This story may sound all too familiar: you start learning a foreign language, you’re full of enthusiasm, and keep enjoying the benefits of learning a foreign language. But as weeks come along, you lose your interest, and the matter starts to build up. At a certain point, you realize it doesn’t work this way and send a quiet email informing the teacher that you won’t be attending their classes anymore. The next few days are filled with regret, which gradually disappears. A year or two later, you start a new course and the vicious circle unveils again. Sounds familiar? Read on, and let’s sort out the common mistakes foreign language learners make.
1. Stage Fright and Fear of Public Speaking
The fear of public speaking is the first big obstacle that students of a foreign language encounter. Many are timid and find it difficult to utter the words, although they can make a full sentence in their thoughts—the best cure: listening to others. Pay attention to how others speak, and soon you’ll see you’re not alone in the boat. So speak up! Nobody judges.
2. Focusing Mainly on Vocabulary or Grammar
Choosing one language skill over another is a common pitfall. What you get at the end is a student who is well-versed in grammar rules or knows a lot of vocabulary, but lacks communicative competence. For one reason or another, communication does not seem to be working. When learning a language, you should have a holistic approach: listen, speak, write, read, play language games and listen to target language television. But keep communication in mind!
3. Learning Vocabulary Items As They Come Along
You should divide the time into chunks (e.g., week-long chunks). Each week, focus on one topic. It could be gardening, agriculture, urban life, tourism, or anything else. Now use this time to learn vocabulary items in this field only. Learn them and use them! If you are a teacher, you may use top translation companies to prepare great materials for students that struggle to keep up with the vocabulary. Having translated materials is their shortcut!
4. Learning Too Often
Learning too often does not yield good results. Rather, it makes you feel overwhelmed after a while, and you need to take a break. Rather than learning five times a week, try learning 2-3 evenings, and keep reminding yourself that Rome was not built in a day.
5. Learning Too Rarely
When learning a foreign language, you should not learn too rarely. Rather than trying to cram up two weeks’ worth of study material in a day, try to space out the learning. The time you need is the same, but your retention rate will be much higher if you learn bits and pieces every day.
6. Worrying Too Much About Mistakes
You should not preoccupy yourself with mistakes. Everybody makes them, even native speakers. Instead, focus on the learning process and understand that mistakes are there to point out the areas you should work on. Learning a foreign language can keep your mind occupied, but make sure it is a good kind of occupation.
7. Not Practicing Listening Skills
Having good listening skills is imperative: there are different accents, modes, and speaking situations, and your ears need to understand them all. Watch TV in your target language, listen to music, podcasts, YouTube videos, and much more. A word of encouragement: most people working in online transcription service are non-native, but their listening skills are so finely tuned that they even put bread on their table.
Conclusion
So with a few simple tricks, a lot of problems can be overcome. Follow our tips; they do come from experienced foreign language learners, after all. Make sure to listen to yourself and others on your road to speaking one more language (and don’t stop here).
Christian Duke
Christian is in love with good books. He enjoys exploring language peculiarities and is interested in word etymology. He hopes to open a tutoring service one day to help students learn better writing.