#5 – Be Patient
Hi, there, this is Steve Kaufmann Founder of LingQ and today I'm gonna talk about the fifth Secret to Successful Language Learning.
Again, you'll remember that so far we've discussed the need to spend a lot of time, enough time, an hour a day for quite a long period of time. The second secret was to do things that you like to do in the language. The third secret was to develop the ability to notice what's happening in the language, which all good language learners have. The fourth thing was to focus on words, vocabulary rather than grammar. Now, the fifth secret is to be patient, patient.
I see more frustrated language learners who get upset because they forget words.
They get upset because they don't understand. Even after listening many, many times to the same content, certain parts of it they just don't understand or they watch a movie many times and they can't understand it. Let me tell you, that is absolutely normal. You will have and continue to have times when you find it difficult to say what you want to say. Maybe the day before you felt you were doing very well and all of a sudden you can't say what you want to say and that is absolutely normal.
It's important to realize that the brain is constantly learning and there are a number of books that I've read about how the brain learns.
The brain will constantly learn and it's constantly changing and renewing itself. However, it does so on its own schedule, so just because you've studied something doesn't mean you're going to learn it. However, you have to be confident as you continue and persevere in your studies and that you're doing things you like to do, which in my case is listening and reading. Even if I'm talking to people, of course I'm listening and I'm noticing.
All of this is gradually improving my capability in the language, so you have to accept that and it's not going to be overnight.
It may take six months for certain things to sink in, but all of a sudden they do. Almost without realizing it (and I've had this feeling), I'll go back to a text that I struggled with two-three months, four months earlier and it seemed that I never made any progress, I could never understand certain parts of it and all of a sudden lo and behold! it's crystal clear to me.
Similarly, in speaking you have these moments of great triumph when you were in a discussion and lo and behold! you were able to express your ideas just the way you wanted to or almost.
Maybe the next day you won't be quite so successful, but it's a very gradual process. It's not obvious which words or which structures in the language the brain is going to learn first or later, so you just have to be patient and you have to believe that what you're doing is going to lead to the desired result.
Anytime you get frustrated, upset, because you forgot something or because you don't understand something, all these negative thoughts are very damaging to the learning process.
Again, I'm not a neuroscientist, but there is so much emotion in how the brain learns that it's very important not to get negative and to be patient. Realize that it's a long road, hopefully an enjoyable road, but one that will definitely lead to fluency in that language. Fluency need not mean perfection, so if you don't expect perfection but you do expect to constantly improve, then I think you can afford to be patient.
So that's my fifth secret, be patient.
Thank you for listening.
