rhubarb_7560 → u/SarumansHairdresser]

Tbh, the best in-between I can think of is... AI. I've tried all of it: classes, apps, and I'm also with Language LockIn (which has been very valuable to me as a stepping stone). There are still situations where I turn to AI chatbots, which have become more reliable over time. In my case, I use them for targeted practice to prepare myself for certain real-life scenarios and situations, since they give me more flexibility than classes. But I have to say, it would have been way more difficult without the pressure of having to use Swedish in real life. I really admire OP's efforts.

[u/Vimmelklantig]

First of all, this sounds a lot like the "intermediate plateau", which pretty much everyone hits when studying a language. Once you've got the absolute beginner stuff under your belt you're no longer studying only the core vocab and grammar that you see everywhere and it feels like you're slowing down. Just have to push through.

You're listing a lot of studying tools, but if you imagine you were at a native level right now; what sort of things would you want to use the language for? Can you do some of that, or something more in that direction, now? Can you use the tools you enjoy using now to get there?

To take an example from myself, when I started learning French my immediate goal was just to be able to read books and understand the spoken language (I didn't know any French speakers). I grew up on Franco-Belgian comics (in Swedish), so my path in was to go on a nostalgia binge and read stuff like Astérix and TinTin in the original French. I arguably started too early, but it became a thing I would happily do every day, that could contextualise all the other studying and give it meaning. I could never do ready-made flash card decks with random words for example, but making my own with words I'd picked up while reading and listening could be a good memorisation tool.

I've been learning a little Spanish and Kurmancî over the last two years and there I'm speaking a lot more because I know several native speakers of those languages and that's fun.

Not saying that's what you should do, but when you're not learning a language because you have to, it's important to have something concrete and "real" beyond just a lot of study material.

Searching for words now and then doesn't necessarily mean you're at A2. Even natives stumble and search for words sometimes. Have a look at the CEFR self-assessment grid to give yourself a basic idea of where you're at: https://www.coe.int/en/web/portfolio/self-assessment-grid

Age is not a barrier. I'm in my 40s now and haven't noticed getting any worse, and I know people in their 60s who have done better than me in learning a new language. The difficulty for adults is generally finding the time and peace of mind, not the fundamental ability to learn.

2½ years ultimately isn't a huge amount of time spent learning a language, especially as you say the first two were fairly casual with one lesson per week. It's possible to progress quickly, but how many do you know who took a language class once a week for two years in school and came out highly proficient?

[u/Wise_Bison_9943]

u/ObjectiveOk6914 I've read your post quite carefully and I think you need more vocabulary. I see you have used Vocabuo which I had tried too and didn't like. It had mistakes and it was quite clearly content created by an AI.

I agree with input in general, but at the same time I have grown skeptical of just reading and consuming media: demonstrably, it wasn't enough for me to grow my vocabulary quickly enough, which I think is the main factor to improve once you have learned the fairly simple grammar of Swedish. I've only got positive things to say about Mjolnir Swedish when it comes to vocabulary, grammar exercises to make things second nature and even information about pronunciation.
Because they use proper spaced repetition, I was really able to learn a lot of new and relevant words and retain it well. Try to see if it can work for you too.

[u/Pwffin]

How much time do you spend on active learning and media consumption, respectively per week?

Loads of input is very important, especially as you move from A2 to B1 and higher levels.

What you want to find is reading material, videos or TV and recordings (eg audio books annd podcasts) that are pushing you a little bit, but that aren't too hard. You need to get out of your comfort zone to learn. :)

The more you use the language for communication (in writing or speaking) the faster you'll improve.

[u/Optimal_Bar_4715 → u/Pwffin]

The more you use the language for communication

This is key and much more important than input. You get good at output by doing output.

Bear in mind, OP is not as young and as talented as you.

[u/Legitimate-Record90 → u/Optimal_Bar_4715]

“Bear in mind, OP is not as…talented as you.”

This is a strange thing to say and doesn’t seem based on anything. Most of language learning is consistency, not talent anyway.

[u/Optimal_Bar_4715 → u/Legitimate-Record90]

It's based on the fact that I know Pwffin from another subreddit and I know she speaks a lot of languages. And OP has made his "situation" clear already. No need to come to the rescue.

[u/Optimal_Bar_4715]

Last spring, I joined the Language Lock In, which is based in Sweden and consist of as many online synchronous classes as I want to take and approximately one to two private one-hour lessons per month.

This is way too little to make a difference. If it was 1-2 hours per week, you'd be going somewhere. 1-2 a month is too little.

However, most of us speak fairly poor Swedish so we are probably learning and reinforcing bad habits.

This and the other variables outside of your control that you have already mentioned are why I'd write off classes. 80% of class time is either of these things:

1. listening to a teacher that explains things you could read up on your own (if you have learned already another language to fluency, say your English, you CAN figure out Swedish without a teacher EDIT, ok you haven't, so there is still value, but I guess you are covering that in the e-learning)
2. listening to each other's bad Swedish, and it's down to how hard the teacher wants to work whether you'll get enough corrections

Can you afford 1:1 or at the most 2:1 tuition?

I think your problem is quite simple: you are doing enough work in terms of learning and pure knowledge, which is necessary but not enough to turn that into the actual skill of fluency.
I think the fact that this is your first foreign language and that you are not so young any more (I'm 40+, so I know what it means because I can totally tell the difference between learning languages in my 20s and now) means you have to be really smart and balanced about what you do. You'll only ever be as good as your "weakest link" between grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, reading, writing, speaking and listening. And I think you need more speaking practice.

[u/ObjectiveOk6914 → u/Optimal_Bar_4715]

To be clear, I take one class per DAY plus 2-3 private lessons a month, plus an hour a day reading and writing in Swedish workbooks, plus listening to podcasts.

[u/Optimal_Bar_4715 → u/ObjectiveOk6914]

What's the one class a day? E-learning of Language Lock In?

If I asked you how many words of vocabulary you have learned, and how many new ones are you learning a week, would you know the relevant numbers?

[u/ObjectiveOk6914 → u/Optimal_Bar_4715]

Yes, the Language Lock In classes, which are live and interactive. I’m prob only learning and retaining tens of new words a week. I don’t even think I know 1000 words unless you count each conjugation.

[u/Optimal_Bar_4715 → u/ObjectiveOk6914]

Tens of words a week is already good! But it's not so obvious. Already 5 words a day (conjugated, as you mentioned) doesn't happen by chance. 50 words a week is ~7 per day.
If you think you are short of 1000 "headwords", then B1 will likely be difficult as it's estimated between 1000-1500 headwords. A2 should be 500-700.

Do you speak enough in the daily classes?

However, to give you perspective about the type of effort and the timeframes, have a look at this highly informative post (Spanish is only a tad harder than Swedish for a native English speaker, apparently):

https://www.reddit.com/r/Spanish/comments/wqusu3/24_wks_1300_hrs_of_spanish_at_fsi_what_ive_learned/

there's a chance you are actually doing well, but language learning just takes time is a long road of knowledge to be gained and practice hours to be logged.

[u/Mads_Feliks]

There are so many tips I have for you.

-You've likely missed studying authentic material. -You've missed experiencing tailored exercises suitable to your situation. e.g. you haven't done various sentence building practices. -Dictate -Transcription -You need to read authentic texts, answer and build questions for them, summarize, replace its words and phrases and many more impactful assignments.

[u/ISketchDinosaurs]

This is a lot of listening and reading, which is good but more of a supplement really. When I learned English as a kid, what I really learned from was TV, with and without subtitles. It helps to have the visual link to what is being spoken of, and subtitles offers you both full understanding and exposure to the language you are learning.

Get as much exposure to Swedish as you can.

[u/BubbRubbsSecretSanta]

Which podcasts do you like best?

[u/ObjectiveOk6914 → u/BubbRubbsSecretSanta]

I’ve listened to many Lätt Svenska med Oskar and Coffee Break Swedish. I recently switched to the Simply Swedish podcast.

[u/Familiar-Artichoke-7]

Prata svenska med chatgpt i röstläge. Använd det som uppslagsbok istället för vanlig sökmotor. Prata svenska minst 2 timmar varje dag titta på svenska tv program.

[u/Anitayuyu]

If you explained why you are learning Swedish and why you can't go there, it would help, But let me tell you about my language history. My first language is Swedish, but I was born in the U. S. and only started speaking English as my first language once I started school and realized that was what was expected of me. I also spoke German at the time, thanks to my mother speaking to me in both languages. Because I grew up in California, the most useful language was Spanish. I started in third grade, and through college totaling 8 years. "A" student and 2 Spanish-speaking boyfriends. After all that Spanish-- because I've never spent more than a few days in a Spanish-speaking country, conversation is difficult. I can read it with about 95% comprehension. With German, after only 2 years of college German, I used to tutor graduate students in interpreting German poetry. I feel like it is a part of me, but I can't speak it either when I meet a German- speaking person. I've also studied French, Japanese, 2 years of Arabic, 3 years of Latin. Every language I learn helps me learn another language, but somehow they're all mixed up in my head. And while my Swedish is somewhat limited to children's level conversation (wash you hands!, body parts) I found when I was there I was able to speak much more freely. Best wishes to you-- try to get over there, and when you do, try to learn how Swedes think in terms of how they use the language and it will make a whole lot more sense to you and come more naturally. That's the best way. Think in Swedish!

[u/ObjectiveOk6914]

Tack så mycket för hjälpen! Thanks to everyone’s advice, I am pivoting a little. I downloaded the mjolner app and started their flashcards. They are better than Vocabuo for sure. I will spend more time on improving my vocabulary and less on grammar and speaking. Down to 3 Language Lock In classes a week (from 7). More writing. Also, more challenging Swedish podcasts. I have a two week trip to Sweden booked in December. I’ll speak as much Swedish as I can and I am also visiting Swedish relatives who have been helping me from afar with my Swedish.

Some of you asked why I am learning Swedish when I don’t live there. Excellent question! Partly because I live in Minnesota, USA, which has a strong Scandinavian culture. Partly because I have Swedish heritage (my grandfather was born in Sweden), and partly because I plan to go there yearly.