This is a situation I observe often among language learners. They complete a 56- or 84-hour training program, listen to English audio, watch films in the original version… and yet, sometimes, a frustration appears:

“I’m making the effort, but I don’t really see any progress.”

This frustration is understandable. When we invest time and energy in learning a language, we want to see the results of our efforts. But in some cases, an essential element is missing from the equation.

Today, we have access to extraordinary tools:

• automatic translators to write emails
• subtitles for watching films
• apps that provide answers immediately
• digital assistants that rephrase our sentences

These technologies are useful. They make our daily lives easier.

But when it comes to language learning, they can sometimes create the illusion of progress.

Let’s take two very common situations.

A learner:

• uses a translator to write an email in English
• watches a film with subtitles.

In both cases, the task is completed. But the brain itself has not really learned.

Because the cognitive effort — the effort of searching for a word, reformulating an idea, tolerating a degree of uncertainty — has been bypassed.

Research in cognitive psychology shows that durable learning follows a simple principle: the brain consolidates what costs effort. Researcher Robert A. Bjork refers to this as “desirable difficulties”: certain difficulties in the learning process strengthen long-term memory.

In other words, when we have to guess the meaning of a sentence or rephrase an idea using limited vocabulary, the brain creates much stronger neural connections.

By contrast, when the answer appears immediately through a translator, a subtitle — or is given by the facilitator 😉 — the information passes through… but it does not stick.

This phenomenon does not concern language learning alone.

After decades of rising IQ scores — a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect, identified by James R. Flynn — some studies now show a stagnation, and even a decline, in cognitive performance in several Western countries.

The causes are multiple, but some researchers point to the impact of an environment where answers are always instantly available.

We have more information than ever before.

But we engage our capacity for deep thinking less and less.

The good news is that progress always appears once the balance is restored.

Learning then becomes what it has always been: a process that can sometimes be demanding, but profoundly transformative.

Hana Bowcott