Becoming fluent in Finnish is admittedly challenging. It can take years of dedication and perseverence — aka, sisu! That being said, I don’t believe that people are either good at language learning or not. I think that when a skill is taken seriously and time is spent on it, it is possible to master almost anything. I have had many friends who have been frustrated that they feel like they know and understand quite a lot of Finnish and maybe have attended several beginning or even intermediate group classes, but still haven’t advanced their Finnish language skills significantly past the intermediate stage. As a life-long learner and teacher of Finnish myself, who did not grow up in a Finnish-speaking family, I can share with you what I did to help my fluency significantly, while I was at that most frustrating stage between beginner and highly proficient. There is nothing easy about these methods, but as they say things that are easy aren’t always the most worthy endeavors anyway.