You don’t really want to learn a language
Or don’t quite understand why you need this. Thus, you are not properly motivated, and this is probably one of the most important obstacles to learning a foreign language. Professor Robert Gardner, PhD in Psychology, and his colleagues have conducted a lot of research on this topic. They have repeatedly confirmed that motivated students achieve better results than those who do not have incentives.
Therefore, no matter how interesting and effective the methods you choose are, they may not work if you don’t really want to learn and don’t want to be active.
Solution
1. Decide on your motives
It will be easier to seriously start learning a language when you identify the reasons why you even thought about it. This could be anything:
The desire to make it easier for yourself when traveling.
Hope to get a more promising job.
Interest in the culture of a country.
The intention to watch movies or read books in the original.
The desire to simply “stretch” the mind or improve self-esteem.
Any fairly strong motivating factor will do. And best of all, it stimulates the anticipation of any pleasure. Just understand for yourself exactly how your life can improve if you learn a new language.
In addition, this will make it easier for you to determine what material and how deeply you should master.
You will be able to understand whether you need to focus only on speaking (when it comes to traveling, for example) or if you need to learn the language comprehensively. Is it possible to learn a limited number of words and grammatical structures, or the more the better. And so forth.
2. Plan your classes
Linguists and teachers recommend doing this in advance to see your immediate and final goals. For example, Jeremy Harmer, a writer and expert in English language teaching, suggests asking yourself these questions:
What exactly do you plan to achieve? What are you going to do about it? Which tools would you prefer to use?
Answering these questions will help you complete the following steps:
Define your goals as clearly as possible. Focus on the aspects of language that are important in your situation. For example, if you need to communicate verbally with foreigners at work, speaking, listening and professional vocabulary come first. You can also focus on the CEFR system, which details the levels of language proficiency. Break down large tasks into smaller ones.
Find appropriate methods and materials. At your disposal are various textbooks and reference books, manuals for preparing for international exams, original programs and numerous online resources. Don’t forget to pay attention to different aspects of language. Decide how you will combine methods aimed at each of them.
Set a time frame. Set deadlines for completing a specific task and decide how much time you will spend on classes every day. Regardless of your employment, remember: it’s better to study a little bit every day than to “swallow” a lot of material at once a week.
Writing a plan in advance can help you turn vague intentions into concrete actions. You will be able to clearly assess your progress and not waste energy each time trying to understand what and how to tackle today. The plan provides general guidelines and can be adjusted if necessary.
3. Fuel your motivation
To do this, Harmer recommends using materials that are filled with emotions in your classes: music, beautiful illustrations, touching stories, jokes — anything that will help you avoid boredom. This does not mean that you should use such things all the time, but adding an element of novelty has a very beneficial effect on the results.
You can experiment not only with materials. Wear some bright clothes or change your place of study periodically — go to a park or cafe.
The main thing is to let in some “fresh air”.
Polyglot Benny Lewis, who speaks more than seven foreign languages, also recommends taking a break from time to time (but not too often) to avoid burnout. You can dilute your studies with activities that don’t give the impression of work, such as watching entertaining videos or reading something simple, like comics, in the language you’re learning.
4. Practice as often as you can
Lewis argues that the deeper you dive into the language, the stronger your zeal becomes. So look for as many ways as you can: video, music, books, movies, radio — you name it. All this increases the chances of realizing that you can already actually use knowledge — and nothing fuels you better.
You don’t like the language
Or the culture of the country where it is spoken. This may seem odd: why teach it at all? But our life is multifaceted, and the reasons may be different:
Learning a language is necessary for work.
You have to live in a country for personal reasons, although you actually don’t want to.
You may like the culture, but the rules in the language seem too illogical, and so on.
This is a really serious problem: this is how you take any information you come across during classes with hostility.
Solution
If you have nowhere to go, you can try the following.
1. Look at language as a tool
Psychologists Robert Gardner and Wallace Lambert argue in their research that there are two main types of motivation to learn languages:
Instrumental — for some external benefit. For example, opportunities to get an attractive job in another country or get a promotion.
Integrative — out of a sincere inner desire to get closer to some other culture.
The second one, of course, works much more efficiently, but this does not mean that the dream of simply making life more convenient and enjoyable will not work. After all, you must admit that it is much better, for example, to work in your profession than to have to choose vacancies just because “they hire them without knowing the language”. And in any case, communicating with foreigners, if necessary, is much more convenient and faster in a language that both you and them know.
2. Think of language as a way to expand your consciousness
Look at the situation more detached and just be happy that you’re discovering something new.
Psychologists and educators link motivation to Abraham Maslow’s theories. Among the basic human needs, he mentions “the desire to know and understand”. According to Maslow, people are often driven by curiosity and enjoy answering various questions about the world and themselves.
And a foreign language and culture are just another unknown facet of reality.
Of course, it is not very easy to restructure the perception in this way, but it is very valuable. Learning a different language is an ideal way to make your mind more flexible and learn to look at things from several different perspectives.
3. Develop integrative motivation artificially
Try to find music, movies, books, inventions, aspects of life, some other things that are related to a language or country and that you like — it’s likely that this will help you reconsider your attitude.
For example, some people start learning Japanese just because they are interested in Japanese video games, music, or anime. Others decide to learn English because they are eager to go to England. And some people are sure that when reading books in translation, he misses a lot of interesting details. It is possible that you will also be able to find something like this for yourself.
You’re afraid it won’t work
There are many reasons for such fears.
Your school curriculum or some of your personal failures could lead you to believe that languages are not your thing at all. Indeed, many educational institutions violate the basic principles of education:
You have to memorize the material instead of consciously absorbing it.
Students are given too many words and grammar that they don’t have time to repeat and memorize.
It is not always possible to train aspects of language in context, and then it is not clear how to apply them in practice.
Classes can be very boring, while interest is one of the most important engines of progress.
However, sometimes you create problems for yourself by suffering from excessive perfectionism or by comparing yourself to others. And here you are in a situation where you don’t even want to start.
Solution
1. Get rid of the idea that “language is not yours”
After all, you did manage to learn your native language. This took time, a lot of practice and real-life examples. And in fact, the same thing is needed for learning a foreign language.
2. Understand that you have more time for language than you think
It’s important to learn not to waste it. And many of the things you already do every day can be adapted to your classes. For example, read and watch only foreign language content on the Internet. And on the way home from work or school, listen to podcasts or audio books. Watching movies and TV shows without translation will also be a great practice, and you can read original works at night. The main thing is interest and real desire.
3. Don’t do things that make you bored
When learning a language on your own, you don’t have to do everything like at school or in a course — you can find many interesting methods that make learning much more fun. There are various ways to practice enough and at the same time memorize material without memorizing it.
You can read your favorite books in the original, use spaced repetition (at regular intervals), and come up with funny associations for memorizing words. There are many resources on the Internet that allow you to learn from movies and songs. There are interesting audio courses and much more.
4. Stop being afraid that you don’t have enough money
To successfully learn a language, you don’t have to spend money on expensive lessons, materials, and trips abroad to practice in real life. There are many free or inexpensive resources on the Internet, and you can communicate with native speakers using any messenger.
5. Forget the statement that only a child can learn a language
There are many examples that refute this view. This is also confirmed by Benny Lewis, whom we have already mentioned. He is guided by his experience with other language learners and says adults even have some advantages. For example, they can understand many details simply from the context of their life experience. In addition, they have better analytical thinking and are able to take up studies more consciously than children.
6. Don’t compare yourself to others
Everyone is different — they all have their own abilities and pace. Even if you learn the material more slowly than someone else does not mean anything. You don’t know what exactly the other person is doing and what difficulties they face. People tend to show only their success, leaving a lot behind the scenes.
It all comes down to one thing: you just have to get started, and if your motivation is strong, it will definitely be easier in the future.
Source: https://lifehacker.ru/kak-uchit-novye-yazyki/
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