With the right approach, learning strategy, and attitude, you will make progress very quickly in
the language. In the early stages, as long as you are motivated you will keep up really good progress! However, keeping this momentum up over the long term is going to be hard!
Sometimes we can lose sight of the end goal and our level of enthusiasm can drop – if this happens, you will have reached a plateau.
The question is - do you stay here, or do you charge on to try to bring your progress back on track?
Depending on your learning style and personality, your current approach may need some tweaking if something is holding you back from reaching the next level. Too many people reach
an OK level, where they can get by and basically stop here and never improve on their level. Even
those who speak fluently, but who would like to reduce their accent or improve their proficiency level, will never do so if the way they are going about trying doesn't work for them.
In this case you need to debug the system. Thomas A. Edison was interviewed by a newspaper after 800 unsuccessful tries to make a
working light bulb. “How does it feel to have failed 800 times?” the reporter asked. And Edison’s
answer?
“I haven’t failed 800 times. I haven’t failed once. What I have done, is I have succeeded in proving
that those 800 ways won’t work. Once I eliminate all the ways that won’t work, I will find the one way that will.”
Several years later, after thousands more “successful proofs” he managed to find a way that works, and thus illuminated the world.
This is the approach that you have to take with your language-learning project.
"Several years later, after thousands more “successful proofs” he managed to find a way that works, and thus illuminated the world."
I accidentally said "unsuccessful proofs." Derp. >__>