| Are you afraid of making mistakes in your target language? Afraid you'll never, ever be able to have a conversation or give a presentation? Or maybe you're afraid of something else? |
| In this video, we'll cover 4 fears related to language learning and how to overcome them. |
| The first one is... “I’m afraid I’m not good enough to speak. I freeze.” |
| Do you feel like you’re not good enough to speak yet? A lot of people can relate to this one. Probably all language learners have felt this at some point; it’s a pretty common fear. Here are some tips to overcome it. |
| First: Speak from day 1. The best way to get good at speaking is to practice speaking! If you’re holding yourself back because you think you’re not good enough, you’re making a mistake. That’s exactly why you’re not improving. You need to open your mouth and start talking! |
| Second: If you're not sure what to say to start speaking, consider practicing with existing dialogues! In our lessons, you get scripts for introducing yourself, making small talk, ordering food, expressing opinions, and much more! If you're looking for some things to use for speaking practice, the lessons will give you the exact lines and conversations. |
| Our third tip: Learn with your own teacher with our Premium PLUS plan." |
| With Premium PLUS, you get an actual native-speaker teacher to tell you what to say and how to say it. You can actually learn to speak with the help of a real native teacher. |
| Fear number two is... “I’m afraid I’ll never be fluent” |
| This is a common fear for beginner learners. Once you start improving and seeing progress this goes away. |
| When you're just starting out with a new language, fluency can feel like an impossible goal. There are so many new things to learn and so many methods you can use. It's easy to get overwhelmed with all the options. But you can't let yourself fall into that trap. The longer you keep at it, the better your language skills will become. And slowly you'll stop worrying about fluency. What's important is that you put in time and continue working on moving forward. |
| So, how do you overcome worries about never becoming fluent? How do you motivate yourself to continue? |
| First, set small, specific goals instead of just saying "I want to become fluent." How do you know when you've become fluent? Fluency is hard to determine. Instead of creating a vague, hard-to-understand goal for yourself, focus on working toward smaller goals. |
| For example: Set goals like: being able to introduce yourself, or having a 5-minute conversation. Something you can measure so you'll know when you've reached it. Fluency can be difficult to measure. If you set goals that you can measure, you can track your progress. This helps keep your motivation up over time. |
| The third fear is... “I’m afraid I’m not actually learning or making progress.” |
| If you’re afraid you’re not making progress, there are a few things you can do right now. |
| First of all, review. A lot of people hear a new phrase once and think they'll remember it. But that doesn't usually happen. So, when they forget what they’ve learned they get worried that they’re not learning. Or that the lessons don’t work. But the truth is, you have to review again and again to truly master something. |
| Second, use the dashboard to track your progress. |
| If numbers and data are helpful for you as you track your learning, check out our dashboard; it tracks your progress and gives you dynamic reports. |
| Third, try a harder lesson on the site. You might not understand it all at first, and that's okay. You'll be able to, after some study. |
| All lessons come with line-by-line translations and our teachers explain every single word. Break down these harder lessons. If you have to work a little more slowly, it's okay! When you finish the lesson, you can be sure of your progress because you'll be able to understand something you didn’t understand a few minutes earlier. |
| Fourth... learn 1-on-1 with a teacher with our Premium PLUS plan. |
| They will personally review your writing and your speaking and will fix your mistakes. Getting regular feedback from a native speaker is a great way to know if you’re making progress. |
| It's such a great feeling to hear a native speaker tell you, “wow, you’re getting good.” |
| The fourth fear is... “I’m afraid of not understanding anything I hear.” |
| This is very common. You hear advanced grammar and vocabulary and it goes completely over your head. You have no idea what you’ve just heard. |
| Here are some tips for working on this issue. If you’re taking an advanced lesson, read along with the script. Reading along with our line-by-line dialogue is the best way to improve your understanding of advanced conversations. If you're in a real-life situation, the solution is quite simple. Learn useful phrases like “excuse me, can you say it again slower?,” or “can you say it in simpler words?” or even just “I don’t understand.” There’s nothing wrong with saying that you didn’t understand something or asking for help. |
| These are some common fears for most language learners, and we hope these tips help you! Is there anything else that you're afraid of when it comes to learning another language? Let us know in the comments, and maybe we can share some suggestions for how to overcome them! |
| For the tools we've talked about in this video, and much more, check out our complete language learning program. Sign up for your free lifetime account by clicking on the link in the description. Get tons of resources to have you speaking in your target language. And if you enjoyed these tips, hit the "like" button, share the video with anyone who's trying to learn a new language, and subscribe to our channel. We release new videos every week! I'll see you next time. Bye! |
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