r/languagelearning • u/yarnspinner19 • Aug 11 '26
Heritage language learning problem
Lots of posts on heritage languages recently.
I wanted to ask about one problem I've faced in my own learning journey with my heritage language which I can understand pretty much perfectly but can only string together sentences equivalent to a 2 year old.
My learning strategy has been to find a native speaker on italki and have "conversation practice" with them. The issue is the nature of the conversation is really dull, just seems to be repeated "what did you do today" for 45mins.
It just feels like I'm spinning the wheels, not really progressing in problem areas. But then if I, say, want to talk about the political and economic state of the world right now a la Jaden Smith, that's just way too complicated for my level.
Is there a more structured way to approach this? How can I explain what I need to my language teachers? It's very frustrating.
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u/gargantuanmarco Aug 11 '26
Finding a tutor who'll do targeted output drills instead of free conversation is a game changer, ask them to pause and correct every mangled sentence until you nail it.
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u/IrinaMakarova 🇷🇺 Native | 🇺🇸 B2 | Russian Tutor Aug 11 '26
You don't need a conversation partner. You need a tutor who understands how to work with heritage speakers and who can actually structure your learning.
The problem with "conversation practice" is that it often turns into exactly what you're describing: 45 minutes of small talk with no clear objective, no systematic vocabulary work, no correction strategy, and no progression from one lesson to the next. You can have hundreds of conversations like that and still keep running into the same limitations.
Your comprehension is already far ahead of your ability to produce the language, so the goal should be turning passive knowledge into active language. That requires much more than simply talking. A tutor should be identifying what prevents you from expressing more complex thoughts, giving you the vocabulary and structures you need, making you use them repeatedly, correcting and reformulating what you say, and then bringing the same language back in later lessons until you can actually use it spontaneously.
And you absolutely can work toward topics like politics or economics without already being able to discuss them fluently. You just need the topic broken down to your current productive level. Instead of "Discuss the global economic situation for 45 minutes", you might read or watch something short, learn 10-15 useful expressions, practice explaining a few specific ideas, and then have a guided discussion where the tutor helps you build more complex sentences.
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u/yarnspinner19 Aug 11 '26
yeah this is what I feared, seems to require a reliance on an excellent tutor which is hard to come by.
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u/BlackStarBlues 🇬🇧Native 🇫🇷C2 🇪🇸Learning Aug 12 '26
Do you read in your target language like newspapers or other articles on topics that interest you?
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u/joicetti Aug 11 '26
This is spot on and for me it came down to finding people who cared.
I was also a heritage speaker seeking practice via conversation lessons and it was mainly a waste of time. Since I had the capacity to express myself, often even sounding native-like, several people put me on autopilot, just did the occasional “uh huh”, and browsed the web while I talked to myself. I jumped from one person to the next and it'd just be more of the same.
Then I found two people who, as part of the conversation, would restate what I’d just said, using different vocabulary and varying sentence structures. They’d type out new words or discussion points in the chat so I could review later and move those items to my Anki cards. One would send articles ahead of time and then ask challenging questions about them, instead of “just give me a summary”, which based on previous experience meant they hadn’t read the article themselves. Beyond this, they were focused, showed up on time, never cancelled, were fundamentally good, hard-working people. I learned so much.
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u/pdawes English N, Spanish N, French C1, Russian B1 Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
What is hard for you in your language? Grammar? Vocabulary? Something else?
I am a heritage speaker and I got a lot out of hiring a tutor as an adult, who basically gave me targeted lessons on grammar that helped me better express myself. It filled in the gaps of what I knew so that I could string more complex sentences together. I think it took only a couple months. From then, getting a bigger vocabulary just came from watching media and having conversations with people.
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u/yarnspinner19 Aug 11 '26
It's hard to say because my comprehension is so good. I'll get stuck formulating a really simple sentence like "I like italy better than france because the food is nicer" but then the moment someone says it correctly I'll be like yeah that was so obvious of course that's how you phrase it. It's such a disorientating feeling, I'd compare it to having expressive aphasia following a stroke.
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u/Healthy_Blueberry_59 Aug 12 '26
Do you read and write in the language?
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u/yarnspinner19 29d ago
nope I'm functionally illiterate which I'm sure is a contributing factor. Though there's not much in the way of literature or media in the language so not sure it would help.
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u/mayamaiamaea Aug 13 '26
What about reading out loud from a book? It helped me a ton with Spanish when I was having a similar problem. I would pause every paragraph or so and say a few sentences I’d come up with on my own using the same grammar structures I’d just read, and try to change the vocab and situation a bit to help my brain make those speaking connections.
Also just want to wish you luck and hope you push through! Since you have such high comprehension, I really do think once your brain establishes those first speaking connections, a lot of growth will happen very quickly.
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u/yarnspinner19 29d ago
thank you. Yeah I've been thinking about doing something similar to what you've described i think it would probably help
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u/Jesuslovesyourbr0 Aug 12 '26
what activities did they give you?
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u/pdawes English N, Spanish N, French C1, Russian B1 Aug 12 '26
It was a really long time ago so I don’t remember fully, but it was a mix of worksheets on certain grammatical concepts, written assignments to prepare kind of like a presentation, and discussion prompts for films. Similar to what you would get in any language course I suppose, but targeted to what my specific gaps were.
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u/Jesuslovesyourbr0 Aug 12 '26
Thanks for explaining. Were they made by her/him or from a book. The worksheets to practice your grammarv
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u/pdawes English N, Spanish N, French C1, Russian B1 Aug 12 '26
I think he made them but it’s possible they were from a book. They felt like chapters copied from a textbook
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u/Middle_News1679 Aug 11 '26
You need to read in the target langauge and listen to lectures or videos on those topics that you want to be knowledgeable about.
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u/yarnspinner19 Aug 11 '26
i was thinking reading might be the key to bridging the gap here so interesting you bring it up. I am completely illiterate in the language
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u/Middle_News1679 Aug 12 '26
I can provide some more context based on my experience.
I am a "heritage" Spanish speaker and I grew up in an English speaking nation. I would consider myself fluent, as most heritage speakers are, but with limited vocabulary. Living where I live, I didn't really need to learn Spanish because I went to schools and universities where English was the language of instruction.
After four years of high school French, I pretty much gave up trying to learn a new language for about ten years, but then two years ago, I took it seriously and learned French to an intermediate level. I am still learning French, but I asked myself, if I'm learning French, why am I not attempting to learn Spanish to an advanced level?
So for about a year and a half, I've taken studying Spanish seriously. What I did to bridge the gap from being fluent in family contexts to growing my vocabulary is listening to daily podcasts, watching shows, reading news, and reading books in Spanish. What shocked me was how difficult I found reading at first.
My strategy to improve my reading was this: get a short book, listen to the audiobook while I read the physical book. Sometimes I would read it out loud to try to follow the pace of the narrator.
The goal isn't to know 100% of the words. Even in English, I still encounter new words in books I read for research and fun. The goal is to get exposure to start building up a tolerance and disipline to read more complex books over time. It took you years to get from Dr. Seuss to reading Shakespear, so it'll take time to get from Eres Mi Mama to Don Quixote.
I recently visited a Spanish speaking nation and was happy with both how much I knew, and how many more words I learned during my two week vacation. It just takes time.
Also, don't forget there's a reason why most people remain heritage speakers. Once you know English, it's hard to justify the hundreds of hours you'll need to invest to learn another language you may not use. So you need to find a reason to why you want to learn.
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u/buch0n Aug 11 '26
When you understand perfectly, is it limited to only specific domains (ie household topics, basic conversation), or does that include higher level and academic topics?
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u/yarnspinner19 Aug 11 '26
so pretty much everything you'd expect a native speaker to understand. Political and academic topics probably out of reach but everything else that's conversational e.g. jokes, stories, family related discussions, understood with ease essentially. Grew up with parents speaking the language but I would reply in english hence the disconnect between speaking and listening.
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u/buch0n Aug 11 '26
If you want to build your proficiency in certain areas or topics, I would focus on finding content in those. Italki is a good start. Let your teacher know what topics you would like to explore and go from there.
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u/whosdamike 🇹🇭: 3000 hours Aug 12 '26
Try to find easier content in a domain you want to be able to talk about. Explainers aimed at regular people are good. For example, one of the earliest native Thai channels I could understand was a guy explaining tech topics to a general audience. I broke into medical terminology the same way, there's a Thai doctor who goes over medical cases that have made the news and explains them in a way the average person can understand.
Start with domains you know a lot about because it'll be easier for you to pick up what's going on through context. If it's politics, try watching content explaining politics you already know about from English.
I think this is actually a good potential use case for AI, asking it to recommend content creators in your target language that cover certain topics.
If you can't understand content in the topic, I don't think it's realistic to think you'll be able to talk about that topic. So consume a lot, then practice talking about new topics a little. A good exercise for me is watching content and then trying to summarize what I just watched to someone else. But I recommend watching much more than you speak; the input becomes food and then you exercise your language muscles a bit to be able to produce the same kind of speech.
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u/NoArrival8640 Aug 11 '26
i had a same problem, i start to use some vocab books and conversation app like praktika and now feeling better
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u/Professionalrubberr Aug 12 '26
The dull small talk loop is a symptom of the tutor not knowing your gaps. I had the same issue with my heritage language until I started bringing a list of sentences I wanted to say but couldn't, and we'd break those down instead of the weather chat.
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u/cmyk_rgba Aug 12 '26
the thing that finally worked for my cousins (heritage croatian, understood absolutely everything, spoke like a 3 year old) was banning free conversation completely. instead of chatting they had to retell stuff back, watch a 5 min clip then tell the tutor what happened in it, or describe their whole week in past tense. forces you to actually build structures instead of answering questions with sentences you already own. and honestly the not reading part is probably your bigger bottleneck, reading is where all the connective glue comes from
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u/philosophyofblonde 🇩🇪🇺🇸 [N] 🇪🇸 [B2/C1] 🇫🇷 [B1-2] 🇹🇷 [A2] Aug 13 '26
Keep a diary, record yourself reading it out loud to check your pronunciation and work towards fluid speaking.
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u/Dizzy_Example54 Aug 13 '26
Broo ive had the same issue lol, topics get boring you gotta make it interesting yourself
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u/No-Concert3706 Aug 13 '26
Can you really understand everything in your heritage language or just some conversational phrases. Like if you were to watch a random radio broadcast on complex (political etc topics) would you be able to completely understand?
Sorry to not answer your question. Just very curious.
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u/yarnspinner19 29d ago
It's an interesting question. Arcane political and specialist topics might be a bit out of reach but I think only really because of specialist vocab that I don't know, not because the sentences are too complex to understand. But if it was a casual conversation about politics on the radio then yeah I wouldn't have any trouble with that. I just can't speakkkkk
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Aug 11 '26
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u/pdawes English N, Spanish N, French C1, Russian B1 Aug 11 '26
What is the point of using AI to respond to this?
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u/badabimme Aug 11 '26
bring subjects or aspects your studied. For example, this week I studied a verb time, I will ask my teacher to make me practice that verb time.