The author remarks that "The No. 1 factor in a student’s tutoring success is simply showing up consistently, research suggests," and this matches with my own personal experience. I've tried various tools for learning foreign languages (though most of them did not use AI), but an issue was that they weren't "sticky" or interesting enough for me personally to consistently use them day-to-day or week-to-week.
The approach that helped me break through the beginning stages of learning Spanish was taking the traditional advice to enrol in an introductory course in a university setting, which motivated me to complete homework and meet with live teachers in a classroom setting week-to-week. I previously tried online courses that had automatically-marked exercises, but I had trouble motivating myself to regularly practice with them. I'm now self-motivated to continue my language studies, so the selection of tool matters less for me now (though stickier methods that insisted on daily practice such as Pimsleur or using spaced repetition software like Anki helped me along the way). But it's a useful idea that consistency is one of the most important factors for learning, and beginners can most straightforwardly achieve this by regularly seeing a live teacher who they pay for.
That said, consistency is certainly not the only factor: it can be frustrating to consistently spend lots of time and energy with an ineffective learning approach. However, consistent studying should be one of the first steps, and study should not be put off out of fear of beginning with the wrong approach. I believe that while sayings like "practice doesn't make perfect, only perfect practice makes perfect" can be useful for higher levels of learning, they drive the wrong message for beginners or struggling learners.
A better message for most learners before the advanced stage would be that: "To get most of the way–if not all the way–to your learning goals, the most important factor is consistent study."
The approach that helped me break through the beginning stages of learning Spanish was taking the traditional advice to enrol in an introductory course in a university setting, which motivated me to complete homework and meet with live teachers in a classroom setting week-to-week. I previously tried online courses that had automatically-marked exercises, but I had trouble motivating myself to regularly practice with them. I'm now self-motivated to continue my language studies, so the selection of tool matters less for me now (though stickier methods that insisted on daily practice such as Pimsleur or using spaced repetition software like Anki helped me along the way). But it's a useful idea that consistency is one of the most important factors for learning, and beginners can most straightforwardly achieve this by regularly seeing a live teacher who they pay for.
That said, consistency is certainly not the only factor: it can be frustrating to consistently spend lots of time and energy with an ineffective learning approach. However, consistent studying should be one of the first steps, and study should not be put off out of fear of beginning with the wrong approach. I believe that while sayings like "practice doesn't make perfect, only perfect practice makes perfect" can be useful for higher levels of learning, they drive the wrong message for beginners or struggling learners.
A better message for most learners before the advanced stage would be that: "To get most of the way–if not all the way–to your learning goals, the most important factor is consistent study."