Topic Talk | What should I do when I get stuck?

In this episode of The A to Z English Podcast, Jack gives students three strategies they can use when they get stuck. Transcript: 00:00:01 Jack Welcome to the A to Z English podcast. My name is Jack and today I have a solo episode and today I'm doing a topic talk episode and the topic is what to do. 00:00:17 Jack When you are stuck. OK, So what to do when you are stuck and what I mean by that is. 00:00:27 Jack Whenever you try to learn something new, like if you're trying to learn the guitar, or if you're trying to learn a new language like learning English. 00:00:37 Jack There's gonna be times where you get stuck. OK, we call this a plateau and a plateau is like a a flat surface, right. You go up, up, up and then you hit a a kind of ceiling. 00:00:54 Jack And then you hit a plateau and you're you. You don't improve for a while. You get stuck, OK? 00:01:02 Jack And I've got 3. 00:01:04 Jack Strategies that you can employ when you when this happens to you during your English language journey. 00:01:13 Jack And the very the first one is the first strategy that I would use if I were you and you're you're studying English, you're learning English, and then you just feel like you're stuck. You're not getting better. 00:01:28 Jack Walk away. Take a break. OK? Just take a vacation. 00:01:33 Jack Because sometimes you're just your your brain is overstimulated, right? You've just been studying, studying, studying and and going to online classes and and everything has just been your whole world is just English, English, English and you're so. 00:01:52 Jack You're so focused on it. 00:01:56 Jack That you're. 00:01:57 Jack That you're you're overwhelmed. OK, you're you're overwhelmed and over stimulated. And that's actually not necessarily a good state to to be in if you wanna. If you want to improve. 00:02:10 Jack In something when you want to improve in something, you want to be in a flow state, right? A flow state is where you're having fun. It's challenging, but it's not too easy and not too difficult. And when you're just overloaded with too many things and you're putting too much focus and too much pressure on yourself. 00:02:29 Jack Then you you're actually not in a flow state, you're not in a good place to improve. So what I would do in that situation is just take a break, maybe two days, maybe 3 days, maybe a week, and just walk away from the whole thing and just be like I'm done, OK? 00:02:48 Jack I used to be an athlete when I was in high school and college. I was a basketball player. 00:02:54 Jack And The funny thing is, we would practice every day, but during the vacation, the Christmas vacation, we would have about five or seven days off, which is that's a long vacation for in the middle of a season, right? If you're if you're supposed to be playing, you know, every weekend, you don't really, you don't usually take. 00:03:14 Jack Five days off in a row. 00:03:16 Jack Though, but The funny thing is, is that what I noticed is that after 5 days of not playing basketball, when I came back I was able to jump much higher than I was before because my legs were not tired anymore. My legs had had had basically rested. 00:03:37 Jack And they've got they got stronger, or at least they were more rested. So when I came back, I actually found that when I was jumping, I was able to dunk the basketball much easier than I was when I was playing every day. 00:03:54 Jack And so that's kind of an interesting. An interesting thing is that when sometimes when you walk away, you get a little bit stronger because you start you, you start resting, your brain is resting, your mind is resting. And then when you come back, you're much sharper. So your English might actually be better. So sometimes taking a break and just walking away from something. 00:04:17 Jack Is not a bad thing that can be a good thing. 00:04:21 Jack #2 change up your strategies, so if you're focusing a lot on on conversation, do go to listening. 00:04:31 Jack OK, just stop doin