Excuses People Make Instead of Getting on With It

Okay, excuses. We all make them. If not to others, to ourselves. It is part of staying a sane human being. But, imagine if for every excuse we made we followed it with a simple prompt: "But..." "I will...". 

I was late today because of the traffic, but I could have left earlier to avoid it, I will try to do better. 

I messed up my diet because I couldn't resist my favourite baked goods, but I could have made sure to plan out my diet better, I will make a better plan for tomorrow's meals, something I will find easy to follow.

You get the idea.

Why bother mentioning this prompt? Our language dictates how we view the world. 

Simple changes like: 

I have to do this --> I am able to do this/I get to do this

You never understand me --> Perhaps I am not expressing myself in a way that you can understand

I didn't____ because_____ --> I can do better

Essentially changing the way you talk to yourself about situations!

Now don't get me wrong. This article, if you can call this horribly formatted sales copy style educational piece an article, is not about "getting on with" what other people are asking you to do. It is about you living the life you have always wanted to do and getting stuck into what you have always wanted to do, to become the person YOU know YOU CAN BE!

So let's hear some of these excuses, especially pertaining to my field of LANGUAGE ACQUISTION. 

Would you be suprised if I told you that learning a language isn't really THAT hard? It is just TEDIOUS if you let it become that way.

Here are some common excuses people make:

"My brain just doesn't remember the vocabulary, I find it so hard"

"After several years of taking the language at school I still couldn't understand it"

"I just don't have the time to learn the language, I am too busy"

"I don't feel motivated to learn it, I have always been able to find somebody who speaks my native language to help me" 

"I don't have any chances to speak to native speakers of my target language"

"I am afraid of making mistakes"

"The grammar is so complex for me, it is going to be such a huge task for me to get to a communicative level"

Okay, first of all, take the ones that apply to you and add "But____ I will_____"

If learning the language is something you really WANT then this should be easy. Let's try!

"After several years of taking the language at school I still couldn't understand it, but, neither could my friends. I will try and find a way of learning that has the highest percentage of successful students"

There you go, that wasn't so hard was it?

However!

The biggest excuse I have seen that people often elude to, but rarely address directly is:

"I will do it one day, I know I can do it, I just need to stay motivated, I need to discipline myself!"

My goodness, have you heard this? Have you felt this? I bet you have! Maybe not related to language learning, but something precious right?

Better health

Better skills

Better relationships

Wider knowledge

A dream project

A life changing journey

Which has it been for you?

Well I want to dedicate this next part to quelling this nasty and all powerful sucker once and for all. Are you with me? Of course you are or you would have left me a few paragraphs ago! 

Jokes aside I want you to take a moment and contemplate the following:

If I started 5 years ago, would I be much further into my journey today? How would I feel about that?

The time has passed, the time will pass. Time is not a barrier, it is ever present, always moving. I will make time my friend! I will sow many seeds in the strains of time that are passing through me! I will believe in the process! The process I experience may be unique. It will be my teacher! It will become part of me!

If I had a horrible learning curve, if it caused me much embarrassment, but I overcame it and learned more about myself, and that I was capable of tackling the task, no matter how eloquently, no matter how quickly. How would I feel about that today?

I hope the answers are a little uplifting for you. You see:

You didn't motivate yourself to go to school. The commitment was expected from you from society, in the belief that the process would work and in the knowledge that if you showed up, you would probably participate, at least a little.

You didn't motivate yourself to go to work. The commitment was expected from your empty wallet,, staring back at you, and the lack of freedom and independence you experienced with that audacious empty wallet.



You did these things because they were immediate "no brainers". Now, if you can put yourself in a position that was once your future, is now your present and will soon become your past. Then remind yourself that the time will pass anyway. That this commitment will be for YOU because indeed YOU will experience the joy of the achievement, perhaps then you can put yourself in a mindset where you take a bulldog approach. 

What I call the bulldog approach it biting down on what you want, and hanging on for the ride. Or as the idiom goes "grab the bull by the horns" and hang on!

Enjoy the process!

Commit to the ride!

Activate your tenacity!

If you master this ability you will be amazed and astounded by the level of personal fulfillment and improvement you can attain.

Will it be "easy"? Well that depends on how you talk to your self about it, will it be "tedious"? Let's do our best to make sure it's not. 

The destination and time matters not, what matters is that you get there and grow along the way.

Bon Voyage!

Misconceptions on Learning a Foreign Language

Untuk versi Bahasa Indonesia klik desini

Many Indonesians feel that they have no "talent" for language or that they are too "old" to learn English well now.

I believe that you are never too old to learn a foreign language. In fact Adult learners posses many resources in learning a foreign language that younger learners don't.

Examples are:

 1. The ability to read

 2. More world experience (i.e. greater context for contextual learning)

 3. Understanding of tactics (very young learners don't use tactics so much but "go with the flow")

 4. Wider vocabulary in mother tongue usually means many similar words in target language

 5. Ability to independently search out language partners And many more.

 The following is an excerpt of an article written on the subject by Steve Kaufman on some common misconceptions people have about learning another language:

 1. Language learning is difficult

 It is only difficult to learn a language if you don’t want to. Learning a language takes time, but is not difficult. You mostly need to listen and read. Believe me, it is that simple. I have done it many times. Soon you feel the satisfaction of understanding another language. Before you know it you start speaking. It is the way languages are usually taught that makes language learning hard to like.

 2. You have to have a gift for learning languages

 No you don’t. Anyone who wants to, can learn. In Sweden and Holland most people speak more than one language. They can’t just all be gifted at languages. Foreign athletes in North America usually learn to speak English faster than people in more formal learning environments. In language learning it is attitude, not aptitude, that determines success.

 3. You have to live where the language is spoken

 Some immigrants to North America never learn to speak more than halting English. Yet we meet people in other countries who speak flawless English. In 1968, I learned to speak Mandarin fluently while living in Hong Kong, where few people spoke it. With the Internet, language content is available to anyone with a computer, and you can download it to your iPod and listen. Where you live is not an obstacle.

 4. Only children can learn to speak another language well

 Recent brain research has demonstrated that our brains remain plastic well into old age. Adults who lose their eyesight have to learn a new language, braille, for example. Adults have a wide vocabulary in their own language and are better language learners than children. I have learned 4 languages since the age of 55. Adults only need the child’s willingness to experiment and desire to communicate, without the fear of ridicule.

 5. To learn a language you need formal classroom instruction

 This is the crux of the problem. Classrooms may be economical to run and a great place to meet others. They have the weight of history and tradition behind them. Unfortunately, a classroom is an inefficient place to learn a language. The more students in the class, the more inefficient it is. Languages cannot be taught, they can only be learned. Theoretical grammatical explanations are hard to understand, hard to remember, and even harder to use. Drills and exercises are annoying to most people. A majority of school kids graduate unable to communicate in languages that they study for 10 or more years.

 6. You need to speak in order to learn (and I have nobody to speak to)

 Speaking the language is usually the goal of language learning, but speaking can wait. Once you have acquired the language, you will find the opportunity to speak. When you are learning the language it is more important to listen. Trying to just pick up a few “handy” phrases to say is likely to just get you into trouble. If you meet a native speaker, you will inevitably spend most of your time listening unless you already know the language. You do not need to speak in order to learn, you need to learn in order to speak.

 7. I would love to learn but I don’t have the time

 How about the time you spend waiting in line, commuting, doing things around the house, going for a walk? Why not use that time to listen to a language on your iPod? Once you get started, even 10 or 15 minutes a day will soon grow to 30 minutes a day, or one hour. If you believe you will achieve significant results, and if you enjoy doing it, as I do, you will find the time.

 Please stay tuned for more tips and motivation to achieve your language learning goals.

 Visit and like my facebook page for learners at facebook.com/mylanguagevillage or subscribe to the blog for regular updates.

How to get 100% Success in Teaching a Foreign Language

Hi Guys,

Continuing from the last post "Questioning Our Preconceptions on Education", what can we achieve after we question our preconceptions? The answer of course is a world of opportunities but what I'd like to focus on today is the benefit that language teachers can get.

CS to BS:

CS to BS means "current situation" to "better situation" to bet a better situation we must first examine our or our current situation. Here's the CS:

1. To be able to speak another language you must be able to speak using another language (sorry for stating the obvious)
2. It is common in most schools around Indonesia to have students graduate from studying English for 9-12 years without even being able to speak English confidently
3. The excuse floating around is that this is okay because they can still pass written tests and are therefore building up a good background knowledge of the language
4. Having a good background knowledge of the language but not being able to speak yet is what we call a "false beginner" being a false beginner after 9-12 years of studying a language is not good enough, to say the least
5. Some students come out of the system being able to speak the target language well. Many say this is showing the system works, I say those students are linguistically gifted and have great internal motivation to succeed. Having a 10% success rate is not to be bragged about.
6. There must be change!

BS:

1. Language is perhaps the only subject in which we can claim to be able to get a 100% success rate. Not every child born on this earth will be competent in Mathematics, nor will they be great in Geography but all human beings can speak a language (unless of course they have some severe disability). Even those who are not able to speak or hear, can use sign language. So everybody can learn a language, if everybody can learn a language, everybody can learn a second or a third language, we have this ability inbuilt in us at birth.
2. All we need to do to get this kind of success is set the correct standards. For the first few years (or at least until the students get past not being able to speak) books and paper based tests should not be used. This is setting many students up for failure and does not instill confidence in students. You should not ask a Second Language Learner to work on literacy skills straight away just as you would not ask a baby to learn their mother tongue from a text book either!
3. If we focus on speaking and listening for a year using a brain friendly approach our students will be able to speak. It may take a few sessions a week but they will speak. This means in one year we will achieve more than what others do in 12 (this is not to say reading and writing wouldn't be used but it just wouldn't be tested or focused on). This means that our students WILL graduate speaking another language, ALL our students, not that shabby right?
4. This opens up a world of possibility for language instruction. If it is possible to get a student to an upper-beginner level in a foreign language in 2 years (being confident to speak and explore the language afterwards by themselves) this means after Primary School (SD) all students would be able to speak three foreign languages to an upper-beginner level.
5. If students graduating Primary School have an Upper-Beginner level in three languages and feel confident with foreign languages this means they could fine tune one or all three of these languages in the next 6 years on Secondary Education. More than enough time to work on literacy skills (especially if they are making a transition from Bahasa Indononesia which is also a Latin Script language or being able to read Quran which is a good enough background in Arabic literacy to kick start the next 6 years).

So in conclusion with only a slight change of mindset and a few new techniques up our sleeve we can achieve grand possibilities in teaching another language. How about for other subjects, what small changes could we make to achieve similar grand results? I think there are probably a few, but let's leave that till another day to discuss.

Please don't forget to leave your comment and visit/join our facebook group to discuss information on the blog or to add your own ideas.
Until next time - Let's Change some Lives!
Kindest regards,
-Hugh