We recently announced that one of our team members – Mike – will attempt to learn Italian in 2 months. To be more specific, Mike’s mission is to reach “The Shift” as fast as he can.

“The Shift” is the point in the language learning curve when conversations finally stop sucking. 

In this post, we are going to talk about this point in more detail. We will also talk about Mike’s tactics and timeline for reaching The Shift as fast as possible.

Why Learning a Language Sucks at the Start

Anyone who’s tried to learn a foreign language knows: conversations suck at the beginning.

First off, you have NO idea what the hell anyone is talking about. People are talking too fast and using too many words you don’t know. But you have to pretend like you understand, otherwise people won’t speak with you in the first place.

Then when it’s your time to speak, it’s impossible NOT to sound like a fool. You either take forever to find the words, or you stutter.

In either case, there is an obvious slowdown in the conversational momentum. And you can’t help but feel like everyone is secretly hating you for killing the vibe. 

I’ve learned five foreign languages, and the starting period sucked all five times.  It’s gonna suck for you with your target language, and it’s gonna suck for Mike with Italian.

It only stops sucking when Mike reaches “The Shift.”

The Language Learning Shift

It can be difficult to describe “The Shift” to anyone who’s never experienced it. This is because it is an internal experience for the language learner. Here’s how Mike will recognize that he has reach “The Shift” in his Italian learning curve:

One day Mike will enter an Italian conversation and think: “Holy $h*t, I know what you’re saying!” This will surprise him, because just the day before he would have been struggling. There will be a quantum leap in in Italian comprehension.

Mike will finally feel like he knows what’s going on in conversations. 

Then he’ll try to speak and find the words flowing out of him with way less effort than normal. It will feel like something “clicked” in his ears, mouth and brain.

To be sure, he will still make grammatical mistakes. He’ll still say “umm” and “ahh”, but he’ll be able to express himself much faster. So Mike won’t feel like he’s slowing down the conversation for everyone else. He will start to feel like an equal participant and want to contribute.

Conversations will no longer be something that Mike dreads. Instead, they will be something he looks forward to.

Once he reaches this stage, his learning progress will skyrocket. He will be able to pick up new words and expressions every conversation. The excitement will push him forward to more advanced levels of oral fluency. You will see this first hand as Mike makes his weekly update videos.

Language Memory After The Shift

In the video game Super Mario, your goal is to sprint through a mass of obstacles and enemies without dying. If you die too early, you have to start the level at the beginning. But not if you reach a checkpoint before you die.

The checkpoint is the white horizontal line between the two blue pillars, in the photo below. If you die after passing through this point, you will start from this point instead of the beginning.

The Shift is like the Super Mario Checkpoint of language learning. 

If you can get to The Shift, you can go a long time without speaking the language and still not “lose” it. You will definitely forget lots of words, and the language will go dormant, but you won’t lose it for good.

For example, when I learned Portuguese, it completely replaced my Spanish. If I started a phrase in Spanish, I would inevitably end it in Portuguese. I feared that I had completely lost my Spanish.

But thankfully I had reached The Shift in Spanish years earlier. So when I went to Colombia years later, I was able to reactivate my Spanish in just two weeks of immersion. 

Portuguese was like the turtle shell that took out my Spanish Mario. But since I reached the Shift, I was back on my feet in no time.

Compare this to your high school Spanish, or French or whatever it may be. Academic programs always focus on Learning by Eye with reading and writing. The emphasis is never on conversation.

As a result, no one reaches “The Shift”, and everyone over the age of 21 says the same thing: “I took such-and-such language for years in school and I can’t remember a thing!”

Moral of the story – Sprint toward The Shift and avoid all the goombas.

The Shift in The Mimic Method

As we explain in this post on our Method, there are 3 stages to learning a language by ear:

• Stage 1: Capacity (Hearing & Pronounciation)
• Stage 2: Conversation (Understanding & Speaking)
• Stage 3: Command (Reading & Writing)

The Mimic Method is our system for accelerating through these 3 stages. There are 9 Steps to The Mimic Method as the graphic shows below. As you can see, The Shift occurs sometime during the Spontaneous Conversation Step.

Italian Capacity Milestones

Below is a list of The Capacity Milestones Mike will hit on his way to The Shift

1. Has practical knowledge of Italian Sound System
2. Can Transcribe Italian Speech in IPA with 80% accuracy.
3. Can perfectly pronounce all Elemental Sounds of Italian
4. Can perfectly pronounce 500 highest-frequency words in Italian
5. Can sing/rap full verse of an Italian song from Memory
6. Can perfectly mimic the melody of natural Italian phrases.
7. Can perfectly mimic natural Italian phrases (without knowing the meaning).

Once Mike reaches the 7th Capacity Milestone, he will have completed Stage 1. At this stage, he still won’t know what anything means in Italian, but he’ll have a strong grasp of the sounds. With the ability to mimic Italian, Mike can pick up new Italian phrases rapidly by ear.

Italian Conversation Tactics

With his basic mastery of Italian sounds, Mike will shift his focus from sound to meaning.

It takes persistence to develop your conversational abilities in a foreign language. So there aren’t as many clear milestones as there are in the Sound Capacity stage. You just need to practice, practice again, then practice some more.

With enough conversational practice, you will eventually reach “The Shift.” 

But speed up Mike’s progress, we’re going to use some special tactics. He’ll start with Pimsleur Method to help him learn the basics. We chose to use Pimsleur because it’s the only program that trains you by ear with native speakers.

Then, Mike will add in daily iTalki sessions to practice conversing with a real native speaker. He’ll start with short 15 minute sessions with different people. Then he’ll move up to longer sessions with a teacher that he likes and gets to know deeper.

Here is our current list of his Conversation Tactics:

1. Two Pimsleur lessons a day until finished with Unit 1.
2. Two 15min iTalki Sessions + Two Pimsleur Lessons a day
3. Two 15min iTalki Sessions + Cognate vocabulary building.
4. Two 30min iTalki Sessions + Two Pimsleur Lessons a day.
5. Script Building/Memorization + Two 30 min iTalki Sessions.
6. Maximum conversation

As you can see, this is purely focused on getting conversational as quickly as possible. We will modify this according to Mike’s taste as we move along.

Italian Progress Reports

Throughout Mike’s journey, we will share all sorts of updates and tutorials. Every Tuesday, Mike will post an update video that contains the following:

• A review of what he did and how long it took
• A brief discussion of his thoughts, frustrations, emotions, etc.
• A demonstration of his current Italian ability

Every Friday, I will post a detailed analysis of Mike’s strategy for that week and how it worked for him. In these analysis posts, I will show you how to apply these techniques to your own language studies.

We’ll keep this up until Mike reaches “The Shift,” which we hope he will be December 1st. After Mike reaches the Shift, we will continue to do progress videos until Mike reaches a plateau.

At this stage, the only way to push Mike forward is to move into the “Sophisticated  Conversation” step. This step takes a lot of focus and energy, so we will leave it up to Mike to decide if he wants to continue down that road. You can check out his progress thus far in these other posts:

• Mike’s Day 21 Update
• Mike’s Day 14 Update
• Mike’s Day 7 Update
• Italian Language Learner Mission

For now, our focus is to make Italian suck a little bit less for him, day by day.