Your first language is not a barrier — it's a scaffold. The research is clear: multilinguals learn new languages faster. The key is conscious transfer: use the L1 deliberately, then step away from it.
1. What is a language plateau? A stage where progress feels invisible but consolidation is still happening in the brain.
1. Is code-switching a sign of not knowing a language? No — research shows it's a feature of high proficiency in both languages, not low proficiency in either.
📖 From the teacher's desk: At 40-something, I completed the Cambridge CELTA course — sitting alongside trainees half my age, writing assignments, being observed teaching, receiving feedback. It was humbling and energising in equal measure.…
📖 From the teacher's desk: English and Bengali are my native languages. I learned French as an adult here in La Réunion — I even passed the DCL exam at C1 level, which proved to…
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Code-switching is the natural alternation between languages in a multilingual speaker. It is sophisticated — not lazy or confused.
I learned French to C1 level as an adult, entirely outside a classroom. Here's the vocabulary that made the difference.
For most of my life I treated my languages as noise and proof of distraction. Undiagnosed ADHD turned my strengths into accusations; this is how I learnt to name them correctly.
“I’m just not a languages person.” Why Sartre would call that bad faith, what research says about aptitude and speaking anxiety, and what I do about it in the classroom.
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Sourov Deb EI · SIRET 106 764 061 00011 · Saint-Pierre, La Réunion