Ever feel like you’ve hit a wall in your Chamorro learning journey? Maybe you’ve been in and out of classes for years, but still find yourself saying little more than Maolek ha’ in conversation. Or perhaps you’re struggling to follow native speakers, and the syntax or vocabulary just isn’t sticking. It’s frustrating, especially when months or even years of studying haven’t gotten you to the level you aspire to. But don’t worry – every Chamorro language learner has moments of feeling stuck, and there are ways to break through it and re-invigorate our learning process. In this post, I am going to give 5 tips for getting out of a language learning rut.

Contents
Build a Habit of Consistency Parrot Sentences & Phrases Engage Native Speech Get Corrected Reframe The “Learning Plateau” Summary

Build a Habit of Consistency

A number one struggle for the majority of learners, especially beginners, is being able to consistently stick with the learning process long enough to realize any progress. We often see people go through cycles of starting and stopping in their learning, which makes progress very difficult.

If this is you, try to focus first on establishing a habit of consistency with your Chamorro language learning.

Rather than focusing on how much we are doing, first focus on showing up regularly for your learning. To make this feel approachable, make your regular study commitment small and easy, such as studying Chamorro for 5 minutes a day, or picking a part of your life where you will start using the Chamorro you know. Try to commit to this daily for a week, then the next week, and the next. A five minute study session can be as simple as testing yourself on new vocabulary or grammar, listening to a song, or reading a story.

The goal is to get ourselves into the habit of showing up for our learning on a regular basis, because it’s only through long-term commitment and consistency that we will build up the repetitions and language exposure we need to meet our goals.

Being able to stick with our learning consistently, sometimes over years, is usually the difference between becoming a speaker or staying stuck. And it is repetition and consistency that make a powerful impact on our learning and retention, not marathon cramming sessions.

Parrot Sentences & Phrases

One of the typical approaches for teaching Chamorro to adults is with a grammar-based approach. We are given a set of grammar rules and told to build our own sentences from scratch, according to those rules. For some learners, this approach is great, but others may struggle with a rules-based approach and feel stuck.

If this is you and a rules-based approach isn’t clicking or has become a roadblock to your progress, direct your focus to learning, repeating and parroting known Chamorro phrases and sentences.

You can pick sentences from a book like Spoken Chamorro or Chamorro Grammar, or you can learn phrases or sentences from anything you read or hear. If you have a native speaker in your life, or can turn to a mentor or more advanced learners for help, try asking them for phrases and sentences you can use.

In the past year my study group has been helping out a beginner group, and every person has different approaches that work for them. I’ve noticed that for learners who don’t resonate with a grammar-first approach, giving them phrases and sentences that they can use right away helps to jump-start their Chamorro. And once they are comfortable with those phrases, grammar can feel more intuitive because they already know “the rules” through practical application. 

So if memorizing grammar rules is making you feel stuck or tongue-tied in conversation, try to jump straight into using whole phrases and sentences instead.

Engage Native Speech

Some learners who stick with their language learning for long enough may reach a point where they have gone to all the classes, have perfect recall of all the grammar rules they’ve been taught, and know all the vocabulary from their learning spaces. They may even believe they’ve learned everything there is to learn about Chamorro because they aren’t being challenged, and their learning space has nothing more to offer them. Yet they have a nagging feeling that their Chamorro could be better, they just don’t know how. So they feel stuck.

Chances are that the majority of your Chamorro language experiences are in a classroom or learning environment, where the language has been edited for learners. If this is you, try getting out of the classroom and into the language by immersing yourself in content from native speakers.

If you don’t know where to start, you can read stories written by native speakers, listen to their conversations or interviews, and listen to songs sung in Chamorro. I also recommend content from highly fluent speakers who did all their learning directly from immersion with native speakers, such as Påle’ Roman de Vera or Påle’ Eric Forbes. And if you can, try to converse with a native speaker on a regular basis. 

Immersing yourself in native Chamorro language will expose you to a variety of syntax, vocabulary and expressions that we cannot get in a classroom setting. Learning grammar rules can teach you about some aspects of the language, but engaging native-level Chamorro is what actually gives you the language.

Engaging native Chamorro speech is like entering a different world, and at first it may feel intimidating after leaving the controlled environment of a classroom or learning space. You may even feel like you are learning an entirely different language! But the growth opportunities are both rich and endless when we engage native-level Chamorro. 

Get Corrected

This point may be a bit controversial, but one reason you may be stuck is that you are not getting corrected.

I understand that people hold different views about giving and receiving corrections. But when we aren’t corrected – especially early on – this allows for bad habits and incorrect language patterns to take root in our thinking and speaking. We can make the same mistakes for weeks, months, or even years and get stuck in incorrect patterns – often without knowing it. And when we finally do get corrected, it ends up being more difficult to undo our ingrained habits. 

And speaking from personal experience, it can feel more frustrating (and embarrassing!) to correct something you’ve been doing wrong for years, than it is to receive a correction right away. My first instructor did not believe in correcting learners, and the result is that five years later, my current language teacher is still correcting the poor habits I picked up from that time.

If you are still feeling anxious about being corrected, remember that any language learner will always have more to learn in Chamorro. And no learner, regardless of our language ability, the number of years we’ve spent learning, our levels of education or professional credentials to our name, is above receiving correction.

Corrections are not negative – they are essential for learning any skill well, and that includes learning to speak, read and write Chamorro.

So if you are not making progress and are not getting corrected, my suggestion is that you start asking for corrections and feedback, whether it’s from the native speakers in your life, your mentors, your teachers, or your study group. Just make sure you are asking people you can trust. And if you are running a study group, create a robust, open learning culture that embraces receiving corrections.

I know it may feel scary at first, but trust me, you will learn more, know where to focus your energy, and start to make progress.

Reframe The “Learning Plateau”

Finally, some learners may be doing all of the above – they may be studying consistently and using the language, engaging native-level content, attending practice groups or classes, receiving corrections, and it STILL feels like they aren’t making any progress.

If this is you, you may be in the learning stage commonly called “the learning plateau.”

In a learning plateau, you are in an awkward in-between stage, because you have learned many new words and concepts, so you know the rush and satisfaction of learning a lot in a relatively short period of time. But you also know there is more ahead and it feels like no matter what you do, you can’t get there. In short, you feel stuck.

If this is you, try reframing how you think about your situation. Even though you feel like you aren’t making any progress, keep in mind that if you continue to show up for your learning, growth and progress is still happening. It just looks and feels different because the changes are more incremental at this stage. In fact, progress is so incremental that it feels like nothing is happening at all.

At this stage, many learners give up, mostly out of frustration or boredom. But it’s crucial to remain consistent and continue showing up. If you stop, your learning will backslide. But if you keep at it, you will continue building and strengthening connections in your brain, even if it doesn’t feel like anything is happening. Then one day, you will suddenly leap forward, as if by magic.

But it’s not magic. It’s just the result of accumulating all of that incremental learning over a long period of time. Because many little things can add up to a lot.

I have experienced at least two learning plateaus in my Chamorro language learning journey, and both times I felt frustrated beyond belief and discouraged. It was tempting to give up, because it felt like my efforts were going nowhere. On top of that, there’s no definite timeline for how long the learning plateau lasts, so you don’t even know when it will end. But in those moments I kept showing up for myself and usually after a period of 6-9 months I would experience another “magical” leap forward in my learning.

So keep going, and trust that all of that incremental learning will add up in the long run.

Summary

In this post, we’ve explored five tips for getting out of a Chamorro language learning rut. If you’re feeling stuck, here are some practical ways to refresh your routine and start moving forward again:

• Build a habit of consistency. Focus on showing up regularly for your learning—it matters more than how much you do in one sitting. Practicing every day for 5 minutes or three times per week for 10–20 minutes will get you farther than a single 3-hour cram session.
• Use known sentences and phrases if grammar feels overwhelming. Memorizing grammar rules can sometimes get in the way of becoming conversational, so skip the rules for now and start using the language instead.
• Engage with native speech. Get out of the “classroom” and into real language. If you need to improve listening comprehension, speaking ability, or add flavor to your Chamorro speech, start interacting with native speakers and native-level content. It will give you what grammar books cannot.
• Ask for corrections. If no one is correcting you, reach out to a trusted speaker or mentor and ask for feedback. Knowing what you’re doing wrong is one of the fastest ways to improve.
• Recognize when you’re in a plateau. If you’re doing all of the above and still feel stuck, you may just be in a natural learning plateau. Keep going—progress might feel slower, but those small gains add up. One day it will feel like you’ve “leaped ahead.”