Why learning new languages is so difficult and how to overcome it

You don't really want to learn the language

Or do not quite understand why you need it. Thus, you do not have the proper motivation, and this is perhaps one of the most important obstacles to mastering a foreign language. PhD in Psychology, Professor Robert Gardner, together with his colleagues, conducted a lot of research on this topic. They have repeatedly confirmed that motivated students perform better than those without incentives.

Therefore, no matter how interesting and effective the methods that you choose, they may not work if you do not feel a real desire to learn and do not want to be active.

Solution

1. Decide on your motives

It will be easier to get serious about learning a language when you identify the reasons why you even thought about it. It can be anything:

Desire to make your travel life easier.
Hope to get a more promising job.
Interest in the culture of a country.
Intention to watch movies or read original books.
The desire is simply to "stretch" the mind or increase self-esteem.

Any fairly strong motivating factor will do. And best of all, it stimulates the anticipation of some kind of pleasure. Just understand for yourself exactly how your life can improve if you learn a new language.

It also makes it easier for you to determine what material and how deep to master.

You will be able to understand whether you need to focus only on speaking (if we are talking about travel, for example) or whether you need to study the language comprehensively. Is it acceptable to learn a limited number of words and grammatical structures, or the more, the better. Etc.

2. Plan your activities

Linguists and educators advise doing this in advance so that you can see your immediate and final goals. For example, a writer and an English teacher might suggest asking yourself these questions:

What exactly are you planning to achieve? What are you going to do for this? What tools would you prefer to use?

Answering these questions will guide you through the following steps:

Define goals as clearly as possible. Focus on the aspects of the language that are important in your situation. For example, if you need to verbally communicate with foreigners at work, then speaking, listening and professional vocabulary come first. You can also focus on the CEFR system, which describes in detail the levels of language proficiency. Break 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, copyright programs and numerous Internet resources. Remember to pay attention to different aspects of the language. Decide how you will combine the methods for each of them

Set a time frame. Determine the time frame for completing a specific task and decide how much time you will devote to classes each day. Regardless of your employment, remember: it is better to practice a little bit every day than to “swallow” a lot of material at once, but once a week

Planning ahead can help you turn vague intentions into concrete action. You will be able to clearly assess your progress and not waste it, 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 advises using materials filled with any emotions in the classroom: music, beautiful illustrations, touching stories, anecdotes - anything that will help you avoid boredom. This does not mean that you need to use such things all the time, but introducing an element of novelty is very beneficial for the results.

You can experiment not only with materials. Wear some bright clothes or periodically change the place of classes - go to the park or cafe.

The main thing is to let in some "fresh air".

A polyglot who speaks more than seven foreign languages to avoid burnout also advises to occasionally arrange a weekend (but not too often). The study itself can be diluted with some activity that does not give the impression of work, for example, watching entertainment videos or reading something simple, like comics, in the target language.

4. Practice as often as possible

Lewis argues that the deeper you go into the language, the stronger your eagerness becomes. So look for as many ways as you can: video, music, books, movies, radio - whatever. All this increases the chances of realizing that you can already use knowledge in real life - and nothing feeds better.

You don't like the language

Or the culture of the country where it is spoken. It may seem strange: why then teach him at all? But our life is multifaceted, and the reasons may be different:

Learning the language is necessary for work.
I have to live in some country for personal reasons, although I wouldn't really want to.
I 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 hostility to any information that you come across during class.

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 in their research argue 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 - from a sincere inner desire to become closer to some other culture.

The second, of course, works much more efficiently, but this does not mean at all that the dream of simply making life more convenient and pleasant will not work. After all, you must agree: it is much better, for example, to work in a profession than to be forced to choose vacancies just because "they take them there without knowing the language." And in any case, it is much more convenient and faster to communicate with foreigners, if it is really necessary, in a language that you and they both know.

2. Treat language as a way to expand consciousness

Look at the situation more detached and just be glad that you are discovering something new for yourself.

Psychologists and educators associate motivation with theories. Among the basic human needs, he mentions "the desire to know and understand." According to Maslow, people are often driven by curiosity and they get satisfaction by answering various questions about the world and themselves.

And foreign language and culture is just another unexplored facet of reality.

Of course, rearranging perception in this way is not very easy, but it is very valuable. Learning another language is the perfect 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, any other things that are associated with a language or country and make you sympathize - it is likely that this will help to reconsider the attitude.

For example, some people start learning Japanese just because they are addicted to Japanese computer games, music, or anime. Others decide to learn English because they are eager to travel to England. And someone is sure that by reading books in translation, he misses a lot of interesting details. It is possible that you can find something like that for yourself.

Are you afraid that nothing will come of it

There are many reasons for such fears.

The school curriculum or some of your personal failures could lead you to believe that languages are not yours at all. Indeed, in many educational institutions the main ones are violated:

You have to cram the material instead of consciously assimilating it.
Pupils are given too many words and grammar that they do not have time to repeat and memorize.
It is far from always possible to train aspects of the 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 yourself create problems for yourself, suffering from excessive perfectionism or comparing yourself to others. And now you are in a situation where you don't even want to start.

Solution

1. Get rid of the thought that "the language is not yours"

After all, you managed to learn your native language. It took time, a lot of practice and real life examples. And in fact, the same 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 that you do every day can be adapted to practice. For example, read and watch only foreign language content on the Internet. And on the way from work or school, listen to podcasts or audiobooks. Watching films and TV series without translation will also be an excellent practice, and at night you can read the works in the original. The main thing is interest and real desire.

3. Don't do things that make you bored

When you learn a language on your own, you don't have to do everything like in school or in courses - you can find many interesting methods that make learning much more fun. There are different ways to practice enough and still memorize the material without cramming.

You can read your favorite books in the original, use spaced repetition (at regular intervals), come up with funny associations to memorize words. There are many resources on the Internet that allow you to learn from films and songs. There are interesting audio courses and much more.

4. Stop being afraid that you will not have enough finances

To learn a language successfully, you don't have to spend money on expensive lessons, materials, and travel 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 claim that only a child can learn a language

There are many examples that refute this opinion. This is confirmed by Benny Lewis, whom we have already mentioned. He is guided by his experience with other language learners and says that adults even have some benefits. For example, they can understand many details simply from the context of their life experiences. In addition, they have better developed analytical thinking and are able to take up studies more consciously than children.

6. Don't compare yourself to others

All people are different - everyone has their own capabilities and pace. Even if you absorb the material more slowly than someone else, it doesn't mean anything. You do not know what exactly the other person is doing and what difficulties he has to face in doing so. People tend to show only their own successes, leaving much behind the scenes.

It all comes down to one thing: you just need to start, and if your motivation is strong, it will definitely be easier further.

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