To learn a language, you need to struggle a little.

I have just started Czech, about a week ago. When I listen without reading, I mostly don’t understand. When I listen to a text where I have looked up all the words, I understand. I don’t mind. I know I wil get there. I just started.

What is really interesting is that my Russian has noticeably improved since I started Czech. The moral of the story. We need to challenge and stimulate our brain. If things are too easy we don’t learn as much.But if we make things difficult and then offer easy things to learn, we learn these easy things more easily, so to speak.

That is why it is useful to vary easy content with difficult content, and not just stick with content at our level, graded readers and the like. That is why we do our kid a disservice by spoon feeding them in school. Let learners struggle a little. Then make it easier again. They will be beter able to focus on these easy things that would otherwise just have bored them or passed them by.

That is my experience. What do others think?