Hi. Welcome to "Why Not Spanish" I am Maria.
For today's video, I'm not going to teach you a topic about Spanish.
Today's topic is more of a reflection.
I'm going to talk about some attitudes
of some language students that I believe are negative
and I consider to not help them progress
or continue learning the language that they are studying.
In this case, we are talking about Spanish because this channel focuses
on teaching Spanish to students that don't know Spanish.
However, if you are learning another language or if you are a native
Spanish speaker that is learning English, French, Portuguese,
well, this can also help you.
I've been a language teacher for many years
I started some years ago teaching English,
and for various reasons I ended up teaching Spanish.
In all of those years of teaching I always saw in some people
a very negative response to the problems
or the frustrations that come with learning a new language.
I recently read that when we are learning a language
it's a change of habits, and with all habit changes,
it's a hit to our ego.
Of course, we are used to doing things in a certain way,
to express ourselves in a certain way, and then all of a sudden,
(and express ourselves with ease), and then we start to learn a new language
where things are said differently,
or where we don't understand something or things don't seem logical
and the frustration starts.
Obvioulsy this video isn't directed to all language students
but if you consider yourself to have one of these attitudes,
I invite you to reflect and ask yourself why
why do you feel like this or why do you react like this?
The first negative attitude that I'll talk about today
is something that happens a lot, that I read in comments
or I hear students saying "Hey, that doesn't make sense"
what you're saying doesn't make sense, that phrase doesn't make sense.
that expression doesn't make sense.
That isn't logical for me.
My thoughts about that is that some people forget
or maybe ignore that languages are a social contruction.
To learn a language is not the same as learning math.
In this sense, it doesn't have to be logical,
it doesn't have to make sense
or maybe, even though it sounds mediocre,
I think it's a good idea that when we're learning languages,
we try to understand that things are simply as they are
and they don't always have a logical explanation.
I can say that from a student's point of view,
because I have also studied and continue to study languages, there have been moments
in the past where I was learning a new topic
or a new expression that was different to how we would say it in Spanish.
To me, it didn't make sense, it wasn't "logical".
And well, my reaction wasn't to get mad or frustrated,
but to understand that it was different
but it is how it is.
I understand the need to understand things
to understand the structure of things and the reason
why we say something.
We want to find the comparison
between what we're learning and what we know
but I think that it isn't worth it to spend so much energy
looking for the origin or reason of some things.
The second attitude that is negative
is something that makes me curious, and
maybe I think it's funny, but in the moment it's happening,
I'm obviously also human and I get annoyed at this attitude:
It's when students write to me mad
really mad at me, because they don't understand
a grammatical structure or because an expression is difficult
or different from their native language
even though this is understandable
I don't know, for me it's not worth it getting mad over.
Maybe it's something that's difficult to understand.
I think it's better to learn than to get mad
or frustrated with someone.
It's a better idea to learn to walk away from what we're learning.
Take some time, do something else,
learn something else, and then come back to what frustrated you
and give it another chance, from a different point of view
with a different method. I don't know.
The third negative attitude that I believe stops students from
learning and getting better in their language studies
It's to say "hey, I'm not interested
in that type of Spanish, so I'm not going to listen,
I'm not going to learn it, I don't care about it"
You already know, Spanish is a language.
But we share it between many different countries.
We have different words and expressions in each language
accents as well, so you can't say that you only want to learn Spanish from one country
and that Spanish I don't want to hear or learn
I'm not interested in it. To me, that's a bad attitude.
In some moment, at some point in your life,
you are going to come across a word, an expression,
or a person from that country and what will you do?
I don't know, you're going to be like....
Very closed minded, and you have some reason.
It's not necessary to learn all of the phrases
that are said in every Spanish-speaking country
That's impossible and even I don't know them all.
But it's not a good idea to close yourself off to at least
giving yourself the opportunity of learning over ways of speaking.
There is pleasure in variety, they say.
To learn a language is a gratifying activity
that apart from being fun, it helps you meet new people
make new experiences, it opens doors for new activities
that you have never imagined you could do.
And of course, I understand that some things
are difficult to understand and learn
However, you have to give yourself the opportunity
to use this frustration that you feel in a positive way
and what I said before
Walk away for a time and then come back.
To end, this is my reflection. It's very philosophical
just take it easy and it will be ok.
Let me know in the comments what you think, what you do,
when you feel these frustrations.
Maybe with a certain Spanish topic, how do you come back to it
or simply what do you do?
That's it. That's all for this video today
If you made it here, thanks for listening and see you soon.
Remember, if you're going to learn a language, Why Not Spanish? Bye.