Hello guys, welcome back
We are talking about five mindsets that you need to have to be a good language learner.
Five things that are going to help you mentally on
your language learning journey.
Recently, I was in a Japanese grocery store and this guy just out-of-the-blue came up to me
He's like, "Excuse me, are you Lindie?"
and I was like, "Yes, hi..."
and it turned out to be someone who watches my videos and is following me on Instagram, and
they had a really big interest in language learning and I'm so grateful that they came up to me and said hi,
and he brought up some things that I never thought about.
-That he picked up in my videos,
relating to mindset that I have in language learning,
so I'm gonna touch on a few of those points and some things that I've thought about since our conversations.
If you are feeling a little discouraged in your language learning journey,
or just looking for inspiration, hope this helps.
I made a little white board here so that I can remember as well
So number one is: Fearlessness
When you are learning a new language,
You're pretty much putting yourself in the position of being like a baby again,
You have to learn to talk all over again,
you are learning colors, names of vegetables, shapes
and you feel like you are unable to express yourself naturally in this new language
because you're lacking vocabulary and grammar
having fearlessness in that sense is helpful because it pushes you out of your comfort zone
To learn from your mistakes and to use the language as much as possible
I know somebody who has been learning Japanese for just a few years and he knows a huge amount of kanji,
his grammar is impeccable, his vocabulary is crazy
but when he needs to talk,
he is very very shy and nervous to talk, and it -it confused me at first because I'm like,
'But you know all these words you're so,' in my mind, 'fluent'
But he's not /fluid/ in talking
because he spent so much time just studying from books and memorizing characters,
that he didn't have a lot of interaction with native speakers.
This might be a bit of a touchy topic for introverts,
I am also an introvert myself, and as I've mentioned in an earlier video
Just to say 안녕하세요 -hello- to a Korean person,
it took me about like a year and a half of courage to,
like to a stranger, I mean, to walk into a Korean store and just greet the owner in Korean
I was shaking, I was so nervous, and all I had to do was say "hello"
It's okay.
These things take time, and fearlessness is not something that you can just build overnight and say,
"Okay, well tomorrow, I'm gonna be fearless and start talking in this new language."
-it it takes a while, it took me a few years
but the more you do it, the easier it gets. So that's mindset number one.
Number Two is: Flexibility
Flexibility within your language learning methods and timeline.
If you research a lot of language learning methods online, you're bound to found -you're bound to find one
that looks fun and interesting to you,
but if you use it after a while, you might realize,
"Oh, actually, this is not really working for me."
If you commit to it, you might feel bad on giving up.
This ties in closely with language learning schedules,
many people ask me
"What is your language learning schedule look like?"
and I haven't really made a video on that because I don't have a schedule.
Only when I have a very important exam coming up,
do I make a schedule when I need to learn a specific set of words or grammar structures.
The reason I don't have a schedule is: it stresses me out,
and it makes me not be flexible.
If I'm feeling really tired or really down or,
girls out there, you know, your hormones and stuff,
There might be periods of time where you just feel like 'I am not in the mood to do anything.'
I don't want to have a schedule that will force me to do something
when I don't feel up for it, when I'm not in the right mental state to study
I don't want to feel forced or disappointed in myself when I'm not able to study.
That is the reason I have a flexible schedule,
truly based on my
emotional state, and what I feel like studying and whichever language I feel like doing that day.
Flexibility also applies to your language learning methods.
Sometimes people feel bored and stuck.
They've been using one textbook or one CD or one course and they feel like they're not progressing.
Having flexibility in your language learning methods allows you to explore new avenues
and to make it fun for yourself again.
Perhaps you can try going to a language exchange,
You can search on a website like meetup, or search for a mundo lingo and see if there are events near you,
that's a really great way to get language learning practice in. You can try exploring a new app
I have some app discount codes in the description, if you want to check that out.
Try reading a new book, watching a new series,
just change something up and be flexible, so it can be fun again.
Which brings me to a point number three, which is: Fun.
The guy I was talking about in the beginning of the video,
hi Marcus,
he was telling me how
in, I think, in business
there are some people who have to learn a language for work,
and these people just do not have the motivation because there's no
intrinsic drive that is
making them feel excited about learning this language
They're just doing it because they have to do it for work.
Which is very, very sad,
and I wish and hope that everybody can have language learning be as fun as it is for me.
But I have to admit it is hard to find that if it doesn't exist there in the first place, you know
I'm not going to go and learn
XYZ language for the sake of learning XYZ's language.
It has to be fun for me.
On that note,
I have a blog post about which language should you learn.
I will link it in the description.
Hello, allow me to shamelessly,
put a plug of my website here
I spent so much time crafting everything by hand
And I know you guys have a lot of FAQs and questions,
So, I post a lot of blog posts here,
You can see there's a bunch of different topics
Which one am I looking for? Oh, yeah, "Which language to learn songs" let's see,
*typing: "Which language?"*
and you will find the post. Here we go, how to choose a language to learn. Yeah
I have the post here and some videos linked.
I also have a ton of language learning resources for a whole bunch of different languages
So, do take a look, hope it is useful for you because I have spent many late nights
Crafting this, so yeah
Okay, thank you. That is all.
And a part of that post, is learning a language for the wrong reasons,
Why should you not learn a language.
Because down the line, you're not going to have that motivation or drive anymore.
So, see if you can find something that really makes the language fun for you.
For me, with Spanish right now, because I'm a UI/UX designer
I have to research and look up a lot of articles related to design and usability
and there is a HUGE trove of resources
in UI/UX, about UI/UX, in Spanish.
So when I'm doing research at work, if I need to know how to design a new feature
I will look that up in Spanish and that keeps it really interesting and fun for me.
Point number four is: Focus
Staying focused is so important in language learning,
and this is where people fall out of the language learning journey
after a few months, they lose focus
Imagine this: You have decided you're going to learn a new language.
You look up all of these amazing people online,
and see how they've learnt this language really fast
Like within a number of months, not possible
by the way, language learning is a lifelong journey, and then you feel like,
'Okay, -I I need to learn this language within 3, 4, 5 months'
and once you start learning, there,
Being a beginner from knowing nothing,
to knowing something,
to knowing a lot ,
-that that curve is really really high right?
From knowing 0 to knowing at least how to introduce yourself.
After that,
once you're past beginner,
once you're past intermediate,
you start to plateau.
I've made a video about the language learning plateau,
I also have blog posts on that. So, check that out,
it has tips on what you can do to pass that plateau.
That is where you need focus and discipline.
The language is not gonna be fun the whole time.
You are gonna get tired, discouraged, frustrated.
A lot of people ask me,
"Do you ever feel, you know, frustrated in your language learning?
Do you ever wanna give up?"
Yes,
all the time,
You know, it's not just a honeymoon journey,
but what you need to do when you feel like "I'm not making progress"
is really to have focus and discipline.
If setting a language learning schedule is a way for you to go,
by all means, do it.
If you need to change up your routine, try that.
If you want to pause on that language and learn another one,
it's okay.
Remember why you're doing this.
You're learning a language for the point of communication and for yourself,
you're not out there to prove yourself to the world.
This language learning is a very very personal journey.
If you don't feel like doing something, don't do it.
Take a break, it is okay.
Another thing I want to touch on about focus is within specific study sessions.
There is something very negative about the studygram or studyblr
language communities on Instagram and Tumblr.
That is that, people spend so much time making their notes look so beautiful and aesthetically pleasing,
for their Instagram posts, that they're not actually getting a lot of studying done.
I've seen this in myself,
study groups, and people have admitted it online and that is a really negative thing.
You are wasting
precious time that you could spend
learning new words and grammar structures.
Not everything you do needs to be posted online,
not everything you do needs to be beautiful.
Just do it, learn more, and surprise people with your progress, later.
Don't put everything online and don't waste your time making your notes look absolutely beautiful.
It's okay to have fun, if that's what you enjoy do it,
but if you're spending more time in your study session creating aesthetically pleasing looking titles and
looking for the most beautiful highlighter to strategically place in your flatlay photo,
you're wasting time, really, it's not worth it.
so, focus.
and point number five is: Faith
I just wrote faith because it's another F,
but this is also like, belief in yourself,
belief that language learning is possible.
It is possible to learn a language at an older age.
It is possible to learn two, three, four languages at the same time.
It is possible to get a native sounding accent over time.
Nothing is impossible, if you put your mind to it. Just have faith in yourself.
So these are the five mindsets,
I believe you should have as a language learner.
I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you in the next video
Thank you so much! Bye~