2

Set Yourself Up for Success

Well Begun Is Half Done

Well begun is half done.

—attributed to both Aristotle and Mary Poppins

Imagine an adult learner who has just enrolled in his first Japanese class. This student decides that the best way to learn the ninety-two modern written kana that represent the sounds of Japanese is to create a practice book. For each kana, he creates a separate page. At the top of the page he affixes a picture of the kana with a diagram showing the stroke order. The rest of the page contains uniform blank squares for writing practice. He arranges these sheets into two notebooks (one for hiragana, the other katakana) and creates attractive covers so that he can take the notebooks with him to practice whenever he has free time. The problem with this strategy is that he spends all his time preparing to study the kana—but not actually studying them. What he sees as good preparation is really wasted time (and paper). By the second week of class he lags behind the other students and ends up dropping the class midway through the term. Clearly, this student did not begin well. But what exactly went wrong?

When it comes to studying a foreign language, beginning well doesn’t start on the first day of class or the first day in a foreign country. It starts with the decision to study the language: if this decision is not entered into wisely, the actual study of the language will be surprisingly difficult. Faulty decision making can cause students to question their abilities, which then leads to decreased motivation and consequently more struggling with the language. Such a downward spiral culminates in disappointment and disillusionment. Because cognitive scientists study how people make decisions, their research in this area can help with the decision on where, when, and how to study a foreign language. That is the best way to begin well.

Although some people make decisions by adding up perceived pros and cons in a loosely mathematical way, that approach doesn’t work with complex decisions such as whether to start (or restart) studying a foreign language. As in most of life, when it comes to these kinds of decisions, there is no precise formula to guide us. Decisions on complex issues like studying a foreign language must be approached flexibly, because these decisions are invariably made in the absence of complete information. One reason for disappointment with foreign language learning is that the decision is often made without a realistic appraisal of what it will take to succeed—or without even knowing how to define success. Whether they know it or not, even for individuals who have successfully studied one foreign language, the decision to study another one still requires a good deal of forethought. But it is possible to master a “super hard” language like Chinese but not a “world language” like French—it happens more often than you’d expect.

Whenever people make decisions, big or small, in the face of such uncertainty, they rely on cognitive strategies called heuristics. These mental shortcuts, or rules of thumb, are “good enough” strategies that can be resorted to when a decision must be made in the face of unknown and unknowable information (which is most of the time). And often enough, using heuristics to make a decision is a smart option.

One very useful heuristic strategy is called the availability heuristic, which states that the more quickly and easily examples of a phenomenon can be generated mentally, the more common that phenomenon is likely to be. Let’s try it. Which name is more common in the United States: Mary or Matilda? One way to answer this question would be to search the Internet for relevant statistics about baby names. But in this case you probably don’t feel the need to do so, since you can come up with the right answer more quickly using the availability heuristic. You would probably say the name Mary is more common, since you can think of more people named Mary than you can think of people named Matilda. This is the beauty of the availability heuristic: it is quick, easy, and most of the time leads to an answer that is good enough for the circumstances. In case you doubt the power of heuristic strategies, they are generally so useful and so efficient that cognitive scientists who work in the area of artificial intelligence have long sought ways to teach computers how to take advantage of them.¹

Unfortunately, like all heuristics, the availability heuristic is not foolproof. For example, people are more likely to buy earthquake insurance immediately after an earthquake. But they tend to drop coverage over time, because as the memory of the earthquake fades, the necessity of earthquake insurance seems less urgent—when in fact, the likelihood of an earthquake is actually increasing as time passes without one.²

The point here is not to avoid using the availability heuristic—that would be impossible. Rather, the point is that for all their strengths, heuristics have weaknesses that can sabotage the best-laid plans. This is especially true when it comes to studying a foreign language as an adult.

Related to the availability heuristic is the simulation heuristic, which works in much the same way, but which inadvertently can lead to frustration for the adult language learner. According to the simulation heuristic, the more quickly and easily you can create a mental scenario in which an event occurs, the more likely you will be to predict that the event will occur. For example, how likely is it that you will become president of the United States? To answer this question, you need to create a mental simulation in which you think about all the things that would have to happen for you to become the president: the more things that would have to happen, the more unlikely the outcome will seem to you. If you are like Roger or Richard, the possibility of becoming president will seem quite remote. If you are the vice president, it will seem less so.

As with the availability heuristic, to simulate becoming the president, you must access your memory for relevant information. As you do, you will be influenced by how quickly you can access this information from memory and also by how relevant it is to the scenario you are creating. Experiences that you recall easily and that seem similar to the present scenario will add to your confidence. For example, if you successfully ran for the governor of a state, you could more easily imagine a situation where you are elected president than if you had only successfully run for class treasurer in high school.

In the same way, deciding to study a foreign language requires visualizing what it will take to reach a desired level of competence. But once you decide to study a foreign language, if you don’t reach your goal, is the reason that you, as an adult, have difficulties learning a foreign language, or could it be that the simulation heuristic failed you in some important ways? Let’s explore some weaknesses in the simulation heuristic that, if avoided, can help better predict what it will take to successfully master a foreign language.

One reason a simulation does not always align with the actual outcome of an event is because of a trap called the planning fallacy.³ The planning fallacy is the tendency to underestimate how much time, effort, or money it will take to accomplish a goal. This is because we tend to be overly confident about our ability to reach a goal and misjudge the resources that are required. One need only look at the nightly news to see examples of where the planning fallacy has derailed outcome expectations.

We become susceptible to a planning fallacy when we focus too much on the good things that will happen when we achieve a goal and not enough on the resources it will take for us to reach that goal. For example, in deciding to study a foreign language, you might think about how wonderful it will be to order food in a restaurant, flirt, or read a local newspaper. Thinking about outcomes can be motivating, but they should not form the core of the decision-making process. One way to avoid the planning fallacy, therefore, is to separate the reasons for wanting to master a language from the specific steps that must be accomplished in order to master it.

In a mental simulation, focusing on the process of what it will take to reach a goal results in better planning than focusing on the outcome of what will happen once the goal is achieved. Not only does such process-focused planning result in a greater probability of actually reaching the goal, it also reduces stress along the way.⁴ In other words, in deciding whether or not to study French, think about how each day must be structured in order to find the time to study, rather than how great it will be to toss off witty bons mots at the café Les Deux Magots.

Another reason for incorrect planning when creating a mental simulation is the tendency to be overly optimistic about the outcome of events. The simulation is often based on an ideal situation where everything goes exactly as planned, without taking into consideration all of the things that could go wrong. For example, Richard decided to spend a month in Brazil studying Portuguese. He thought that a month would give him enough time to reach the level of mastery he needed to take a telephone test in Portuguese for the Foreign Service. To do this, Richard went to Rio de Janeiro, enrolled in a Portuguese language class, and was mugged the day he arrived. That certainly wasn’t the fault of the Portuguese language, and it may in fact have been a good thing since he became more careful afterward, but he also spent more time in his hotel room and not out meeting people. Consequently, Richard did not improve his Portuguese as rapidly as he had expected, he did not pass the telephone test, and he had to spend another month studying in Brazil the following year. The moral of the story is not to avoid being mugged (though that is also good advice), but to expect the unexpected when charting a course of action. Doing so will lead to less frustration when things don’t go as planned—and they won’t.

Finally, because the simulation heuristic works well most of the time, when it doesn’t, people blame their own abilities—or worse, those of others—rather than recognizing the real culprit: how the heuristic was used. Such blame may be reinforced by what is called counterfactual thinking, which is a mental simulation that occurs after the fact and focuses on what might have been. For example, who do you think is happier to be standing on the winners’ platform during the Olympics—the silver medalist or the bronze medalist? Even though silver is higher than bronze, the smile of the bronze medalist is usually much brighter than that of the silver medalist. The bronze medalist can easily create a simulation whereby she came in fourth; the silver medalist can just as easily create a simulation whereby he captured the gold.⁵

Once you’ve made the decision to study a foreign language, some other heuristics can also adversely affect the outcome. One of these is called anchoring and adjustment. This heuristic specifies that it is difficult for us to move very far away from what we have initially decided—even when the reality of the situation necessitates a change in plans. For example, adult language learners may slavishly follow a preset lesson plan (i.e., the anchor) even when it becomes clear that it is not very effective. Although we may make minor adjustments to plans when something is not proceeding well, it is unlikely that we will make the kind of drastic changes that are often needed. You probably know someone who continued to create and study flashcards in order to memorize vocabulary words when, in fact, this strategy was not particularly effective. He might have adjusted the task by studying fewer flashcards at a time, or by switching from index cards to an electronic format; however, he never considered simply abandoning the anchor, that is, to stop using flashcards altogether.

A related error in decision making that can trip up even the most dedicated language learner is the confirmation bias, which happens when people give more credence to information that confirms their beliefs, while at the same time ignoring or discounting information that goes against these beliefs. The confirmation bias works against groups and individuals both in planning and carrying out a course of action. By ignoring contradictory feedback, we lose the opportunity to make changes that could drastically improve the probability of success. It can be a problem of Titanic proportions, so to speak.

Consider the first myth of this book: Adults cannot acquire a foreign language as easily as children. Meeting an adult who tried but failed to learn a foreign language failure confirms the belief. Meeting an adult who succeeded is written off as a fluke, when in fact, plenty of people can and do successfully master a foreign language in adulthood.

The confirmation bias is at work in all kinds of stereotypes—take your pick. Once you know what to look for, it’s easy to see, but it’s not so easy to change. Interestingly, negative stereotypes about aging can affect more than just one’s attitude about language learning; they can also affect one’s health. For example, maintaining positive beliefs about aging is associated with fewer cardiovascular incidents.⁶

For all of their strengths, given the various ways heuristic strategies can fail, it’s no wonder that highly motivated adults sometimes abandon their foreign language studies. They blame themselves or their teachers for the failure, when a lack of insight into the decision-making process set them up to fail in the first place. Perhaps saddest of all, once the decision to abandon foreign language study is made, a final heuristic rears its ugly head: the hindsight bias. This is when they look back at the failure and say to themselves, “I knew it would happen all along.”⁷

Caution: Contents May Be Habit Forming

If it’s been a while since you were a student, you probably don’t relish the prospect of developing study habits for learning a foreign language. However, just studying a little bit every day is one of the most efficient ways to allocate your time. Fortunately, the successful formation of habits is something that psychologists know a great deal about. Unfortunately, it is also something that is discussed in a very simplistic way in the media, so what you’ve heard about habit formation may not be entirely accurate. It is necessary, therefore, to start by addressing three questions about habit formation.

1. Does it take twenty-one days to develop a new habit?

In 1960, Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon, published a book entitled Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life. In this book, he made the claim that a whole host of phenomena require twenty-one days in order to effect a change (e.g., “People must live in a new house for about three weeks before it begins to seem like home”). It’s unclear how he arrived at this magic number for so many different things. Subsequent research, however, has shown that there is no preordained timetable required to form a new habit.⁸ So don’t think about study habits in terms of quantity—think about them terms of quality.

Try to incorporate your target language into your life as much as possible—but do it in a meaningful way. For example, there are language books that include vocabulary words on adhesive strips that can be attached to objects in your home. If you were studying Spanish, you might put the label for la cuchara (“spoon”) next to the spoons in the kitchen drawer. That way, theoretically, each time you use a spoon you’d see this word and make the association. Unfortunately, many people might just read the label, and because it feels familiar (“Yes! la cuchara means ‘spoon’!”); they don’t realize that they are only thinking about the word in a superficial way that does not make the kind of associations that lead to long-term retention.

Rather than putting labels on all of the objects in your home or office, a better habit to develop would be to remind yourself for each object you encounter that it has an equivalent in your target language. Even better than putting a label next to the spoons, when you pull a spoon out of the drawer, ask yourself if you remember the Spanish word for spoon. If not, look it up, then think of a way to associate this word with other words in the target language. Once you start remembering the word consistently when you see the object, then start making sentences using the word, for example, Necesito una cuchara para comer mis Corn Flakes. This habit of thinking more deeply about the language will pay great dividends—and you won’t have to wait twenty-one days to start seeing results.

2. Do setbacks mean that you’ve failed?

Despite the best of intentions, life events can interrupt consistent study habits. You may find yourself setting aside foreign language study for days or even weeks. This can be frustrating, but it doesn’t mean that you should abandon your goals.

The development of new habits has often been studied in the context of smoking cessation. One of the best predictors of whether people are ultimately successful in giving up smoking is the number of times they’ve managed to quit before, if only for a few days or weeks.⁹ So if you find yourself “falling off the wagon” of foreign language study, don’t take it as a sign that you can’t do it—hop back on that wagon and try again. Remember too that relearning is faster than learning, so whenever you do start again, you’ll have a head start.

3. If a little study is good, is a lot of study better?

Call this the fertilizer fallacy: if a little bit of the stuff in this bottle will make my begonias grow faster, then why shouldn’t I use all of it? The reason, as many gardeners have had occasion to learn, is that fertilizers contain soluble salts that cause root burn: the plants’ ability to absorb water and other nutrients is reduced, and the plants become dehydrated, turn yellow, and wilt.

You don’t want to give your brain root burn. Studies have consistently demonstrated that learning information a bit at a time, what cognitive scientists call distributed practice, is superior to massed practice, which is just another term for cramming.¹⁰

Suggestions for Developing Effective Language Study Habits

1. Determine what is realistic.

It might seem obvious that it is important to set goals in life. Everywhere you look, you are encouraged to “Aim High” or “Reach for the Stars.” Those are fine sentiments, but the real question is how? Cognitive scientists have long studied goal-setting behavior. The ongoing research was summed up by Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, who wrote: “Specific, high (hard) goals lead to a higher level of task performance than do easy goals or vague, abstract goals such as the exhortation to ‘do one’s best.’ So long as a person is committed to the goal, has the requisite ability to attain it, and does not have conflicting goals, there is a positive, linear relationship between goal difficulty and task performance.”¹¹

Locke and Latham’s conclusion would seem to bode well for the adult language learner. Clearly, learning a foreign language is difficult, but most adult language learners who are committed to this goal have the requisite ability to attain it, as long as they keep conflicting goals from interfering. Why then do so many adult language learners end up feeling frustrated or disappointed or dissatisfied with their language learning experience? How can you keep this from happening to you?

If your goal is to achieve native-like fluency in a “super hard” language like Chinese or Arabic by the end of the year, you may be setting yourself up for failure. A goal like that is virtually impossible to achieve, so it would be very difficult to figure out a plan of study for attaining it. You’re much better off setting realistic, short-term goals over a period of time as a way to accomplish the long-term goal. If you can achieve these subgoals, you’ll be more motivated to stick with your plan of study as time goes on.

2. Go public with your goal.

Once you’ve settled on a goal that is realistic, it can be highly motivating to share it with others. If you simply toy with the idea of undertaking foreign language learning, you may never get around to starting. If you share your goal with your spouse, or a friend or sibling, they’re likely to inquire periodically about your progress. It would be embarrassing to keep telling them that you haven’t even begun, so this can be another form of motivation.

3. Find a study buddy.

Some people who start running find it helpful to run with a partner. It’s a lot easier to blow off your daily run when the only person it affects is you. It’s much harder to skip a day when your running partner comes knocking on your door. Unfortunately, finding someone who wants to study the same language may be difficult. And if one of you already has some knowledge of the language, this can make the less knowledgeable partner feel like they’re behind. If you’re taking a course, you might be able to partner with a classmate of similar ability. You also might be able to find a study partner online.

4. Study at the same time each day.

Most of us have a preferred time of day for accomplishing important tasks. Some find the quiet of early morning to be best for study and writing, while others are night owls, and do their best work late in the day. As an adult language learner, you probably have a good sense of what works best for you. Studying every morning before or after breakfast, or late at night, before a midnight snack, might be options to consider. If you’re consistent about this, then the time of day will serve as a trigger and reminder for your study.

A Sense of Self

As you consider your goal of learning a foreign language, there are many factors you need to keep in mind: your motivation, how much time you’ll have for study, and whether or not to take formal classes in your target language. You’ll wonder whether you’re too old for such an undertaking (you’re not!). How much support will you get from friends and family? Will the effort required be worth it? How will it feel if you expend a great deal of effort, only to be dissatisfied with your level of fluency? Only you can answer some of these questions, but it may be helpful to consider some concepts from social psychology that are relevant to these issues.

The term self-efficacy was coined by Albert Bandura in the early 1970s to refer to a person’s belief in her ability to accomplish something: to perform a task, reach a goal, or overcome an obstacle.¹² However, it’s important to understand that one’s self-efficacy can vary greatly from one domain to another. Perhaps you’re a wizard in the kitchen: you can assemble a tasty and nutritious meal given almost any set of ingredients, you frequently watch cooking shows, and you love to try out new recipes. The self-efficacy you possess in this sphere of your life is high: you love to challenge yourself, and you derive a great deal of satisfaction from your mastery of cooking. In another sphere, however, your feelings may be decidedly different. If you’re one of the many people who find internal combustion engines to be a complete mystery, you will have low self-efficacy with regard to automotive matters. You might feel helpless and depressed when your car isn’t running well, and a visit to the repair shop may fill you with dread. You never understand what the mechanic is talking about, and you have no way of determining whether the bill for repairs is reasonable or not. So clearly, one’s perceived level of self-efficacy can vary greatly across the different arenas of one’s life.

An important thing to remember is that low self-efficacy can be a trap: it can keep even the most motivated person from trying to master things at a later point in time. Unfortunately, experiences that shape self-efficacy may happen early in life, and the memory of an unfortunate episode can last a lifetime. For example, in talking to people about the subject of this book, Richard and Roger frequently encountered negative reactions to foreign language learning. “Oh, I’m not any good at foreign languages,” they might say, averting their eyes as if this were some sort of moral failing. “I studied Spanish in high school, and barely earned passing grades. The teachers made fun of my accent, and I hated studying something that I knew I would never use.” So a negative experience with one language can lead to a generalized low self-efficacy with regard to learning any foreign language, in any context, and for any purpose.¹³

If you have feelings of low self-efficacy, then failing to achieve your hoped-for level of fluency might be the expected result. Psychologists have a name for that as well: it’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because you expect a certain negative outcome, you may sabotage your efforts at mastery without even realizing it. And low self-efficacy can have a pernicious effect on your motivation, the time you spend in instruction and study, and may ultimately lead to abandoning the enterprise altogether. And this outcome will make sense to you: “I never was any good at French when I was a sophomore, so I’m not surprised that I can’t learn it now.”

How, then, does an adult overcome feelings of low self-efficacy in language learning that may have persisted since childhood? First of all, be sure not to confuse self-efficacy with self-esteem. Self-esteem refers to your overall evaluation of your worth as an individual. You can have a healthy level of self-esteem and still have feelings of low self-efficacy for certain domains (such as language learning).

Second, the best way to overcome low self-efficacy is to take practical steps to develop mastery in the desired domain. Because self-efficacy is based on doing, not being, it can be transformed through learning. The goal of this book is to help adult language learners develop a sense of self-efficacy for language learning, even if that has not been their experience in the past. Rather than think about language learning as one domain, break the different aspects of language learning into more basic units. Then start building self-efficacy by first emphasizing those aspects of language learning in which you generally do well in other domains. For example, if you know that you have a good verbal memory, then concentrate on building a large vocabulary. If you know you’re a person who needs to see or hear things repeatedly before they make sense, then load up your iPhone with practice conversations. If you know you thrive on structure and organization, then create detailed diagrams as reference material. And if you’re more of a free spirit, make impromptu phone calls to a fluent friend to practice your conversational skills. It doesn’t matter what you do to get started, as long as you do what you’re good at. As you continue to improve, your self-efficacy will grow. As an adult language learner, you have the gift of insight—something younger learners lack. Don’t be afraid to take advantage of it.

Trying Hard Not to Try Hard

Martina Navratilova was a force of nature in the tennis world throughout the 1970s and ’80s. She won dozens of singles and doubles titles, and was clearly one of the strongest and most consistent players of her generation. One of the cruel realities of the sporting world, however, is that you can’t stay on top forever. By the late 1980s, Navratilova had passed the age of thirty, and younger players were beginning to threaten her. At the French Open in 1987, she lost to the eighteen-year old Steffi Graf. In the same year, she was beaten by the sixteen-year old Gabriela Sabatini in the Italian Open. When interviewed about these defeats, Navratilova’s response was revealing. She said:

I was afraid to play my best. I felt so threatened by those young kids coming up, Graf particularly, wondering whether they were better than me … I daren’t give those matches 100 per cent.

The idea that a world-class tennis player would intentionally undercut her own performance may seem quite strange. Why on earth would she do this, particularly against opponents who would seem to require all of her skill? Navratilova herself provided the answer in the very next sentence of the interview:

I was scared to find out if they could beat me when I’m playing my best because, if they can, then I am finished.

Welcome to the world of inverted logic known as self-handicapping.¹⁴ And it’s not just tennis stars or other athletes who fall prey to this destructive behavior. Self-handicapping is doubly harmful because since it leads to failure, and neatly provides a ready-made excuse for that failure.

Imagine a college student who has an important exam the following day. The test is in a course he’s been having problems with, and he’s not sure how well he will do. Nevertheless, he spends the night before drinking with his frat brothers instead of studying. Paradoxically, this student now has all of his bases covered. If he does poorly on the test the following day, he can make what researchers call a situational attribution: “I would have done okay if I hadn’t gotten drunk last night.” This makes sense—everyone knows that taking a test while hungover will not truly reflect one’s ability. But now imagine the other possible outcome: the student actually does well on the exam. Now his success seems even more impressive: “I got a good grade even though I spent the night drinking with my buddies. I must be freakin’ brilliant!”

Research has shown that individuals will do almost anything to avoid a downward revision in their perceptions of themselves. And as both Navratilova and this hypothetical student demonstrate, this includes doing things that are actually quite harmful (deliberately not playing at one’s best, or not studying for an exam). However, this also means that they won’t perform as well as they could have. Apparently, this outcome is preferable to the one in which the student studies hard, and fails the test. And Navratilova was able to convince herself that she still could compete at the highest level of her sport, even as she allegedly allowed other, younger players to beat her.

As with self-efficacy, self-handicapping will vary depending on the context and situation. Researchers have characterized self-handicapping as either situational or as chronic. Letting your young nephew beat you at chess would be an example of the former—you don’t want to crush his spirit by playing your best when he’s still learning the game, and it won’t keep you from trying as hard as you can to defeat your brother when you play him. However, self-handicapping can also become a way of life, as in the case of someone who persistently abuses drugs or alcohol.¹⁵

Keeping this discussion of self-efficacy, self-fulfilling prophecy, and self-handicapping in mind, therefore, may lessen anxiety about trying to achieve proficiency later in adulthood.¹⁶ Don’t assume that a particular outcome in the past is predictive of what can be achieved now and in the future. Capitalize on what works well, and don’t let fear of failure keep you from trying your best.

Getting in the Zone

In your pursuit of proficiency in a foreign language, it’s important that you study topics that are neither too easy nor too difficult for you at any given point in time. This is particularly true if you’re studying a language largely on your own. If you already have a working knowledge of Greek, for example, it wouldn’t be very helpful to spend all of your time studying basic vocabulary or completing elementary exercises, although as we will see in chapter 7, some overlearning can be beneficial. Although it may make you feel good about yourself to effortlessly rattle off simple phrases like “Where is the train station?” ultimately, rehearsing only easy material is not the best use of your study time. By the same token, if you’re a beginner, then jumping into a difficult topic, like the grammar for a language’s subjunctive mood, is not time well spent either.

This means that, at each point during the study of your target language, some topics and exercises will be most appropriate to your current level of expertise. Just ask Goldilocks, who found some of the bears’ porridge either too hot or too cold. Like her, you are looking for topics that are “just right,” given your current mastery of the material. The trick is to find this territory.

The concept we’re referring to is well known in educational circles, although it has gone by different names at different times. Perhaps the first and most famous name for this concept was offered by the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. In the early 1930s, he coined the term “zone of proximal development” (or ZPD) to refer to the metaphorical region between what a learner can do without help, and what a learner can do only with assistance from a guide or teacher.¹⁷

Educators also use other terms that have much the same flavor as the ZPD. For example, teachers and school psychologists talk about the concept of readiness—the cognitive state when a person will benefit from a particular educational experience. First-grade schoolchildren are not cognitively ready to study calculus, nor do they have the requisite knowledge of the mathematics that would be involved. However, they are ready to understand more concrete concepts like counting along a number line.

Sometimes, events that are unplanned or unexpected are used to foster understanding of a concept that lies within a person’s ZPD. At the time we drafted this section of the book, the US news was dominated by the announcement that the city of Detroit had declared bankruptcy. Several commentators referred to this event as a teachable moment for understanding the economic challenges faced by large postindustrial cities in the United States. Few of us would willingly seek out arcane information about bankruptcy law, public policy, and pension obligations. However, the significance of Detroit’s bankruptcy meant that millions of people were now ready to learn more about these principles of macroeconomics.

Another idea that is popular in educational circles is the concept of scaffolding. Just as a physical scaffold can provide support for painters and other artisans, a teacher can provide support to his or her pupils to help them master something that they can’t learn on their own. And in some fields, it’s assumed that once mastery is gained, it should be passed on to others as quickly as possible. Medical residents become familiar with the phrase “Watch one, do one, teach one.” Doctors in their residency have to learn so many procedures that they don’t have the benefit of observing, say, dozens of lumbar punctures before attempting the procedure themselves. Mastery is assumed to occur after witnessing one such operation and then a successful performance of one’s own. Once a resident has successfully performed the procedure, she then can serve as the scaffold for the next doctor in training.

All of this has important implications for the adult foreign language learner. Although your neighbor down the street may be a native speaker of your target language and is willing to converse with you, he may assume that you will progress more quickly than you actually can. As you gain mastery of the foreign language, you’ll begin to have a sense of your strengths and weaknesses—what’s easy for you, and what typically takes you a bit more time to understand and master. You probably don’t have unlimited time to study the language, so your goal should be to use your time as efficiently as possible. This means that you’ll want to get in the zone—the zone of proximal development. If you find yourself completing exercises or engaging in conversations that are quite easy for you, it would be wise to increase the level of difficulty. And if your conversational partner is enthusiastically barreling along on a topic that’s way over your head, it’s up to you to intervene and ask to go more slowly or to provide simpler examples. Remember, just being a native speaker of a language does not make someone an effective teacher. As an adult learner you have the ability to gauge for yourself whether or not you are in the zone and make the appropriate adjustments.¹⁸

Think about it this way: The best way to improve your tennis game is to play against someone who is just a little bit better than you are. If you play against someone worse than you are, you’ll be helping her—but you’ll never get better yourself. If you play against someone who is much better than you, then you won’t improve your game either, unless she is willing to play at a level just a little bit better than you are. Whether learning a language or playing tennis, recognizing when you are in the zone is one of the most important metacognitive skills any adult learner can develop. The ability to “think about your thinking” allows you to optimize your learning environment—on the court or in the classroom.