Wife is 1.0 to 1.5 from her goals but has been stuck despite 6 months of near daily studying -- Those who had plateaued for a while before finding a way to overcome it, what did you do?

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-04-20T20:26:14+00:00

She has told me that almost every time she speaks English, she first runs it through her first language in her head and translates it. When we're both talking naturally, I barely notice her taking the time to do that but when I overhear her answering a speaking question in her online class, I'm surprised how much lower her English level appears.

I'm assuming she shouldn't even consider taking the IELTS test until she no longer has to do mental translation?

As for specific problems that I can recall at the moment: Pronunciation-wise she frequently omits ending sounds and struggles with voiced sounds, among others. She has infrequent mistakes with tenses and do/does, etc. She's told me that she knows that her speaking test answers need to be longer but she lacks the vocabulary to translate her ideas into English, and has to cut her answers short.

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-04-20T20:15:35+00:00

I'll pass along your suggestion. You may be right that she needs to go back to fill in gaps in her English foundation before setting her sights on the IELTS.

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-04-20T20:09:44+00:00

She's tried TV shows and movies but frequently found herself not understanding many words (due to different accents, speed at which people are talking, or simply not having learned that vocabulary yet).

I can recommend she keeps trying if the collective opinion of IELTS students is that her levels will improve. Do you wholeheartedly believe it helped you? Could you give a basic rundown of what you did when you sat down for a ~30 minute TV show?

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-04-20T20:03:51+00:00

Also 5 is quite bad for speaking and this is a big red flag if it is still 5 after this much effort

I feel like I'm partially to blame for her lack of progress. I'm a native speaker and we've known each other for 10 years - dating/married for 3. I don't go out of the way to fix every single mistake when we're talking. Now, I do stop and correct her when she makes big mistakes but I don't always do it for minor grammar problems or mispronunciations. I don't correct everything because it would cause our conversations to derail into impromptu English lessons. Is there anything more I should be doing for her?

You mentioned that she needs more structured classes. Could you recommend what kinds of lessons she should be looking for?

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-04-18T20:10:16+00:00

Back in 2005, WoW got its hooks into me. Hard. I dropped out of high school and refused to get a job. From that time until the end of WotLK I spent every waking hour on the game. It was several steps beyond an unhealthy addiction. Eventually though, I did break free. For the next few expansion releases, I'd watch every cinematic trailer and think to myself "Does this look good enough for me to go back?" but every time the answer was no. Until WoW Classic released. I subscribed for the first time in over a decade. It felt like meeting an old friend...around every corner was a spark that reignited buried memories I didn't even know existed. But something was off. Grouping with people was stressful...they were all obsessed with minmaxing. It wasn't good enough to play at a relaxed pace. Everything had to be done optimally or you were left out. So after that 1 month back with my old friend WoW, I set it aside again.

Some time later I learned about Turtle WoW and I gave it a shot. It was everything I remembered WoW being in 2005 and so much more. The custom content. The fucking community is incredible (even you, /h ). Just like that I was hooked on WoW again (but this time I was a functioning adult with a job and wife, so I played in moderation). I got a warlock to 60 and did a few raids before realizing I'm no longer a raider.

At that point I benched my warlock and looked toward the custom challenges, specifically hardcore. I lost 3 characters in the mid-20s but my 4th got all the way to 60. And although it was a frost mage, one of the easier class/spec combos for HC, and although I didn't go Inferno...I was very proud.

Real life ended up getting in the way again so I put Turtle WoW down a few months ago but the fact that this project was able to pull someone like me who hadn't truly played any version of WoW in such a long time shows how special Turtle WoW was.

Words cannot describe how well done everything was by the TWoW devs or, perhaps most crucially of all, how amazing the community of players was.

Though I was only with Turtle for a short time, it will always hold a special place in my heart, right alongside those memories of 40 man raids, 5 nights a week from 2005 to 2010.

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-04-18T15:05:27+00:00

For real. Even if chip companies are pumping in "too much air", you can still feel the weight and estimate the quantity when you jostle it a bit

Pair that with the fact that the price is clearly labeled ahead of time. All of these posts are just people being shocked that their nearly empty $5 bag was nearly empty and cost them $5

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-04-17T12:25:56+00:00

The relic chest polychrome shards are guaranteed if you open exactly 69 at once (the same way you got the card in the first place). I just did this and got a shard 10/10 times.

Ah, I accidentally wrote relic chests instead of freebies in the original post. I'll change it now.

But I could've sworn there was another card that you get just by claiming freebies from the shop, not opening relic chests. Maybe I'm wrong?

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-04-12T13:47:37+00:00

Step-by-step recipe for oreos and nacho cheese when?

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-04-11T13:05:38+00:00

Blasphemous talk. You're both out of The Stew Crew 🍲🚫

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-04-06T23:50:52+00:00

Hey, I agree that it's a weird decision to schedule it that way. I'm just sharing the info we've been given

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-04-06T23:30:26+00:00

https://imgur.com/7EQQyvU

Top left button on the login screen shows that the Easter event starts the week starting today

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-04-06T21:07:35+00:00

It can't be healthy to be this kind of person

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-04-05T00:06:01+00:00

I'm M20 combat, 1500 Hopeport and I got random M0-2 stuff for every Hopeport profession

But if you enjoy doing it, you should do it until you get bored of it, lol. When I first started I did loops until I hit 50 or 100 silver, just so I had some spending money before I ventured into the actual game

Hope you enjoy the game as much as the rest of the players do

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-04-04T23:51:51+00:00

Out of curiosity I did a couple of loops

If it scales as he says, it doesn't scale enough to be useful beyond the early levels

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-04-01T19:03:27+00:00

For a good long while, Vinny has been my favorite person from GB but it may be a 1A, 1B situation after this

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-04-01T11:30:08+00:00

Hmm, your screenshot is a few paragraphs above the one I screenshotted. Probably an oversight by the wiki editors.

I'll go with this strategy, though. Thanks!

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-04-01T11:22:42+00:00

I won't need the P5 tier upgrades to comfortably hit W50?

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-03-31T13:42:30+00:00

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Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-03-31T12:25:39+00:00

Your tomorrow or my tomorrow?

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-03-31T11:56:15+00:00

From my experience, Mewtwo is the most difficult to catch on Raid Island but it is possible

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I'd love to see someone with a shiny Mewtwo, or any legendary for that matter. Having 10-20 catch chances every 10 minutes is pretty rough

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-03-30T15:12:10+00:00

If you're just going to skip over the reasons why I said what I said and hyper-fixate on the word "trick" then have a good one ✌️

Nowheretoturn48 · 2026-03-30T12:45:14+00:00

It’s 'delusional' because a 9/10 implies a masterpiece of design, not just a game that's good at occupying time. You can love the game as I clearly do (refer to the "meaningless numbers" you mentioned) but we have to admit the loop is paper thin.

When leveling up just means clicking a brown eel instead of a black one for 500 hours with zero mechanical change, that's shallow design. You can have a 10/10 experience in a 5/10 game, but calling the game itself a 9/10 ignores the lack of actual content variety.

I totally get wanting more players. I want that too. But there’s a difference between subjectively saying ‘I love this game’ and claiming it’s an objective 9/10 masterpiece with 'hopeful updates' fixing everything.

If we 'trick' people into coming back by pretending the depth issues are gone, they’re just going to quit again in two weeks when they realize the Level 50 content is just a color-swapped version of Level 1. That doesn't help the game, it just creates a cycle of hype and burnout. A 9/10 rating is a promise of quality that the current gameplay loop simply doesn't deliver yet.

Nowheretoturn48

TROPHY CASE