Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here.
Today I wanna talk about 10 of the most common mistakes in language earning.
These are mistakes that make it much more difficult for people
to learn languages effectively.
I'm gonna go over these 10 common mistakes, and in my opinion and in
my experience, if you can avoid some or all of these mistakes, you will be
a more successful language learner.
Number one is expecting that you can learn fast.
We're gonna learn the language quickly.
And this is usually followed by the conviction that you can't learn at all.
So the number of people who are expecting to learn the language in a few weeks, and
there are systems and people who promise, you know, rapid success, and of course
they don't achieve the rapid success.
And then people think, well, I just don't have a talent for language learning.
Part of that too is because of the way languages are taught in school where
many of the learners aren't motivated, where there's an emphasis on, you
know, passing tests and so people become convinced that they can't learn.
But one of the reasons for people thinking they can't learn is because
they have unrealistic expectations.
So the first mistake is, don't have unrealistic expectations.
It's going to take time.
Second mistake is, people think we...
if you learn something that you're not gonna forget it.
If you learn a word, if you learn a phrase, if you learn a grammatical
pattern, you think, you know, I should be able to use that.
Now I should be able to recognize that.
And of course we don't because we continually forget.
We learn and we forget.
And that is the process of learning.
So a lot of people get quite upset.
When they keep forgetting even the most basic things, things that they have come
across time and time again and still can't remember, this is absolutely normal.
So here again, people who can't accept the fact that they're going
to forget and have to relearn, very often they become unhappy and therefore
unsuccessful language learners.
Number three, another mistake is trying to master the grammar
rules or grammar tables.
People spend a lot of time trying to remember or remember or memorize
or do exercises to drill into their minds, certain basic structures in the
language, or they drill themselves on conjugation tables or declension tables,
trying to remember the endings for the different cases, for different genders.
And of course, this is very difficult to do.
There is nothing wrong in studying.
There's nothing wrong in looking at the explanations and seeing
examples and quickly reviewing the tables, but what is a mistake is to
expect that you will remember them.
You won't remember them.
You will have to come across examples of these grammatical structures or case
endings or conjugation forms, you'll have to come across them in different contexts.
And then once again, review the table and once again, review the explanation
before slowly, slowly, they become a habit for you in the use of the new language,
and still you're gonna make mistakes.
But trying to sort of master these rules and tables upfront,
in my opinion, is a big mistake.
Another mistake is expecting that the language should become clear to us.
I've listened to so much of the language, and yet I still don't understand it.
There's still the same parts, even though I look up the words that I hear
it and I still can't understand it.
And of course, eventually the language becomes clear, but the expectation
that it should become clear before it becomes clearer is a mistake
because it builds up frustration.
The fog will gradually lift, and you shouldn't have expectations
that the language becomes clear before it becomes clear.
Another mistake, people stay with easy, comfortable, learner content.
Often quite uninteresting.
Of course, when we start out, we have to use learner content.
Ideally, we use content like our Mini Stories at LingQ,
which have a lot of repetition.
The same words need to repeat very, very often.
That's often not the case in your usual language textbook where they move you,
in my opinion, too quickly, from the post office to the doctor's office, to
the train station, whatever it might be.
What you need initially is a lot of repetition, but a lot of
people stay with the easy content because it's, it's satisfying to
understand what you're listening to.
It's comfortable, it's easy, but you have to push outside that comfort
zone and challenge yourself with.
More interesting and more difficult content.
Fortunately, with sites like LingQ or other apps that are there, online
dictionaries, the availability to bring content in from YouTube
and to look up words you don't understand, it's becoming easier and
easier to access more challenging content and content of interest.
People need to take advantage.
Don't just stay with the easy content.
Number six.
Mistake people think they can get by with a few words, whether
it be listening or speaking.
Uh, the Pareto principle, you know, 80% of any content, uh, is basically
contained in the 20% most common words, which appear very often.
This is a fallacy, uh, in order to understand anything sort
of interesting, significant of interest, or to have a conversation.
With another adult person on a subject of interest, actually, you
need a lot of vocabulary and even if you can train yourself to...
to say a small number of things fairly fluently, but you only use a
small number of words, then that's gonna limit that conversation.
To the small range of vocabulary that you already have, and you're kind
of forcing the other person to stay within that limited range of content
and you won't grow your vocabulary, you won't grow your language capability.
So in my opinion, it's a fallacy to fake that a small number of words,
and remember that word frequency declines very, very quickly.
So the initial 500, 1000 words, they show up very, very often, but very quickly
words show up much, much less frequently, and so you have to do so much reading
and so much listening that gradually you accumulate these less frequent words.
Another fallacy, people think that they shouldn't be able to speak
well, even if they don't speak often.
So they live in a country where the language they're learning isn't spoken.
They have an opportunity once or twice or three times a week to use the
language, and then they get frustrated that they aren't able to speak well.
In order to speak well, you have to speak a lot.
And if you're not in a situation where you can speak a lot, if you're not, you
know, a place in a place where you can go out and meet people of that language
group and have evenings with them or...
if you can't be in the country where a language is spoken, speaking two,
three times a week is not going to enable you, even with a lot of
listening and reading, it's not going to, uh, enable you to speak well.
To speak well you have to speak a lot.
Therefore, don't be too demanding and don't sort of beat yourself
up if you don't speak as well as you would like to speak.
Once you are in, you know, frequently in situations where you need to speak a lot,
your speaking will improve quite quickly.
Along the same lines, another major mistake is people are afraid of
making mistakes when they speak and they judge themselves too severely.
However well you speak is good enough.
Probably you speak better than you think you did.
You know you didn't do very well.
You probably did fine.
As long as you're communicating, the other person seems to
understand what you're saying, you understand what they're saying.
You struggle to find words you can't remember, words that you know, you
know, but you can't find them when you need them because there's pressure now
to find that word you cannot find it.
All of that is fine.
So, uh, don't be afraid of making mistakes and don't get
upset when you do make mistakes.
And another thing, this is all about speaking, many people only speak
with other non-native speakers.
It might be a, a discussion group in Japan or in Brazil or some other country.
There's nothing wrong with that if you don't have access to native speakers.
But typically in those situations, the range of vocabulary used is limited.
The discussion, the subjects, it's limited.
Very often it becomes sort of a, a performance competition type situation.
It's not genuine communication.
It's not communicating for, for the purpose of communicating.
It's kind of showing off what you can do in the language.
It can be very helpful as a way of practicing your output, but ultimately
you have to find opportunities to speak with native speakers who will
challenge you because they will use a broader range of vocabulary and
they might have different accents.
And so you have to start speaking with native speakers in my experience .And and
the last one, is kind of contradicting point number nine in a way, but I
often people hear people complain, you know, I'm learning language X.
If I speak to a native speaker of language X, he or she replies in in...
in English typically, and that's very frustrating and very annoying.
However, our random person, let's say you're learning French or German
or Chinese, a random person may be interested in helping you, may respond
in the language you're learning, but they're under no obligation to do so.
They are not a teacher.
You haven't hired them to teach you the language.
They are a person that simply wants to communicate.
And so the challenge for you as a learner is to be so good in the language you are
learning that you make that person feel comfortable, and if that person feels
comfortable, in most cases, they will prefer to speak in their own language.
And so, and even if you're better than them in that language.
They have every right to say, I wanna practice by English.
Just like, like, you wanna practice your French or whatever, German or Chinese.
So, uh, you know, if you meet enough native speakers, enough of them
will reply in the language you are learning, but you can't get upset if
they prefer to speak in your language.
So there you have it, 10 very common mistakes that I would recommend
people try to avoid, and if they do, they will find that their language
learning, uh, success rate will improve.
Thank you for listening.
Bye for now.