diff --git a/misc/utils.py b/misc/utils.py
index 3085810f..b2e208ad 100644
--- a/misc/utils.py
+++ b/misc/utils.py
@@ -112,6 +112,10 @@ def set_lr(optimizer, lr):
     for group in optimizer.param_groups:
         group['lr'] = lr
 
+def get_lr(optimizer):
+    for group in optimizer.param_groups:
+        return group['lr']
+
 def clip_gradient(optimizer, grad_clip):
     for group in optimizer.param_groups:
         for param in group['params']:
@@ -159,3 +163,38 @@ def length_average(length, logprobs, alpha=0.):
     Returns the average probability of tokens in a sequence.
     """
     return logprobs / length
+
+class ReduceLROnPlateau(object):
+    "Optim wrapper that implements rate."
+    def __init__(self, optimizer, mode='min', factor=0.1, patience=10, verbose=False, threshold=0.0001, threshold_mode='rel', cooldown=0, min_lr=0, eps=1e-08):
+        self.scheduler = optim.lr_scheduler.ReduceLROnPlateau(optimizer, mode, factor, patience, verbose, threshold, threshold_mode, cooldown, min_lr, eps)
+        self.optimizer = optimizer
+        self.current_lr = get_lr(optimizer)
+        
+    def step(self):
+        "Update parameters and rate"
+        self.optimizer.step()
+
+    def scheduler_step(self, val):
+        self.scheduler.step(val)
+        self.current_lr = get_lr(self.optimizer)
+
+    def state_dict(self):
+        return {'current_lr':self.current_lr,
+                'scheduler_state_dict': self.scheduler.state_dict(),
+                'optimizer_state_dict': self.optimizer.state_dict()}
+
+    def load_state_dict(self, state_dict):
+        if 'current_lr' not in state_dict:
+            # it's normal optimizer
+            self.optimizer.load_state_dict(state_dict)
+            set_lr(self.optimizer, self.current_lr) # use the lr fromt the option
+        else:
+            # it's a schduler
+            self.current_lr = state_dict['current_lr']
+            self.scheduler.load_state_dict(state_dict['scheduler_state_dict'])
+            self.optimizer.load_state_dict(state_dict['optimizer_state_dict'])
+            # current_lr is actually useless in this case
+
+    def __getattr__(self, name):
+        return getattr(self.optimizer, name)
diff --git a/opts.py b/opts.py
index b8a0907f..69c1f605 100644
--- a/opts.py
+++ b/opts.py
@@ -100,6 +100,8 @@ def parse_opt():
                     help='epsilon that goes into denominator for smoothing')
     parser.add_argument('--weight_decay', type=float, default=0,
                     help='weight_decay')
+    parser.add_argument('--reduce_on_plateau', action='store_true',
+                    help='')
 
     parser.add_argument('--scheduled_sampling_start', type=int, default=-1, 
                     help='at what iteration to start decay gt probability')
diff --git a/train.py b/train.py
index f27c6207..6125a455 100644
--- a/train.py
+++ b/train.py
@@ -79,7 +79,11 @@ def train(opt):
     crit = utils.LanguageModelCriterion()
     rl_crit = utils.RewardCriterion()
 
-    optimizer = utils.build_optimizer(model.parameters(), opt)
+    if opt.reduce_on_plateau:
+         optimizer = utils.build_optimizer(model.parameters(), opt)
+         optimizer = utils.ReduceLROnPlateau(optimizer, factor=0.5, patience=3)
+    else:
+        optimizer = utils.build_optimizer(model.parameters(), opt)
     # Load the optimizer
     if vars(opt).get('start_from', None) is not None and os.path.isfile(os.path.join(opt.start_from,"optimizer.pth")):
         optimizer.load_state_dict(torch.load(os.path.join(opt.start_from, 'optimizer.pth')))
@@ -87,13 +91,14 @@ def train(opt):
     while True:
         if update_lr_flag:
                 # Assign the learning rate
-            if epoch > opt.learning_rate_decay_start and opt.learning_rate_decay_start >= 0:
-                frac = (epoch - opt.learning_rate_decay_start) // opt.learning_rate_decay_every
-                decay_factor = opt.learning_rate_decay_rate  ** frac
-                opt.current_lr = opt.learning_rate * decay_factor
-            else:
-                opt.current_lr = opt.learning_rate
-            utils.set_lr(optimizer, opt.current_lr)
+            if not opt.reduce_on_plateau:
+                if epoch > opt.learning_rate_decay_start and opt.learning_rate_decay_start >= 0:
+                    frac = (epoch - opt.learning_rate_decay_start) // opt.learning_rate_decay_every
+                    decay_factor = opt.learning_rate_decay_rate  ** frac
+                    opt.current_lr = opt.learning_rate * decay_factor
+                else:
+                    opt.current_lr = opt.learning_rate
+                utils.set_lr(optimizer, opt.current_lr) # set the decayed rate
             # Assign the scheduled sampling prob
             if epoch > opt.scheduled_sampling_start and opt.scheduled_sampling_start >= 0:
                 frac = (epoch - opt.scheduled_sampling_start) // opt.scheduled_sampling_increase_every
@@ -151,6 +156,8 @@ def train(opt):
         # Write the training loss summary
         if (iteration % opt.losses_log_every == 0):
             add_summary_value(tb_summary_writer, 'train_loss', train_loss, iteration)
+            if opt.reduce_on_plateau:
+                opt.current_lr = optimizer.current_lr
             add_summary_value(tb_summary_writer, 'learning_rate', opt.current_lr, iteration)
             add_summary_value(tb_summary_writer, 'scheduled_sampling_prob', model.ss_prob, iteration)
             if sc_flag:
@@ -168,6 +175,11 @@ def train(opt):
             eval_kwargs.update(vars(opt))
             val_loss, predictions, lang_stats = eval_utils.eval_split(dp_model, crit, loader, eval_kwargs)
 
+            if opt.reduce_on_plateau:
+                if 'CIDEr' in lang_stats:
+                    optimizer.scheduler_step(-lang_stats['CIDEr'])
+                else:
+                    optimizer.scheduler_step(val_loss)
             # Write validation result into summary
             add_summary_value(tb_summary_writer, 'validation loss', val_loss, iteration)
             if lang_stats is not None: