Time and time again the questions I am asked by my students is: “How can I improve my English?” and “Why am I getting nowhere?” Given that most of these people are graduate students with plans of doing post-graduate study abroad, I am often tempted to think their questions are disingenuous – merely an attempt to make conversation. Surely someone who has already been through sixteen or more years of schooling really knows at heart what is needed to learn something as mundane as a language. Indeed, many of these inquirers do secretly know and are just expressing their frustration at being too lazy to meet the requirements, but then I remind myself that notions of what learning involves are often quite different here and that many students are in fact stumped as to why they are making such little progress despite trying so hard. Assuming that the ease with which people learn English varies widely (because let’s face it – some adults are poor at picking up new languages, while others excel at it), in my experience the general reason for Taiwanese students’ failures to improve their English skills is as follows...