fossilization in my English study

[Gigi3731]

Dear Teachers,
I am a English major in unicersity. English is my second language. I found Learning second language is hard. However, comparing with his first language learning, there is no painful memory. This semester I found no matter how much effort I paid, I can not improvemy English. Someone told me I am suffering fossilization.
So I want to know how to measure whether a learner is facing fossilization or not in his studying. I search some reference academic books, but they only provide a vague definition. Would you like to help me? Thanks a lot!

[Tdol]

Sometimes, especially in more advanced levels, learning isn't very linear and there can be periods when it appears that progress isn't being made. These plateaus, the fossilisation you mention, don't necessarily mean that nothing is being learned. At lower levels it is easy to see progress- you don't know the past tense, then you learn it. Higher up, it becomes a lot of small points and fine tuning. Try comparing what you can do now with what you could do six months ago.