Has Language Guilt ever Ruined your Day?

Us humans, we’re an unreliable lot. Making big promises, telling our lovers and our languages that we will be forever faithful to them. And then, we find an exciting new script and go skipping away, never reaching the blissful heights of B2 level! Have you ever abandoned a language? In today’s post, I want to give you a quick life and language update and share my abandonment of Russian along with some ideas of how we can deal with Language Guilt.

Quitting without guilt

I’m finding this one very difficult indeed. I started learning Russian over a year ago and have not made a lot of progress. I don’t really mind this all that much - obviously I’ve been a productive person in many other ways. But I genuinely feel quite guilty and embarrassed at the thought of “giving up on Russian”. I feel like I’m sharing this in a space where people are keen to acquire lots of languages. I’m a teacher of languages. My whole thing is designed to keep you going! What a poor showing when your own language coach announces that she’s going to stop learning Russian for a while.

I had the time and I used it

But there may be a different way of looking at this. First of all, let’s examine the classic excuse of “I’ve just got no time in my life for this.” I have thought this a few times, just like everyone has. But realistically, I know that I have spent time language learning. I spent a lot of time and brain energy on bringing my French back up to scratch since last year. Russian seemed like the one I was scared to go back to because it was a real challenge, and right now I just wasn’t ready. But really, I had time. I could have made time. I wasn’t idle, I was just not that into Russian.

Some other things I did?

So I think I can get away with considering myself a person who has not been lazy.

I needed to unblock my Productivity

Do you relate to the following situation? My own productivity is never higher than when I manage to let go of a “should-y” feeling. There is no need to be my own worst critic and spend all my days avoiding something I don’t like, and at the same time feeling guilty about it. So instead, I want to take this opportunity to openly declare that I feel embarrassed that I didn’t learn more Russian.

There. So what? So nothing! I have learnt a lot in the time I did spend with this wonderful language: new words, verb endings, Cyrillic script and what grechka is. Maybe if I feel like I "should be at level A2 by now", the guilt actually becomes a hindrance to learning more Russian?

If we lose our sense of fun and play in language learning, what is left but graft and guilt and bad feelings?

Now it is the time to follow my own enthusiasm and start discovering the basics of a few more languages with a clear and open mind. Isn’t that better? I am taking a moment to appreciate the things that I did learn and I am ready to move on and let the enthusiasm boost me along.

I am Declaring my Intentions

Here I am with my clear and open mind. I have learnt some basics of Russian. I will be back one day and LOVING IT. And in the meantime?

Here’s what’s on my plate for the coming few months:

As you are reading this at the beginning of June, I have just celebrated my wedding and hidden out in Wales for a few days. Now I hope to be able to carve out a little more time to delve into a language that has fascinated me forever: Welsh. I live near the Welsh border and a week in the country is one of the most affordable travel options I probably have. The Welsh language also attracts me because of its historic connections and the wonderful way that it evokes its landscape in its pronunciation. I have not yet got a plan of how I will go about learning this one, and am most likely to treat it as my “passion project”, dipping in and out of learning more.

The second language is one that I’m truly looking forward to, and again one I’m expecting to pursue at a beginner level. I’ll give you a few hints here to see if you can guess which one it is:

  • It’s related to English and German in a way that makes it easy to read
  • I’ve just started a new Pinterest board for it
  • This guy:
swedish chef

Any ideas?

Has Language Guilt ever ruined your day?

I would love to hear from you guys on this topic. Let's drag that language guilt out of the closet, kicking and screaming, and look at it in daylight. Is it okay to move on from a language when you feel ready to do so? Or should we all stop being so precious and commit to working harder?

I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments - please let me know where you're at.

Three Quick Techniques for Speaking and Writing More in a Foreign Language

If you are the self-directed type of language learner, I bet you’ve got yourself a little routine set up and have a large amount of input coming in. Online courses, flashcard decks, podcasts. And instructions and TV shows. And Harry Potter in whatever language you are learning. It’s all about how much you can put into your head in the shortest possible period of time.

speak-write-more-fluent

And then an article comes along and tells you to “speak more”, so you pack your motivation and get yourself that language exchange partner, you open your mouth and …. nothing. Where the HECK are all those new words, please?

Like you, I totally know the feeling of wanting to just open your mouth and speak. I see it in my students on a regular basis. I can feel it when I try to have a French conversation. Why is it so frustrating?

For me, the heart of the problem lies in the nature of the skills you have been training. There are output and input activities. And within those, thee four core language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. All languages are systems of communication, so they require you to be able to both understand and produce comprehensible things. Balance really matters, and if you are on chapter 15 of your Assimil, but you can’t talk at chapter 3 level, you need to go back to the core language skills and start pushing yourself to go from input to output.

Core Language Skills to the Rescue

Luckily, this isn’t quite as tough as it seems. In my book Fluency Made Achievable, you can find lots of easy exercises for training the specific skills of writing and speaking. And here are three ideas you can use in your language learning routine to focus on boosting your output. If you have to cut some of your study time away from the input-focused tasks through this, don’t hesitate to do so. The aim of incorporating output into your language learning is not to make you better at producing language right away, but instead to give you that core skills balance. You will find that you become a better and more confident speaker through this, and that you’ll start approaching that desirable feeling of fluency and confidence.

1. Reply Back

This exercise is for all those learners who spend hours with foreign language podcasts and TV shows. It cuts right through all those excuses and attention drifts that are holding you back. Whenever you are listening to those recordings, get into a routine of stopping what you are listening to every five minutes. Think about whatever the actors were talking about and imagine you are being interviewed about the same topic. If you are watching a drama, imagine you are part of the action. What would you say? What do you think about these facts?

Don’t just imagine what you would say, but reply back to the video, talk to the actors or the imaginary interviewer in your head. Speak out loud, like no one is around you. This exercise is so perfect for being in the car or studying at home. Not only does it force you to say something, but it also prevents you from tuning out. If you force yourself to think about what was discussed and reply back, you are also forced to listen attentively and make sure you really understand. No more hiding.

If you’re interested in a great tool deeply understanding native language content, check out Yabla, a fabulous tool that goes so much further than your average YouTube channel.

2. Describe Your World

Here is a quote from Fluency Made Achievable, in which I interviewed language learner David Mansaray about his favourite practices in learning a foreign language:

I like to describe the world around me in a the foreign language. For example: ”The boy is wearing a hat”, or ”The woman is pushing a pram”, or ”The people around me are boring so I'd rather think in my head in a foreign language”. I can do this exercise anywhere at any time. It not only helps me practice, but it also helps me to discover vocabulary and grammatical structures I need to work on. I make a note of these in a small notebook I always carry with me and work on them later.

No matter if you are recording a voice memo on your phone or jotting sentences down in a notebook like David does, the key is that you are using your language in the context that works for you. You can go from foreign language shopping lists to describing an everyday scene in great detail. The key is that you maintain active use and produce something in a foreign language on a regular basis. This exercise is also particularly great because it builds habits very easily, which can make a huge difference when you start coming out of the first honeymoon phase.

3. Write Short Lines Every Day

There is a reason I keep making my students aware of the need to write as part of their language practice. Writing forces you into paying attention. When you try to write something on your phone, you miss what's on the TV. When you try to tweet while talking to someone, it comes out as nonsense. Writing has this way of being an activity that tells you "HEY! Look here! This is where you focus now". I often talk about how much I find that this practice is underrated, and it is the quietest core language skill. If speaking a foreign language appealed to you because you are an introvert, or dreaming of overcoming shyness, then you may not be willing to spend hours crafting short stories.

Nonetheless, you should put your mind to short and regular writing practice. A line a day is easily written, takes up five minutes of your time and STILL does more for you than half an hour of podcasts can. If you work with a tutor, why not email or text them in your target language from time to time?

Or alternatively, start out translating one line from your native language every single day. Over time, you will feel this huge sense of achievement as you realise you have written thousands of words in your foreign language. Behold the achievement when it happens, congratulate yourself on your progress and make sure you get this proofread.

Remember Balance

Nothing is as frustrating as feeling you are working hard and making no progress at all, and understanding the core language skills idea will help you propel forward your language learning progress. Getting stuck in a rut is not for you.

Here is the key: Maintain variety and keep doing the things you haven’t done.

It’s not about beating yourself up when you find that your writing skill doesn’t live up to your advanced reading routines. It’s about recognising that there’s a skill gap and getting to work. I promise you that you’ll find yourself getting better and boosting your confidence in a little matter of weeks. It’s incredible what a shake-up can do for language learners.

If you want to work through your own core language skills assessment, check out my book Fluency Made Achievable which is focused entirely on this system of four skills and contains a neat 3 week planner. It will help you build your proficiency and focus on strengthening the precise skills you need.

9 Questions To Discuss With Your Language Tutor

language teacing

Today's post is inspired by a recent episode of David Mansaray's "Language Is Culture" podcast. In Episode 12 of Language is Culture, we hear from computational linguist Judith Meyer - she's German, she loves languages and you can totally hear it in her voice!

Working with a language tutor is something I can recommend for any language learners, especially introverts, because you'll just get more out of the intense environment and focused attention.

Even if you have never worked 1-to-1 before, you can easily to use it as a booster, for example before an exam or as a quick refresher after a quiet spell.

But it's important to get the chemistry and expectations right from the start, so take account of the following key points.

First Conversation with Your Language Tutor

If you are looking for a tutor that works specifically on your goals, then it's much more important to have a clear conversation at the start. The experienced tutors will know what

Some questions I like asking my new students are:

  • Do you want to work with a specific resource only, and do you want me to buy it too?
  • Are you aiming for a specific skill like reading literature, applying for jobs or doing small talk?
  • Are you working towards an exam or moving date?
  • Is your goal about a feeling (confidence, comfort, encouragement?) or about hard data (vocab, grammar?)?

And here is what you should ask them:

  • How long and how frequent are your lessons, and what is the pricing structure?
  • Have you worked with my type of situation before?
  • What kind of lesson structure would you suggest for my situation?
  • What's your approach - strict or relaxed, friendly or formal?

You should know what kind of answer you want to hear, so make sure you have made some notes before the first conversation.

My Perspective

My own style, for example, is very friendly and I like to build up a supportive relationship with my students. If you were looking for a sober teacher, my lessons might not meet your expectations!

How To Use a Language Tutor

Judith's interview is focused on how learners get the most out of working with a language tutor. Here is her theory:

Any 1 to 1 language lesson should be led by either the tutor or the student, so an inexperienced learner should look for an experienced tutor and vice versa.

I thought about this point for a bit, and I do agree. The dynamic between me and my students can be very different depending on how experienced they are at language learning. When a student knows very definitely what they want out of the lessons, I often find that they're less keen to react to my input - it's not a lazier lesson for me, as I then take a role of watching out for errors, prompting the conversation and supporting through extra challenges. With a student who is new to language learning, I am more likely to direct the lesson in many ways and set the topics myself.

A good tutor is sensitive to what the student expects, and able to make adjustments to the teaching style that meet those expectations.

My Perspective

My favourite people are new to tutoring and often they're studying their first foreign language. In those cases, my students are often happy to experiment. They just love a challenge, so we can enjoy the variety that I bring to our lessons and just focus on having fun along with the more complicated parts. As someone with a love of coaching, I like providing those extra services of improving learning methods, finding new exercises and encouraging them along the way.

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Which Language Should I Learn?

So you have decided that you want to learn a new language. This is big. This will change your life. If you are wondering which language to learn, here is a little bit of help. Here are a few thoughts that you might find useful:

1) Ignore Thoughts of “Easy” and “Difficult”

Here are some common reasons why you might hold back from learning a difficult language:

The New Alphabet

You might know that my current language learning journey is learning Russian. But this is my 7th foreign language. Until I was 28, I never even considered learning Russian. I thought it was difficult. But then came my first business trip to Kazakhstan: A country where street signs look like this:

Kazakhstan street sign

No English! No Western script! I had to find my way around the streets, and it showed me just how quickly learning a new alphabet can be done. I had been scared of this all my life, and it turned out to be a really small problem.

The New Systems

Now, what about the fact that some languages are just naturally difficult or easy? This is partly true if you measure languages by how similar they are to English. You may find that the ideas listed in this graphic are going to work for you:

But if you have an understanding of the English grammar, you already have a basic understanding of language and you will very quickly find that your existing knowledge makes learning easier. Any langauge makes more sense once you know grammar.

The Bad Experience

Many people tell me that they are not interested in learning German or French because they had to study at school and they were bad at it. It is almost as if a bad grade in school was a message to these people, telling them that they are not allowed to try again.

If you have similar thoughts, please adjust. Language learning is not about how you did in school, or about what you found difficult when you were 13. Most adult learners now look at languages from a different point of view, and as a teacher I have often experienced that even the most basic knowledge of a language will be reactivated when you come back to it after many years. So in other words, if it was difficult at school you must not expect it to be difficult after school.

2) 1000 Speakers Is Enough

Many people decide that they want to learn a popular language spoken by many people everywhere. But did you know that even minority languages like Irish Gaelic or Maltese are spoken by over 100,000 people around the world? This means there are more people than you could speak to in a lifetime.

When you decide to learn a new language, choosing the popular language can help you find more native speakers makes it easier to find materials and fellow learners. But there are also advantages to learning the rare language. For example, native speakers will appreciate your effort so much more. Plus, rare languages can actually boost your career! My friend Mike is a native English speaker and found that his skill in Finnish helped him start his translation business in a smaller market and attract bigger clients a lot more easily. This would be a lot harder if you were working in a language spoken by millions.

3) Your Interest is The Best Guide

The first and strongest bit of advice I can give you is to choose a language that truly interests you. This matters more than the number of speakers, the career prospects, the difficulty or anything else. If you are fascinated by the desert palaces of Rajasthan in India, you should not be looking at learning Spanish!

Every expert will tell you that learning a language just gets so much better when you can make it come alive. Obviously, this means speaking in most cases. But even if a language is hardly used in modern times, you can still become extremely passionate about it. Latin learners will enjoy reading the smart (sometimes really funny) writings of Ovid, and if you are in Europe it will give you a new perspective on your own country. This can be fascinating and rewarding, and we haven’t even started to talk about how useful Latin is for learning Italian, Spanish, French, Romanian and so many more.

So, Which Language Should You Learn?

In my life, I have so far studied 7 languages. It never felt like a waste of time. Now that I am studying Russian I know that each and every one of the other 6 is making it easier for me. But the important thing was that I stuck with those languages, and I didn’t start more than one at the same time. My best advice would be to just make a decision and start learning. Stick with your language. If you become interested in a different one in the future, you have not wasted your time because language study is connected, and teaches you a new way of looking at the world.

Stop wasting your time choosing the easiest language, instead choose the most interesting one.

There is just one thing to think about when you want to learn a new language: You will learn nothing if you stay lazy. New languages are always a lot of work, and the only way to keep going is to motivate yourself all the time. This can be because of cultural reasons, but the interest in your own achievement is just as powerful. For example, I never learnt French because I wanted to move to France. But at the same time, I never gave up on French and I committed my time and effort. Now I am fluent in French, and still have never lived in France. French culture is not my passion, but being able to speak French has always been such a strong goal that I just kept going. The formula I would share with you is a bit like this:

Interest * (Commitment + Engagement) * Time = Fluency

If one of these is zero, you will not achieve fluency.

I hope this article helped you make up your mind. Which language do you dream of? What’s holding you back from studying it?

Further Reading:

It's Good to Be Bilingual! 8 Reasons you Should Learn a Second Language

Do you speak any other language apart from your mother tongue? This question is becoming more and more popular among professionals aged 20-40. Why should we learn a different language from ours? Is it trendy? Would we get more chances to find our soul mate? Or is it just a reason to become more competitive in the job market? Being bilingual has hundreds of benefits; however the most important reason to learn a new language is that you desire to learn it. In this sense, motivation seems to be the key to the whole process - and in this multilingual world, here are eight truly persuasive reasons to become a language learner.

img ©Berto Garcia

img ©Berto Garcia

1) You´ll Become a Multitasker

Studies have shown that multilingual people have better task capacities. According to a study from Pennsylvania State University, bilingual individuals become smarter as they get used to working in two different language systems. In this sense, learning another language is also a good way to improve your memory (Bilinguals are better at retaining shopping lists and names). This is because the brain is like a muscle that works better when it gets exercised!

2) Learning a Third Language Gets Easier!

This is very simple. Once your brain has started working in a foreign language (which involves getting used to different constructions and memorising rules), it will be ready for a third one! This means that you will be more aware of language and you could even develop a better ear for listening. Several experts said that the action of learning a new language can make you better in speaking your mother tongue. It´s all about advantages!

3)Free Access to More than One Culture

This is one of the most beautiful treasures hidden behind languages. Who doesn't want to find out more about other cultures and traditions? If you become fluent in another language, you will have the chance to get close to people. You can make new friends and maybe you can find love. But it's not only about the people, it's also about the pleasure to read a book in the author's language and forget about the translations (You can actually feel what he or she felt while he was writing the novel). And of course, you'll be able to watch a film without subtitles and hear the actor's real laughter. And yes, that is priceless!

4)You’ll Become Someone Else

It is said that people change personality when speaking another language. Have you ever thought how would you sound in Spanish? This language, for instance, is often related to warm people and physical proximity. This is because once you learn a language you also learn the social procedures of that culture and may find yourself picking up a few new social habits outside the constraints of your usual circles.

5)Bilingualism can Delay Alzheimer's

Several studies have revealed that for monolingual adults, the mean age for the first signs of dementia is 71.4; however, for those who speak two or more languages, the mean age for those first signs is 75.5. If bilingual brains can better resist dementia, I guess it's well worth it to give it a go!

6) It Can Open Doors For You in The Job Market

As companies become more international, there is an important need for employees that are fluent in different languages. People with language skills are more valuable in the global job market. The knowledge of more than one language is necessary in most sectors. For instance, the travel sector is one of the most attractive, especially for young professionals. International companies such as Expedia offer different types of careers with languages all over the world. Remember: Try to offer what others don't have.

7) Travelling Will Be Even Better!

We all know that English is considered as “the international language”, however we also know that it's not the same going to Italy and speaking to the locals in English as if were to do it in Italian. Wherever we go on a holiday, if we don't speak the official language of the country we are visiting, we'll be missing all those little things and secrets that make that destination so fun. Speaking Spanish, for instance, is today incredibly useful for travelling. Have you ever thought of how many Spanish speaking countries you could visit in the world? There is no doubt: You speak the language, you win.

8) You´ll Become More Tolerant

Last but not least: Being able to speak another language will make you more tolerant and can encourage people to cut down racism. In other words, it will encourage you to be more open to others. And don't forget that once you can communicate in another language, you will also be able to bring new perspectives to other groups of nationalities and help them to be more tolerant.

After reading this, I hope you are now curious to learn a second language and discover the great fun that there is behind it.

It's good to Be Bilingual! by Marta Lopez Garcia was first published on Fluent, The Language Learning Blog. Join our newsletter for more language learning tips and a free copy of the Guide to the Best Language Learning Resources.