The Most Common Mistake Intermediate Language Learners Make

I've fallen into it countless times and I just realized I did it again.

Photo de Qingbao Meng sur Unsplash

I’m back to writing in Chinese in my diary these days.

Every day, I write a few sentences about my day, thoughts, or plans in Chinese. Nothing big. Just something so I can get some practice writing and create my sentences with my own words.

That’s where the main error lies.

When you start a language, you lack, well, everything. Every word you need is new. Every grammar pattern exotic. If you want to create a sentence from scratch, you need to look up tons of things.

That doesn’t happen as much when you reach the intermediate level.

If you want to write something complicated, you can. By using simple words and going in roundabouts. And that’s exactly what intermediate language learners tend to do too often.

You cannot improve unless you push past comfort.

If you rely exclusively on knowledge you already have, you’re bound to be stuck in that (god-awfully frustrating) stage that is the plateau.

The realization

I realized I was doing it again for Chinese when I encountered the particle 地 in an article I was trying to read to improve my reading skills. I’ve seen it tons of times and kinda get its meaning but I have not used it once in my entire life outside of exercises specifically for it over 10 years ago.

Moments later, I saw another sentence with the particle 把. This one I know well and how it works. I also know it’s a sentence structure I’m extremely uncomfortable with since it requires you to say the object before the verb, as in 我把鑰匙給他。（literally “I the key gave him”).¹

Between my native French which puts objects after the verb, and languages I handle well such as Japanese and Korean which put the verb at the very end, this in-between method feels unnatural. I can create sentences if I concentrate hard but don’t ever expect me to do so in the middle of a conversation or even understand it then. My brain’s way too slow to process it.

And we’re talking about very common particles used in Chinese. Someone focused on learning Mandarin would likely get this covered within their first few months, or at least first year.

I’ve been learning Chinese on and off for 13 years!

Now. It’s easy to look down on oneself for something we “should” know by now. I’ve done it too many times and been reminded enough times by friends that I’ve also learned and improved drastically other languages in this period so it’s fine for me not to have mastered basics like these.

It’s not a reason to let it go this time around though. I’ve noticed it so it’s time to do something about it.

Working on what’s hard

I’m a big proponent of getting a lot of exposure so what feels hard becomes easy. That’s also why I often say it’s better to just watch a bit of a video rather than doing Duolingo. At least you’re getting in-context clues, not sentences about owls and bears eating pineapples.

Exposure works. To a certain extent.

If we want to overcome certain barriers, we have to put ourselves in uncomfortable situations, concentrate and push through until it finally sticks.

There are many ways to do so. What I’ve chosen this time around, however, is quite straight forward:

• Read up about these two patterns to refresh my memory on them so I don’t feel how they’re used but rather understand.

• Listen to a deep-dive NotebookLM podcast about them.

• Write at least one sentence using each in my diary every single day.

• Actively look for these two whenever I read a new text or watch a video.

• Once or twice a week, do an exercise in ChatGPT until I get all the questions correct 3 times in a row.

I know. There’s nothing extraordinary. But it doesn’t have to be so special.

I’m pushing past the discomfort. Gaining confidence in my skills. Improving.

I’m not relying on what I know and getting stuck at the same level anymore and it feels great.

If you’re an intermediate learner, I recommend doing the same and finding one or two specific topics you might want to dig deep in. Depth can bring much more satisfaction and improvement than width.

Cheers for reading,
Mathias²

1. Some may point out that putting the object before the verb is quite standard in Japanese or Korean but what fumbles me is that I need to add a particle before the object itself, which means I need to think of the particle before my brain even think of the word. How’s that supposed to work?

2. This piece was written in late 2025. I’ve since then stopped writing daily but 地 and 得 aren’t so scary anymore thanks to these exercises.