9 SILLY reasons why you are not succeeding with your target language

Not everybody manage language learning the same way

Have you ever felt that you were not making progress with your target language? Be it Chinese, Portuguese or Russian, you continue to put tons of effort but it doesn’t seem to help at all.

The worst part?

The fact is that there’s not only one reason for that. Everybody seems to manage language learning in a different way and the results can be way different depending on the method, approach and time you spend learning your target language.

Fortunately

Whenever there’s a problem, the best way to face it by identifying its causes and the things we can do to solve it and avoid it in the future. That’s why after years of language learning and some nice conversations with polyglot friends I’ve concluded these 9 reasons why you’re not succeeding with your target language.

After reading these reasons there will be NO EXCUSES to continue complaining about your ‘slow’ progress:

1) You are not being patient!

It turns out that despite of what you’ve heard, language learning is not a sprint but a REAL MARATHON, you can practice French numbers for weeks and still not nail it when it comes to say 99:

Today we honor those who have to deal with #99 in #French. 🇫🇷😂 https://t.co/I9QRfxdiFt #PolyglotProblems #Polyglot #Languages pic.twitter.com/9CY0POqPnt

— Digital Polyglot (@hellopolyglot) 27 de octubre de 2016

If you wanna succeed with your target language you gotta be patient and realize it’s gonna take a while until you manage to express yourself with enough confidence.

2) You have very high expectations

You’ve probably heard of people who manage to learn a language from scratch in only 6 month and suddenly language learning becomes a piece of cake, 6 month later you are like:

You: Hola, qué tal?
Spanish friend: Bien, ¿Cómo fue tu día?
You: Sí

We all have different skills; you can’t compare yourself to anybody else than a past version of you. That is, you just gotta make sure you’re being efficient and learn more everyday, the rest is relative. We are great in different ways, remember this.

3) You are not applying the right method

When it comes to learning, there are methods everywhere. You just type on Google: ‘Best method/technique for ‘whatever’ and you’ll find from the most popular methods applied by famous gurus to crazy new hacks invented by anonymous people.

But there’s a secret with methods… they don’t fit everybody’s interests!

As I said before, we have different ways to assume language learning and this applies to methods as well, whenever you pick a method you gotta be sure that it’s suited to your way of interacting with new things. Some of us are more visual, some more kinesthetic and others more auditory. You must have that in mind when it comes to finding the right method.

Which one of these 3 types of learning fits you the most? 🖐👀🎧 https://t.co/oMuiMPHWNZ #Education #Polyglot #LanguageLearning pic.twitter.com/YpwfDJS6WY

— Digital Polyglot (@hellopolyglot) 27 de octubre de 2016

The Birkenbihl-approach is a good way to start your learning journey in a brain-friendly way, but make sure to follow it step-by-step in order to get the most out of it.

4) You are applying the right method wrongly

I’ve finally found the right method for me!

Stop celebrating dude… If you don’t apply the method as it’s supposed to you’ll see no results. According to www.wordreference.com, a method is: ‘A procedure, technique, or planned way of doing something’. So in order to see results, you’ll have to apply them as they were planned to. Continuing with the Birkenbihl-approach, if you skip the word-by-word translation part and jump right into the passive listening, chances are that you’ll finish by being discouraged because you first gotta know enough vocabulary in order to understand what you listen.

5) You are not putting enough effort

If you are in this marathon, you gotta be prepared to give the most of you to achieve your final goal. You won’t make it with just one approach, such as watching TV in your target language, you gotta implement a holistic approach that includes every aspect of language learning (I.E: Listening, Speaking, Writing and Reading). This should help you start with a new language in a more holistic way.

6) You lose motivation, reach the peak

When it comes to the language learning journey, something very interesting happens. Once people have learned the basics and already feel comfortable with their reading and writing skills, they keep making the same efforts as before but surprisingly doing the same thing during the same amount of time doesn’t bring them the same results as before! Most of them start to lose motivation because and can’t explain what the problem is.

As I’ve talked to some polyglot friends, they feel like they’ve reached their target language’s peak and don’t know how to learn more, so they put more time on THE SAME THINGS. And here’s my point, the problem is that they are trying to solve the problem with the same approach.

When it comes to #LanguageLearning things are not easy. Did you know about the Steep Learning Curve? 😀💪 https://t.co/oMuiMPHWNZ #Polyglot pic.twitter.com/HxIcCwlZle

— Digital Polyglot (@hellopolyglot) 27 de octubre de 2016

Once you feel enough comfortable reading and writing in your target language, it’s time to overcome this small hill and start from the bottom of the real mountain: listening and speaking.

Most people will say: ‘I’m still not prepared for that’ or ‘Whenever I start talking I feel nervous and mix languages’. Well, WHO SAID IT WOULD BE EASY?

Remember you are on a MARATHON and you are on the last Kilometer, don’t let SILLY excuses take your dreams away from you, embrace the challenge and TALK.

I’ve found some really handy resources out there when it comes to listen and talk.

7) Multitasking: Learning more than one language at the same time

It’s not that it’s impossible, is that if you are learning two or more languages at the same time it means you are not prioritizing. The effects of this are that your learning process is gonna be slowed by half and you’re gonna lose motivation again.

See how important is motivation in the whole process?

The solution to this problem is not easy to understand for some: PICK ONE
It’s better to be able to speak one foreign language than not being able to speak any, right?

There you have, you’ll have to prioritize based on your personal criteria.

8) Procrastination: The art of putting things off

But, I don’t have enough time!

The solution for this is obligating yourself to learn little by little. You don’t need to sit down with a book for 2 hours a day to battle procrastination, don’t FOOL yourself.

Habits are not made in one day, you need to add them to your daily life one step at a time, this way it will become hard to abandon them.

In case time is the excuse, I’d suggest you to change all your devices to your target language and start following social media profiles that talk about the topics you are more interested on in that language. In this way, anytime you use your cellphone or scroll down in your Facebook/Twitter feed you’ll automatically be impacted by your target language, which unintentionally will help you to get familiar with it. In a matter of weeks, you’re gonna feel totally comfortable with this change and probably don’t want to switch back, as it happened to me with French.

 

9: This spot is for YOU

We all learn in different ways. The same method might work very differently in two people. Some of us are more visual and others more auditive.

The comment box is below and now you have the power to put your excuse here so you realize it’s just an excuse and not a real problem.