"I really want to improve my German," Laura said, frustrated. An Italian woman living
in Berlin, Laura told me over and over how she felt her Italian accent was
holding her back. "I feel like I express myself like a five-year-old," she added.
"I have no clue how to fix this." Fortunately for Laura, she'd come to the
right person. Who am I? You ask. My name is Luca Lampariello, and I am a language coach.
Ten Ways a Language Coach Might be Able to Help You! A language coach, if you've
never heard of the term, is an expert language learner who works with people
one-on-one to help them solve their own language problems. Over the past 10 years,
I've helped over 200 students face their fears and conquer the obstacles in their
path, at every stage of the learning process.
I've helped even the most fearful beginners become confident advanced
speakers, and done so in a wide variety of languages. I love what I do because I
know it makes a difference, not just in the lives of my students but in the
lives of all the people they will share the language skills with, too. Today, I want
to give you a preview of some of the massive changes having a language coach
can make in your life and in your learning. With a language coach you will
1) Improve your mindset; 2) Learn how to learn; 3) Make language learning part of
your lifestyle; 4) Focus on what matters most; 5) Use your interests to guide your
learning; 6) Practice a variety of techniques and methods; 7) Tackle language
from four different angles; 8) Build sustainable motivation; 9) Beat
procrastination and 10) Track your progress. 1) Improve your mindset: when
people come to me for language coaching, they often assume that I have some
top-secret method or resource that will automatically make them into great
language learners. This is not true. I do share my most effective techniques and
learning strategies with my students, but that's not what makes the biggest
difference in their success. The biggest benefit that I and any language coach
can offer is not a physical book or an online course, because most of these
don't evolve with you as your skill level improves. Instead, what language
coaches offer is something that money cannot buy and that you cannot outgrow,
once you have it: the right mindset for language learning.
You see, most language learners have a variety of preconceived notions and
false beliefs about what they can truly accomplish and which traits will make
them better/worse language learners. Age, country of origin, ethnicity,
intelligence, talent, schedule, etc. The worst thing about these beliefs is that
they are usually not founded in reality. These are just things that learners have
been told or that they think might be true. Language coaches know these
language myths are not true, because they have personally dispelled them. They have
no doubts about what is and is not possible, because they have achieved what
is possible. When you work with a language coach, they will train you to
promote the beliefs that help you learn and ignore the ones that stand in your
way. 2) Learn how to learn: once you believe
you can learn a language, your language coach will teach you how to do it. Again,
the "how" of language learning is not about which language course or method
you should use. The truth is that there is no single best method and good
language coaches know this. Instead of methods, all successful language learners
share the same cognitive principles that guide how they go about their learning.
These key principles are universal. They can be woven into any learning
routine, no matter your personal learning style. For example, we just discussed
mindset. Mindset is a part of an essential learning principle that I call
attitude. Your attitude is a combination of how you think about and react to
different situations. Cultivating an attitude of openness to challenge and
new experiences will make your learning journey easier. Maintaining a closed mind
and an aversion to challenge will ultimately lead to failure. This is just
one of several principles that I teach to all of my students, regardless of
their goals, personal background or previous language experience, since these
principles are rooted in the science of effective learning. They act as the
foundation upon which you build all of your future language learning success.
3) Make language learning part of your lifestyle: over the years, I've been
approached by many people with questions about how to find time to learn
languages. These people tell me they want to learn a language but cannot, because they're
simply too busy; they don't have the time. I find this funny because I know it's an
excuse. The truth is that time is not something you have. It is something you
create. Of course we all have the same 24-hour day to work with, but it is how
we manage this time that makes the most difference. Every single one of us
organizes our day around our priorities. We set aside time to sleep, to work, to
spend with our families and to relax. These things are a normal part of our
lifestyle, so we create time for them automatically. When you work with a
language coach they will know that in order to be successful you need to make
language learning a priority and work your learning time into your daily
lifestyle. And if you think that prioritizing language learning will
force you to sacrifice things like hobbies or free time,
there's no need to worry. Your language coach knows that a key part of time
management is reclaiming unused time. So, it's very possible that you may end up
with more free time than you started with.
4) Focus on what matters most: have you ever been a victim of "the beginner binge"?
That's what I call the period right after you start a language for the first
time, and you purchase every single learning resource you can get your hands
on. You amass hundreds of resources, all before you seriously start learning.
Seems like a good approach at first, since more materials lead to better learning.
Right? Wrong! If you begin with too many choices, you're less likely to make any
choice at all. The abundance of options will overwhelm and distract you. And you
may give up learning because of it. The goal of any good language coach, of
course, is to structure things so that you won't want to give up. So, in this
case, he or she will encourage you to focus deeply on one resource, instead of
many possible resources. In addition to cutting down on potential overwhelm,
focusing in on a single resource will train you to learn everything you can
from it before moving on. With less distractions you will gain a deeper
understanding of the pros and cons of a particular approach. And you'll be able
to use that understanding to guide future learning.
5) Use your interests to
guide your learning: focusing on smaller quantities of learning materials will
help you be more direct and deliberate in your learning. However, that will not
be the only time your language coach recommends focusing your efforts. Once
you know you should only learn from one resource at a time,
you and your coach will have to determine which resource to actually use.
While you could technically choose any course, app, or book to start, like most
learners do, your coach will urge you to choose only the resources that you
personally find interesting and relevant. This is where your individual learning
style comes in. You have a built-in set of likes, dislikes and general
preferences that can greatly affect your learning experience. If you choose
resources that align well with your personal preferences and learning style,
you'll be challenged, engaged and happy with your language learning
journey. If you do not do this, you will be bored, frustrated and unhappy. As your
skill level grows and you outgrow resources dedicated for learners, your
language coach will guide you to use your interests as a way to expand your
knowledge. This is something I've done many times on my own and with my
students. If I'm coaching someone who is passionate about a particular topic,
military history for example, I will help that person grow their skills so they
can share that passion in their target language. 6) Practice a variety of
techniques and methods: using your interests to guide your learning is a
great way to stave off boredom and burn out, particularly when learning over the
long term. However, it is also possible to have too much of a good thing. If you do
an interesting activity too often, it can be just as bad for you as not doing fun
activities at all. Ideally, your coach will teach you to strike a balance
between using a specific technique or method too often and not using it enough.
And they will help you to do this by incorporating a variety of activities
into your routine. Any experienced language coach will have the wide range
of learning methods and techniques that they have used either with students
or on their own. In the early stages, this is a huge benefit. You can try them out
immediately, because you won't have to come up with them yourself. With time,
however, you may even outgrow certain methods taught to you by your coach. When
this happens with my students, I encourage them to adopt a
trial-and-error mentality, and use it to introduce even more variety into their
learning process. 7) Tackle language from four
different angles: when students hire a language coach, they usually want help
solving one major problem: speaking. These learners are usually incredibly
passionate and work very hard on things like grammar, reading and
vocabulary acquisition. Often, they have been learning this way for years. Despite
all of their effort and experience, they never felt ready to use their skills to
speak to another person. Because of this, they struggle with basic conversation as
well as other productive tasks, like writing. Learners who avoid certain
skills are like bodybuilders who train only their arms. Sure they've put in a
lot of work, but the overall result is unbalanced. Even if you're working hard,
imbalances can lead to unforeseen issues and cause unexpected strains. As a
language coach, I don't want my students to strain themselves unnecessarily. Even
if initial progress is slower, I encourage my clients to actively train
all 4 skills: speaking, listening, writing and reading, so that they all
develop at an even pace. When I've worked with students in this way, I've
seen how a balanced routine can greatly accelerate their progress. When each
major language skill is being actively improved, each skill reinforces the
other three, and you become a much more capable and confident learner, as a
result. 8) Build sustainable motivation: one
of the biggest issues with language self-study is that it can often be
incredibly lonely, at least at first. At the beginning of the process your head
is usually stuck in a book or on an online course, and the days of connecting
with real people can seem far away. You're doing this on your own, and that
can feel very demotivating. If you've felt this way, hiring a language coach can be
a great solution to this problem. With a language coach, you'll never run the risk
of feeling unsupported. Or like you can't get help overcoming the problems in your
path. In many ways, a language coach can be: a role model, a personal trainer (for
languages), a life coach, a personal cheerleader and a friend. A good language
coach will do everything in their power to lead you to success. Helping you find
the motivation you need is a huge part of that. Even in cases where students
need more motivation that I can offer, I actively train my students to
continually seek out their own motivation. In this way I ensure that all
the learners I work with have enough inspiration and stimulation to reach
their goals.
9) Beat procrastination: if language learners can be said to have a common enemy, it
would be procrastination. Procrastination is when you decide to avoid hard work
and put it off until later, which sometimes turns into never. For language
learners, this often happens right before we start a new language. Or when we are
about to do something that is difficult or scary. When you're working alone,
procrastination can be very difficult to overcome. Even if you know you should
work on what you're avoiding, you can always postpone it again, and no one will
stop you. That is, unless you have a language coach. Language coaches are the
antidote to procrastination for a number of reasons. First and foremost, your
language coach always knows what your goals are. As a result, they will always
be able to tell when you're slacking off. Secondly, your language coach should be
very knowledgeable about your likes, dislikes and personal learning style. And
as such, you will never be given tasks that you find boring, like pointless
homework. Thirdly, your language coach should have the expertise to know
exactly which learning activities will help you improve your skills. And because
of this, the tasks you're given should feel like highly targeted, highly
motivated learning challenges. When you combine all these three factors, there is
little chance you'll even want to procrastinate. You'll be so excited to
make progress that all you'll want to do is keep on learning.
10) Track your progress: language learning is like a journey, on foot, to a far-away
land. It's a long-term process, and there are no substitutes for putting in the
necessary work. Because the journey is so long, it's easy to lose track of where
you've been or where you're going. Once you're an intermediate learner, it's hard
to remember what it was like to be a beginner. Once you're advanced, your
intermediate level problems seem like a lifetime ago. Working with a language
coach can help you remedy this problem and use your past experiences to help
provide future motivation. Personally, I want students to remember as much of the
journey as possible, so that they can be proud of how far they've come. To do this,
I create a common shared space, typically a Google Doc, where each student can
record their progress, session after session. I often write my own notes in
these documents as well, leaving comments, corrections and suggestions, as necessary.
Every time a student has a small victory or a big breakthrough, I record it in the
file. After working with a student for a while, I encourage them to read the file
and reflect and how much progress they've made over time. Once they do this,
I'm always happy to see how motivated they become and how much harder they
want to work to reach even bigger goals in the future.
To sum it all up, remember Laura, the Italian girl living in Berlin? When she
came to me, she was so nervous that she would never have an opportunity to truly
connect with the Germans in her life, that she'd never be truly understood... all
because of her accent and inexperience. I've been working with Laura for over a
year and still hold sessions with her regularly. Up to this point, Laura has
experienced every benefit that I've described to you in this article, and boy,
what a difference it has made. Laura's German has improved drastically since we
first met. But it's not just her linguistic skills
it is her mindset, her will to learn, her approach to languages and, ultimately, to
life. And that's the goal of a language coach: to train, through language learning
and using our amazing inner ability, to be the best version of ourselves, every day.
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