Once upon a time there was a young man called Graham, who lived in a tiny little flat on the outskirts of the city.

Now Graham was hardly the tidiest man around.

He rarely cleaned the house or tidied up his things, only did the washing up a couple of times a week, and only picked up his dirty clothes off the floor when he did his weekly clothes wash.

But he didn’t really mind.

His flat was messy, but it was so small that it didn’t really cause any drastic problems in his life.

One day, his boss gave him a promotion at work and with it, a pretty decent pay rise.

Graham was over the moon. He could finally move out of his tiny flat and into a bigger apartment.

In his new apartment in the city centre, Graham carried on with his messy habits. But he now found it more and more difficult to manage the mess. After all, he had more rooms and more things to organise.

He started to become more and more stressed but he didn’t realise it was the mess that was making him more stressed.

But his work continued to go well and soon after he got another promotion.

He received another generous pay rise and moved out of his apartment into a big house in the suburbs. The new house had four bedrooms, a big garden, two bathrooms and a bunch of other rooms.

But he carried on with his messy ways.

His house and garden were a complete disaster. Forever untidy and dirty. The problem was that now his house was so big but he was still so messy, there was no way he could ever keep it tidy, even if he wanted to.

Poor Graham.

When your house is small it’s easy to tidy. As you move to ever bigger houses but you don’t clean up your ways, it becomes more and more difficult to tidy until you get to a point of no return.

When you finally get the house of your dreams but you haven’t cleaned up your ways, it becomes impossible to tidy.

English learners often think that in order to move up a level, the only way is to accumulate more and more knowledge.

That’s not a problem in itself but it becomes a problem when you don’t consolidate the knowledge you have in your head.

It’s exactly the same as Graham buying more things for his house but instead of organising those new things in the house, he just throws them on the floor.

The result is a head with more knowledge, but inside the head it’s an absolute mess.

If you’re a B1 or above you have tons and tons of knowledge in your head. More than you realise.

The reason many English learners stop making progress at this level is because they have loads of unconsolidated knowledge in their head.

And worse than this, they have a large number of mistakes that they make constantly without trying to resolve them.

This stops them from making progress and makes their English level appear lower than it actually is.

As a language learner your number one priority as you learn English should be to remove mistakes that you frequently make.

If you are lower than a B1 then it’s even more important to do this. And easier.

Standard teaching doesn’t really talk about this problem. Its only concern is to put more knowledge into learners’ heads. What happens is that as English learners “move up” a level, they take with them a lot of unconsolidated language and mistakes.

Then they “move up” again and take even more mistakes with them to their new level.

Eventually, they have so much unresolved language and so many mistakes that they find it impossible to progress.

And that’s exactly what happens.

They stop making progress.

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Then they continuously ask themselves, “Why have I stopped making progress?”

The easiest, smartest and quickest way to move up a level is to remove mistakes that you make.

Remove the common mistakes that you make and you will move up a level INSTANTLY.

It’s something I write about a lot because I know for a fact that it’s the biggest reason English learners stop making progress. It’s the reason why perpetual B students stay at B level for so long. It’s the reason so many English learners get frustrated with a lack of progress.

So I’ll say it again.

Clean your house.

Tidy your house.

Do it while you still can.

If you don’t, you won’t ever be comfortable with your English. If you don’t, you’ll have real trouble moving up a level and keeping that new level.

The longer you leave a problem unresolved, the more difficult it gets to resolve.

Don’t focus on accumulating more knowledge and language. Focus on cleaning up what you already know (or should know).

Clean your house guys.

That’s all you need to worry about.

Useful Language

to be over the moon: to be very happy about something

to get to a point of no return: to reach a point where you are unable to go back and undo the damage caused

to carry on: to continue

messy: untidy

tons = loads: lots (spoken English)