Literally translated, that sentence means “the leaves are dead”.
It’s true – November is here and the last few leaves on the tree in our backyard are hanging on for dear life. Some are more determined than others it seems.
What a great analogy for describing the students who are the most successful at learning another language. They are tenacious and hang in there even when things get tough and they feel like quitting. They do just a few minutes more, practice one more sentence, repeat one more phrase, until they are confident that they have got it! That’s what it takes to be successful in anything in life but especially so when learning a new language.
I encourage my students to take small steps, build a solid foundation and just do it! There is always the temptation to try analyzing things to death until you have it just perfect, but when learning a language, just doing it proves to be more effective – speak out, make mistakes, risk saying somthing even if it’s not perfect. With every sentence, every word, every phrase, you build confidence in your abilities and over time, that effort pays off with fluency in the language. My motto is “darn good is good enough!”