Most language learners quit within the first 24 hours. Not 24 clock hours, but 24 hours of real practice. And if you're a beginner, chances are you're in this danger zone right now. I've been there twice with American Sign Language and Korean. I felt very excited and motivated to study at the very beginning only to find myself quitting a few weeks later. Today, I'll show you six reasons why most people quit language learning within the first 24 hours. and the exact plan to follow to get unstuck and continue improving your skills. All right,

so the first reason why most of us quit language learning within the first 24 hours is because of unrealistic expectations. We think that language learning is the super easy thing to do and is going to feel easy and effortless forever. And because of that, we underestimate the difficulty and time commitment that language learning actually requires. Many people stop practicing because they don't realize how hard it is to learn a new language. It's real work and many of us don't want to do it and so we quit. It's you know how when I watch those videos on YouTube by

polyglotss where they share their routines, they often say that language learning is their job. like they often do it for a living. It requires a lot of commitment and a lot of sacrifice. And I think this mismatch between your super high expectations that you know language learning is super easy and it's going to feel easy forever and the brutal reality that it actually takes a lot of time and effort to learn a language leads to these unpleasant feelings and unpleasant realization. You realize that the honeymoon period is over and so you give up. The initial excitement that you

felt gets replaced with realizing that, oh, now I need to learn a completely new writing system. I need to memorize new words and learn complicated grammar rules. And this exact reason, unrealistic expectations, is the second most common reason why people quit language learning so quickly. We'll talk about the first most common reason later in the video. You guys know that I do think that language learning should feel fun. And something that is going to help us make this process more fun is obviously making it easier. However, it doesn't mean that language learning always feels

easy. It doesn't mean that progress comes without any effort. That by doing nothing, you're somehow magically going to learn a new language. And that is the conversation that I had to have with myself when I started learning the American Sign Language and then Korean. Like, do I actually have the time to dedicate to all of these languages? Or maybe I can use this time to do something that is of higher priority to me right now. And for me, that was obviously Spanish because at that time, I just moved to Mexico. And so, learning Spanish was definitely my top priority. And yes,

sometimes it means stepping away from a certain language or maybe resetting your expectations and realizing that learning a new language is hard work. Unrealistic expectations can really hurt our motivation and our progress. And when you watch hours of YouTube for your studies only to forget everything a few days later, that can feel really frustrating. But with Y2Doc, you can make every second count. And I want to say a huge thank you to them for sponsoring a portion of today's video. I use Y2Doc to pull the useful parts out of long videos so I can spend my time on

actual practice, not re-watching important videos many times. Go to y2doc.com by using my link in the description. Paste the link to one of your videos. I'm going to use one of my recent videos where I talked about overcoming the intermediate plateau. And then click submit. In a few seconds, you get a clean structured document so you can read the YouTube video, not just watch it. Y2Doc can handle really large videos up to 4 hours long. It can produce up to 10,000 words per document, so nothing important gets lost. And a huge plus is that the writing is clear,

structured, and consistent. So, it's super easy to understand everything. They give me multiple export options to choose from. I prefer to use PDFs because this way I can have all of my documents saved on Google Drive. Y2Doc is an incredibly useful tool and I really like how it helps me turn a 30 minute video into 10 minutes of focus practice. If you want to give it a try too, make sure to use my link in the description. Okay, so the next reason why so many of us quit language learning is because too much too soon. The thing is, because we feel so excited at the beginning

of our language learning journey, we start doing a lot of things at once. And a lot of those things are really hard for us. Like the level is way too high. We start reading a book that we're really excited about only to realize a few pages later that it's not your level at all. It's like really, really hard for you. And so that is when too much too soon happens because there's no comprehensible input. The same overwhelm happens when you're asked to produce the language too soon. When you have to speak and write too early and you feel really stressed.

This thing right here is pretty nuanced because it really depends on your personality. For people who are extremely extroverted, they love to learn languages by speaking, by having conversations, by you know, jumping in and actually talking to native speakers. I am more introverted. So, it's really hard for me to speak and write without a lot of exposure. Like, I need that exposure to gain confidence. Otherwise, I'm just going to experience a lot of cognitive load because the information is too hard, the pressure is too high and my brain will start overheating. And so,

that is why a lot of people conclude I am bad at language learning. I quit. And that is why I talk about comprehensible input so often doing a lot of listening and a lot of reading at a level that is just slightly above your current level. Your brain needs time to absorb new patterns before it can produce them. All right, the next reason why many of us quit language learning is because of app fatigue. The thing is, language apps are designed to feel fun when you're using them. Their goal is to keep you on the app for as long as possible and then make you want to come back. So that is why

many of them use gification a lot. And this design that feels like a game gives you an immediate rush. You feel great while using the app. It feels really easy to learn a language this way because it doesn't feel like you're actually studying. It feels like you're playing. You're just playing a game that you really like. But the problem is this novelty is shortlived. The dopamine boost you get from streaks and badges doesn't last for a very long time. You know, all of these exercises start to feel really repetitive after a while, mundane. The excitement wears off and you quit. And that is

exactly why fewer than 10% of Duallingingo users are still active one week after starting a new language. The gamification hooks you in because the app relies heavily on external validation, but that's not enough. That's not enough to keep you going and to actually see sustainable progress. And this is really connected to our next reason why a lot of language learners quit so quickly. External motivation. You know, when I think about learning a new language, I always get excited because I imagine myself traveling to that place. Let's say learning

French to go to France and then, you know, walking around everywhere and speaking French. Like all of that just sounds exciting. But did you know that the number one reason why people quit language learning is because of lack of motivation? Many of us study a language because it's a mandatory subject at school. So we just have to study it. And so once you graduate you're like bye, I don't really care. And a very surprising thing is that most people who use language apps, their only motivation to keep going is to maintain their streak. It might sound

a little weird and irrational, but this is exactly how it works for most people. The streak becomes your main source of motivation. That is exactly why I talk about finding your internal why so often. Because if you have this strong intrinsic motivation, a very strong personal reason for why you're learning this language, you're way more likely to push through those plateaus that happen to all of us. Okay. So, the next reason why so many of us give up language learning is because of self-study isolation. Basically, what it means is a lot of us prefer to study by ourselves. And

if that works for you, that is great. However, that also means that you have to be the student, you have to be the teacher, you have to be the scheduler, and you have to be the cheerleader. And when you study by yourself, it becomes so easy to quit because if you miss a week, no one is going to tell you, oh, you haven't studied your language in one week. Like, do you want to get back into it? What happened? If you study by yourself, you're just going to be like, ah, it's whatever. I don't really care. This often results in analysis paralysis or frequent resetting like

starting over with a new method once you lose motivation and after going in circles for a while like that you stop trying and the thing is I personally love to study by myself. However, I often struggle with accountability because life often gets busy like my everyday responsibilities, my job, my other hobbies and without any external accountability sometimes it becomes really hard for me to maintain this consistency and inconsistency is the enemy of language learning. What I have realized works really great for me when it comes to staying accountable is the idea

of losing money. That is why I love to purchase courses. I love to invest in training or like classes with teachers because I paid my money to get all of this knowledge and so I can't not show up like this is not an option for me. Okay. Reason number six why many of us quit language learning is because we obsess over fluency. You know there are people who don't like the process of language learning. They only like the end goal of becoming fluent. And because of that, obviously, they want to become fluent as fast as possible. Those people are usually the ones watching all

of those shortcut videos like how to become fluent in English in one month, in one week, in one day. Because there's a high chance that if you expect to become fluent quickly, you will lose motivation even quicker and then you'll quit because you will be interpreting slow progress as failure. The thing is, I have to be honest with you guys here. It's pretty much impossible to say with absolute certainty how quickly a specific language learner will become fluent. So obsessing over this end goal of becoming fluent won't do you any good. We're all different. We all have

very different experiences. And fluency is a really vague concept because language learning doesn't really go like this. It goes more like up and down, up and down. Sometimes like this, sometimes like that. It really depends. So again, the sooner you actually come back to your why, to this intrinsic motivation, and switch your focus to the book you're reading right now, the movie you're watching right now, making sure that you actually like the process of language learning, the sooner you will realize that, wow, I have improved so much. Okay, I think we've

mentioned all of the possible reasons for why so many of us quit language learning so quickly. If you like this video, don't forget to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my YouTube channel. Before you go, don't forget to check out Y2Doc and turn the YouTube videos you watch into text. In today's video, I talked a lot about motivation and working with this intermediate plateau. If you want to see how to actually work with it and overcome it, make sure to check out this video right here. Here I talk about how to go from B1 to C2 in English. So, if this

is something that sounds interesting to you, make sure to click right here and I'll see you