He still says the same wrong thing: how to get unstuck

A child who repeats the same mistake for months has reached what King and Mackey call a plateau. Their fix is to notice the one specific pattern he keeps getting wrong and draw attention to it inside something engaging, not a drill. They do not describe it as a sign of a problem with him or with bilingualism.

What is going on

King and Mackey say language learning rarely moves in a straight line. A child can make steady progress and then seem stuck on one recurring pattern, such as the same wrong verb form every time.

Their reading of the mechanism, as the app reports it, is that getting stuck on a pattern usually means the current level of challenge and exposure is not enough to push past it. That reading does not blame effort. A form that already gets his meaning across gives him little reason to change it.

That is a general account from one pair of authors. It does not tell you which pattern your son is stuck on, and no source read for this site says how long a plateau lasts.

The authors' own example is small and specific: a child who says "goed" instead of "went". It is one wrong verb form, not a general weakness in the language. That is why their fix starts with noticing the exact thing, and why a long list of corrections would miss the point.

The same chapter of The Bilingual Edge states that bilingualism does not cause speech delay or any other developmental disorder. The sources read for this site do not link a stuck pattern to having two languages.

What to do tonight

1. Pick the one specific thing he keeps getting wrong. One pattern, not a list of his mistakes.
2. Choose something he already enjoys doing with you. King and Mackey's example is looking at photos together.
3. Use the correct form yourself inside that activity, and ask about something you both did, such as what you did that day.
4. Leave the correction out of a separate moment. The authors advise against a drill and against correcting the form in isolation.

Here is the authors' own example, in English. If a child says "goed" instead of "went", the parent says "went" while looking at photos together and asking what the two of them did that day, rather than stopping to correct the word on its own.

The idea is that the child hears the right form in a moment where he cares about what is being said, without being stopped to repeat the word. This is the one example the sources read for this site give for this pattern, and they do not set a schedule or a number of repetitions.

What is still unknown

• How long a plateau lasts, and how many months of the same mistake is too many. No source read for this site gives a number, so this article does not.
• Whether this approach will fix your son's particular pattern, or how quickly. The authors give the method and one example. The sources read for this site report no measured result for it.
• Whether a repeated error ever points to something other than a plateau. The sources read for this site treat it as a plateau and do not discuss other causes.

When to ask a professional

If you are worried about your child's speech or development, or if the stuck pattern comes with other concerns, ask his pediatrician or a speech-language therapist. The sources read for this site do not give a way to tell an ordinary plateau from something that needs an evaluation, so this article leaves that call to a professional.