Successful Journey in Learning Foreign Language

What foreign language are you learning? In many countries, the mandatory foreign language taught at school is English. And yet, instead of progressing in their learning, many people have been stuck at the same basic level throughout their life, resulting in them claiming "I have been studying English for many years, but I cannot speak in English".

What about you? How long have you been studying a foreign language? How much have you progressed since then? If you want to make a successful journey in learning a foreign language, do not forget to like ❤️👍 this post and subscribe 🔔 It will help the channel grow! Also, feel free to share this link with anyone who is studying languages, too! ✍️

With that being said, let's check the hindrance and learn how to overcome it!

3 Reasons for Being Stuck

In my previous post, I shared that I was born and raised in a multilingual culture, and I have been familiar with English basic daily expressions since little. Nonetheless, I could not make a fluent conversation with native speakers or non-native speakers with native-like speaking ability well until my 20s. Even though I understood what the other person was saying, I could not respond but smiled nervously.

When I was younger, I was afraid to speak a foreign language because:

I processed my thoughts in Indonesian, my mother tongue, and then my brain slowly converted them into English.
I was terrified to say something wrong, so my brain ran through the list of polite replies in English, and since there were so many, it got errors and displayed "404 not found" instead.
I got too nervous, expecting that number 1 and number 2 would happen, so I went deaf, and all I could hear were the panic voices inside my head, rather than the other person's voice. Hence, as I could not listen to what the other person asked me, all I said was, "Ha?"

Are these situations familiar to you? If so, no worries, you are not alone! When I was a beginner, I also struggle with my language learning, as you are! That is why in this post, I want to share how I overcome the obstacles I face throughout my journey in learning a foreign language. Do you want to know how?

3 Ways to Ease Your Language Journey

Have you been on a journey before? How was the travel? Did you prepare many things before you go? In a sense, learning a language is like going on a journey; there are preparing, traveling, and arriving phases. 🎠 Let us check one by one!

1. Preparing

If we plan to go on a long journey, we need to prepare essential things to survive along the way. The same goes with our language learning journey. What are the things that we need to prepare for language studying? It goes beyond choosing the correct stationaries to write. The preparation for language learning includes gathering sources that cover reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

There are both free and paid resources to learn languages, and it is up to us which one to choose. You may want to try free ones at first, at least until you pass the pre-beginner level, which includes letter recognition, spelling, phonics, and writing practice (if the letters used differ from the alphabet in your native language). We can utilize social media and Youtube to search for free materials. On Instagram Study and Etch, for example, you may get a daily update of new free English vocabulary.

2. Travelling

After preparation is done, let's go on traveling! My current linguistic journeys involve, Korean and Spanish. I often use the iPad to do my worksheets, but I prefer to use paper and a pen to take notes since it is more convenient. 📖✍️ I still need to look at my Korean Hangeul cheat sheet as I am still unsure about some letters' pronunciation. Still, as for Spanish, I am familiar with the letters and their pronunciations (Indonesians use the same Latin alphabets, too!), so I can move on to grammar relatively fast.

As you travel through your linguistic journey, there are no magic pills; you have to absorb the vocabulary, arrange it according to grammar, recognize the patterns to understand what you read and listen to, and finally speak it out. It will take time, effort, and perhaps even money! That is what traveling is all about. Just enjoy the ride and have fun throughout the experience as you make the most of your journey ❤️

Furthermore, try to change the self-talk in our minds in the language that we are currently learning. Since I am learning Korean daily phrases, if I am grateful that it has not rained today, I tell myself, "비가 안 와서 다행이에요." ☀️ As for Spanish, I try to make short sentences in my head (sometimes I talk to my dogs too, they are such good listeners! 🐶) about a particular topic. For instance, when I brew my coffee, I often mumble to myself, "No puedo empezar el día sin una taza de café."☕ For further explanation on how to improve through self-talk, you can click here!

3. Arriving

"So, arriving means, we are done studying, right?" Nope, not at all. Learning a language is a never-ending path to walk on as it grows and changes. For example, some words are overused or outdated, so we should choose other vocabularies or phrases to use in our conversation (Linguamarina, 2020).

Moreover, what do you do if you arrive at your travel destination? Just immediately come back home? I guess not; you would enjoy the scenery, go sightseeing, try some local food, and so on. The same thing goes with our language journey - getting to a destination does not mean stopping to learn about the language we've learned; on the contrary, it's just the beginning.⭐

Do you remember what I shared in the beginning? I processed my ideas in my mother tongue, and then my brain progressively transformed them into English. I was frightened of saying something incorrect or unpleasant because of grammatical errors. I became too concerned with grammar and grew deaf, hearing just the panic chatterings in my brain rather than the other person's speech. As a result, I couldn't understand what the other person asked. I made these mistakes because I did not take my learning as a journey but rather as a final destination.

However, as one of the famous writers and motivational speakers, Lakhiani said, we need to differentiate our end goal and mean goal when aiming for a successful learning journey (Caprino, 2016). Getting good grades in language exams is my end goal because it might enable me to be an official translator one day, but being a polyglot is my mean goal because I feel fulfilled when I can speak and reach out to many people in many languages.

In conclusion, unlike running competition, in which we expect to see the finish line soon, we would like to treat our language learning as a fun journey which we enjoy walking. Make well-thought preparation, explore or "travel" through the materials we prepared, and cherish the learning opportunities to expand our existing linguistic knowledge once we "arrived". When we enjoy learning a language, we will absorb more linguistic components and can engage in meaningful conversations without stressing out about our fluency. I hope my tips are helpful for you! ❤️👍

References:

Caprino, K. (2016, August 22). Why Goal Setting Can Be Dangerous If You Make These Mistakes. Forbes. Retrieved February 1, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathycaprino/2016/08/18/why-goal-setting-can-be-dangerous-if-you-make-these-mistakes/?sh=1d98d7d1375d

‌Linguamarina. (2020). 14 Overused English words - Stop Using Them! Use these alternatives [Video]. In YouTube. Retrieved February 1, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6T1DCB8iz8

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