I don’t have much to add to the general question of anti-correspondence bias, but I can speak to this from personal experience to the specific question of that annoying guy in language class who seems to be breaking the curve (if you will allow some generalizing from one example) -- in another class, some years ago, that guy was me. I am very good at language acquisition. When I was studying other languages, I am confident that I also put more effort into them than my fellow students. These effects are difficult to disentangle. It is enjoyable to be good at something, so people tend to be willing to put more effort into things they have a lot of innate ability for. I was also motivated to hire a tutor to make up time for having started as an adult (let me note that one summer with a good tutor twice a week launched me far ahead of the students I had started out with—it is far more effective than class time).
Most of my progress owed to ability and to putting a lot of time into it, not to secret language-fu techniques. There is one exception, however. After picking up the rudiments of the language (after the first semester, in other words) I tried to excise native-language thinking from the process as much as possible. So I used to draw pages of drawings of nouns and verbs, grouped thematically, and put the Russian words with the pictures rather than with English words. I found this to be helpful in developing the ability to think in Russian, rather than have a running translation going in my head. Additionally, after I spoke Russian fluently, and I moved on to another language, I took my class notes for the next language in Russian, not English. The point again being to to remove the use of English from the thought process as quickly as possible to force direct thought in the new language rather than internal translation.
I also found immersion programs to be well worth the investment.
I don’t have much to add to the general question of anti-correspondence bias, but I can speak to this from personal experience to the specific question of that annoying guy in language class who seems to be breaking the curve (if you will allow some generalizing from one example) -- in another class, some years ago, that guy was me. I am very good at language acquisition. When I was studying other languages, I am confident that I also put more effort into them than my fellow students. These effects are difficult to disentangle. It is enjoyable to be good at something, so people tend to be willing to put more effort into things they have a lot of innate ability for. I was also motivated to hire a tutor to make up time for having started as an adult (let me note that one summer with a good tutor twice a week launched me far ahead of the students I had started out with—it is far more effective than class time).
Most of my progress owed to ability and to putting a lot of time into it, not to secret language-fu techniques. There is one exception, however. After picking up the rudiments of the language (after the first semester, in other words) I tried to excise native-language thinking from the process as much as possible. So I used to draw pages of drawings of nouns and verbs, grouped thematically, and put the Russian words with the pictures rather than with English words. I found this to be helpful in developing the ability to think in Russian, rather than have a running translation going in my head. Additionally, after I spoke Russian fluently, and I moved on to another language, I took my class notes for the next language in Russian, not English. The point again being to to remove the use of English from the thought process as quickly as possible to force direct thought in the new language rather than internal translation.
I also found immersion programs to be well worth the investment.