Lessons

Lesson Info

Avoid Language Pitfalls

now, this is probably the biggest concern that many learners many people out there feel that they are threatened on, plagued by when it comes to learning a language. And you've reached the point where you may be had difficulties at the beginning and you've overcome these. And then at some point, you realize drama, that path that we saw there, Well, there's now a train that's gone through it, and there's no way of getting on the other side or what she was there happened in England is the leaves fall on the line in the train stop, and we're told that the leaves we can't carry on because the sheep are on the line on the lever on the life. So I said, There are leaves on the line. We can't get past there now what do we do? One example would be to do that. Johnny, My have had enough. I can't do it. I simply can't do anymore. Now. That's understandable. And I think every now and then we need to do this. We need to get a bit of our anger out. But the more effective way is to deal with problems...

when we encounter them and here will be looking at how we deal effectively with problems identifying them in the first place and how to resolve them on. I would also like to point out and I think this is very important for us. We need to realize that the problems that we encounter are not purely linguistic on by that mean by that I don't mean I'm not saying that you are the problem. I'm not saying that at all, but we do bring on. This is what we looked upon looked at before this whole notion of psychology, of learning and psychology, of language learning, we do bring some emotional problems. So emotional baggage, let's say for want of another word we do have were emotional beings. We have feelings, We have difficulties. We have moments of joy. We have moments of despair now where looking essentially therefore a combination of these where we're bringing our own personal worries, our personal fears on putting them in a linguistic in a language context. But the end goal, the aim, the objective always has to be to know how to gain, or should I say, regain and how to retain confidence because just like information we need toe retain confidence, our well being. And we need to feel good. We need to feel our ease in our own skin. Now, I pointed out some of my some of the mistakes that I think are the most common mistakes that we encounter when it comes to learning the language. And I would say one of the biggest ones ever is worrying about making mistakes. Now that could be many reasons that could be have many. It's a very complex issue. It could be, for example, that you don't you're worried about making mistakes when you speak. You're worried about making mistakes. When you're right, you're worried about getting the word order wrong. You're worried about your pronunciation. You're worried about not using the right terms. You're worried about not using the right grandma you're worried about maybe actually mixing things up with English. There are so many mistakes that we can worry about here. The 2nd 1 is what I refer to as negative attitudes towards learning. And by that I mean that our language environment, our learning environment is full of negative vibes. It's full off discouragement. It's full of negative thoughts and feelings towards the language, which actually does happen where I'm pretty sure, even if you know if you've experienced it yourself, some of you out there might have made no other people that say, I hate French. I hate Chinese. It's so annoying. I can't learning on the system So ridiculous that, for me is in the clear example of every negative. That negative attitude and the 3rd 1 is something that I think is very relevant. Tours are, and it's something that we've looked at extensively in this class, and it's the notion of not varying your methods. That means that you insist on doing one kind of method one kind of monotonous, repetitive or maybe not so repetitive method that you think it's simply okay to learn from one book from one form of the language on simply do that every single day. For the next months on, do you expect to do nothing but that Andi, for it to expect for the language to stick Andi. Funnily enough, it's not sticking, it's not sticking it all. You're not going anywhere with your really and you're really frustrated and you smash your phone. Maybe are you smashing you tell the paid on your book because you're not going anywhere. And the 4th 1 is neglecting what we've seen before as active or passive learning. So you're only focusing on one. And as I said before, you know, active and passive learning need to be reciprocal. You need to be engaging in both, you know, that have a holistic approach to the language. Very common mistake is literally translating word for word from English. And we saw yesterday how important you are in a previous lesson. How important it waas to develop your own language. Mindset. Onda Last but not least, as I said, there are many reasons out there many mistakes that I could come up with, but this is probably together with the 1st One of the biggest problems that we have is lack of confidence. We feel as if we're not able toe feel comfortable in the language. We don't feel he's the language isn't ours. It's were no way near from making hours on How do we go about doing this? I mean, how are we able to actually solve these mistakes now? The thing is, I would always say that the first thing is we need to look at ourselves. This isn't necessarily pointing the finger and saying You're bad, it's not about but he's just being And this is something I've always said from the beginning as well. It's being realistic to ourselves on honest Andi if we're honest, If we look at, for example, the first mistake worrying about making mistakes now if we look at this, I've analyzed a few of them and I'd like us to analyze the problems and solutions together. But if we take the 1st 1 apart, then I can't make it easier than it already is. We all make mistakes and this may sound like our pat on the back. It's fine. Don't worry like we all make mistakes way actually do I mean we all, no matter what, what area, what expertise. We always make mistakes and we will always make mistakes and we always made mistakes. His Children, especially concerning the language we would say like I eat and instead of eight I spoke and I instead of I spoke. How do we learn from making the state? How do we learn the language by making mistakes? Because if you don't put the language into practice, then no one's gonna tell you what you're saying is right or wrong. And if you don't put the language into practice, then you're never gonna communicate with anyone. And if you don't communicate with anyone, then there's really no reason to learn the language. It's a genuinely human, understandable thought of being worried about making a mistake, and all I can advise here is go back to being a child. Now that doesn't mean throwing your toys out of the problem and screaming and wherever you want, I wanted to get your own way. Sometimes that's really but what I genuinely mean here is behave like a child would do when approaching this language. Child Children don't ask themselves were what they're saying is correct. They simply say now, depending on the situation, this might not be the most advisable thing. I mean, if you're they fancy dinner and then you just blurt something help. But you wouldn't do that in English, so that's not the issue here. But the thing is, the onus is on you and this isn't in a negative way. It's a positive way is toe stimulate you to motivate you to keep on practicing on. Ideally, that's simply what we need to be doing. We need to use the situation, the use of the language. Sorry, in any situation we can whenever, wherever. And however, Andi, essentially, we need to believe in ourselves because I said from the beginning as well is that we look to golden and Pygmalion, and if you don't believe that you have the ability to do this, then you're never going toe make. You're never going to commit and you're never going to make strides in your language learning process. It's a simple as it couldn't be any simpler. So if you feel and believe me, we all do it. In this case, it's very much like sports are going to the gym that you have to feel that you can commit and you can believe. But we already have a tool to do this because we have our reasons. We have our goal. We have our ways of rewarding ourselves, and most importantly, we have our timetable and we have our techniques. We know when and why and how we should be learning the language, and this automatically should cancel out any negative attitudes towards learning. Sometimes, however, it doesn't is completely human to come home after a long day at work, and it's 5 p.m. On. The only thing you want to do is put your feet up and you can't be bothered learning that exercise because he says on the timetable that you should be learning it at five or 5 30 Well, sometimes it's got to switch off. So if you realize that you're not gonna be able to do that, then do something fun. Because at the end of the day, I always reiterate, and I can't stress enough how important it is to make your language learning experience for Andi know, grammar rules I find them for. But I'm aware of the fact that a lot of people don't now. Even then you can maybe died. Make this cut this up into smaller segments. You could maybe make your language learning your grammar, learning smaller and space it do a bit in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. And in the meantime, watch your television Siris for 30 minutes to give you that feeling that you're doing something with the language toe to invigorate your attitude. towards do something really fun that you enjoy doing in the language. Watch a sports game, listen to music. Maybe speak to a friend that speaks the language and you want to You want to learn the language to show them as well. One of the reasons is to be able to converse with them in their language. Send them a message and they'll send your message back saying, Oh, cool. What you doing today than in the language or Oh, I forgot that you you know, You know, I have to say that already and this will automatically change your attitude towards learning because you have to make it feel fun. And you have to feel excited about it on. You can feel excited about any subject concerning language. It's simply about your attitude to water and making sure that he doesn't have to be overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly positive. I'm not expecting you to leave here and say, Ah, yeah, grammar is the best thing ever. I'd love you to say that, but if you don't want to, I'm not gonna judge. I'm not therefore saying you fail the class because I mean, none of us are gonna fail anyway. but grammar. If you couldn't appreciate it, tolerate it, then they then I'm really happy about that. If it becomes your next best friend, even better. So these are simply too. We had another list off mistakes here, such as neglecting active or passive learning and translating from English. I would like to. This is for example, I am sorry. I would like us toe reflect on this whilst I I speak about briefly translating from English because I think it's something that is very, very important. We were discussing about how on we need to develop a mindset. If we're going to speak French, then we want to speak friends like a French person would on that, as we saw before, means thinking to a certain extent, like a French person, what are among person from Quebec would from Canada. Now, if we're translating from English, it's usually the simplest thing to do. But if we required our mindset, then we should stop ourselves almost every single time from doing so because we want the language to come out as naturally as it does. This doesn't mean, however, that every now and then you can't do it because it happens to all of us and happens to Multilingual people as well. You'll get someone that comes up to go. Zack, How do you say sliced bread and English, All the state to me in German? I think that's a thing for a minute. It's like, How do I say that? So automatically trying to find a link in my brain toe. Translate that back. So every now and then it's not. Depending on the situation is not the wrong it's not. I think that I would. You have to translate it sometimes. But essentially, when you're speaking, you shouldn't be thinking about the notion in English. You should be let you should just let the language out on as if you were a Spanish person. That's thinking at the same time in Spanish, because when we think in English, we don't think about what we're saying. We don't have a word in our mind unless we're really thinking of a very complex subject. We need t focus on this, but usually when we speak, we have an idea, a concept in our head, and we don't have it written in front of us. It's just we know what we're talking about and we're going about this so I could carry on talking about this and all of a sudden, if my mind and you can see this, I was thinking about talking about atomic energy. Then all of a sudden I could start talking about atomic energy. I have an idea in my head, and it's the same what we need to be doing in Spanish. We shouldn't be focused in whatever language. We shouldn't be focusing on on what we're trying to say in English, because only does it make a sound more robotic. But also it stops us from from attaining the natural level of fluency. So if you go back to the the my top mistakes the two that I singled out now what would you single out? Or what do you consider to be your problems? And maybe after listening to wife said, Can we come up with our own solutions to the problems that we face on? And I would love to hear about this on toe to discuss this with you, Andi, maybe to know only listen to your solutions, but also maybe to come up with solutions together. So as I said before. Please drop down a problem or two down on duh. We will be discussing this in the next few minutes. I know for myself, Matthew, that one problem I have is I reached a level. Imagine like a conversational fluency. But I just tell myself there's no way I could master like there's no way I could become literate. There's no way I can, you know, take a university class and Chinese. Um, so that's my problem. But I I don't I don't know if there's a good accepted taking more positive we'll most definitely, because a big part of this is you saying to yourself that you're not going to be able to do it on because you convince yourself of that already. Then any activity that you might want to engage within the language you will simply disregard because you've already told yourself there's no point. Now if you were to say OK, it's not as easy as I thought it would be because nothing in life is usually a simple as we think it is. But if we were to say well, okay, in order to retain and the university level, our level of Chinese that would enable Manchester University. Then I need to be leaving a few more things. I need to be in integrating this into my life and we can do this. You re set out a timetable on we set out way a deadline. By the time we'd like to do this, Of course, we're realistic to ourselves. So if we're going to say like, Oh, I have nothing to do for the next four weeks, they're gonna spend every single day learning Chinese. Then that's fine. Most of was, unfortunately unable to do that. But it's all about making it a personal goal for you. I mean, now my son is learning Mandarin, and so that's a little bit of ah solution, because he'll ask me how to write stuff and I have to go for your out like, Okay, Is this word off looking my app? You my dictionary app on my phone. But that's helping me relearn some of it. And what better motivation Thio Thio be a good role model for him and communicate with him in that way and online? We're talking about one problem a lot of us have had is being scared. Teoh make mistakes and one solution. We come up with these. I lived in China for many years, and when I first got there, I didn't want to make mistakes or talk to anybody. But if I didn't do that, I didn't eat. So So one way is to travel to the country and really, because it forces yourself forces. You do? Yeah, We realized language, and we realize as well is. And I'd like to stress this as well that we have this innate fear the world going to end. If I say this sentence now, it's always if the world going to end on. If you say you pronounce the sentence wrong, no one's going to laugh. If they laugh, you don't need to be speaking to them. Simple as it is, most people will not laugh. They'll be actually amazed at the fact they've actually taken the time to learn the language on uh as I said, nothing bad is going to happen. The thing that stopping us is ourselves studio here have any problems with solutions? Yes, that translating from English. Yes. So with the languages that you've learned is it that like when you see an apple, the word. Apple just doesn't come up. It's just by passing. And you think of the four? Exactly. Yeah. So how long does that take toe for that switch to take place? I think it depends on how much you do with the language, but I mean for me because we're speaking several languages. Then if I see an apple depending on the language, I'm speaking and I don't I just see the concept of an apple a bit like, say, Chinese in the sense that you just have this thing, that it's just the meaning of it. But I don't think of the language in it. On this I were engaging in conversation, and then all of a sudden, I see Annapolis allowed you on the apple. But it's an interesting topic because I think in this sayings like, if it is applicable to you, then if you look or something, don't think of the apple. If you're thinking if you're learning language and try and think as much as possible instead of thinking Apple, which when we see enough, but we don't we think it. But we don't see the word apple, but trying visualize the word that you're that you're the language that you're learning and also someone else, online said. I think for me I feel like it becomes a chore, and I need to remember how fun and liberating it could be. Toe learn Exactly. And Sanders says, I would say, Join a study group or something so we can practice together. Definitely the more than Mary I mean, then you feel encouraged to You've got people there in the same boat as you. I want to retain the same goal and in that sense there's nothing better than learning together. I mean, I love doing it with my brother as well, and if I see that he's doing something that I'm not in, the automatic makes me think I have to be doing this. And if he's doing it than all the other way around, then he feels exactly the same. And she also said Center also said that it was a good point that we're scared. People gonna laugh at us, but when we think about in reverse, like if someone spoke to me in English and wasn't speaking right, why with the last thing I was rude, everything yeah, and he sees say, so true, so true