Language Learning Burnout

So it's very important to feel that whatever you're doing,

that's what you want to be doing.

Hi, Steve Kaufmann here and today, I want to talk about burnout.

Something that we all experience at different times in learning languages.

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So to my mind, burnout is associated with a number of things.

First of all with what I call the doldrums, the plateau, when

you hit that point where you feel you're not making progress.

So then we are discouraged.

You know, I've said before at the early stage in learning a language, we

actually make quite a bit of progress.

It's a steep climb, but we're actually climbing.

We can see where we were.

We look down, we see where we were a month earlier.

We knew nothing.

Now we can say something, we understand something.

So that's the sort of early call it three to six months, the early

period in learning a new language.

But then we sort of come into a stage where the words don't appear so often.

Uh, we've put in a lot of time, we think we've put in a lot of

time and yet we have that feeling that we're not getting any better.

Part of the problem is we're too hard on ourselves.

And I think part of the problem, why people experience burnout is they have

unrealistic expectations about how quickly they can learn a language.

Manfred Spitzer, whom I often quote, a German neuro scientist, said the

brain cannot do otherwise than learn.

The brain learns.

The brain is exposed to stimulus, stimuli, and it forms patterns to deal with the

world that the brain is sort of confronted with experiencing, but so he says the

brain cannot do otherwise than learn.

However, the brain learns slowly.

So we have to accept that as long as we are exposing ourselves to

the language, reading, listening, speaking, we are acquiring the

language, but we're doing it slowly.

And I think a lot of frustration comes from unrealistic expectations.

Learning it slowly means it, the language will continue to remain fuzzy.

Even something you listened to initially three months ago and you're back, go

back to it now and you say, I should be able to understand it very easily and

you go there and you can't understand it easily, or you feel you should be able

to express yourself better and you can't.

So I think this, this burnout comes from the feeling that you're doing

the same thing over and over again and not achieving, achieving any results.

So I think the first thing you have to do is to say let's be realistic

in what I'm going to achieve, and let's try to enjoy what I'm doing.

Let's make sure that while you...

so to enjoy what you're doing A.

You gotta look for content that's of interest.

So I put a lot of effort in my language learning into looking for

things that are of interest to me.

So even if I feel that I'm not improving, at least I'm not just going over the

same material over and over again.

At least I'm learning something new or, you know, I, I found this,

these, uh, Jordanian cartoons that are funny and, and, and give a bit of

a glimpse of Jordanian family life.

Uh, and I'll leave a link to them here, but I'm finding it's it's enjoyable.

So whether I'm improving or not, I'm not really sure but I am enjoying, you know,

reading those and listening to them.

So, uh, don't put unrealistic expectations on yourself, find

ways to enjoy the process.

And also, and this is I think, a little difficult today, you know, in the old days

we got a textbook and that's what we had.

And that's the only thing we used.

Now there's lots of options out there.

So it's very important to feel that whatever you're doing,

that's what you want to be doing.

Don't be thinking about other things that you would like to do, make sure that you

don't begrudge yourself the time you're putting into the language, that's going

to make your attitude more positive.

So I enjoy what I'm doing.

I'm glad I'm doing it.

I may not really feel that I'm progressing, but I have to

trust that my brain is gradually getting used to the language.

I can assure you it's a long process.

Now, another thing that I think is very important in order not

to get burned out is variety.

So variety comes in different...

in a variety of ways.

So the variety can be the content you're listening to.

Vary it between advanced and beginner and different subjects and things of interest.

Um, I find myself, for example, I say I should do Persian cause I have a

tutor tonight, but I'm actually more interested in doing the Arabic tonight.

Well, then do what you want to do, make sure you're having fun.

So, but there's the variety there.

Um, again, the variety in terms of the kinds of activities.

You can read, you can listen.

Uh, I'm also gonna do another video where I talk about shadowing.

Uh, flashcards.

Variety is going to make you feel less frustrated so you can do

one type of activity for a while before you get totally tired of

it, go off and do something else.

And finally, if you're really burned out, take some time off.

One of the interesting things about language learning is when you back away

from it a lot of what you've been learning continues to gestate in your brain.

I've called it this period of benign neglect.

So don't feel that if you sort of stop studying for a few weeks, you're going

to lose everything you've learned.

You won't.

In fact, when you pick it up again very quickly you'll get back to where

you were and then you'll find that you'll improve more quickly again.

So those are some of the strategies that I would recommend in order to avoid burnout.

Thank you for listening.