2025-02-20
10 分钟Hi, today I want to talk about 10 things you shouldn't do,
10 don'ts when it comes to language learning.
I'm not trying to put those out there as negative things
because these are things that I feel sap your confidence and confidence is so important in language learning.
And I relate it to golf.
I actually am a very poor golfer.
For my age, I'm relatively flexible, relatively strong, relatively athletic.
A lot of people who are not as athletic as I am are much better golfers.
And that's
because I struggle with some of the very same issues in my golf that i think some language learners struggle with in their language learning so here we go number one don't put pressure on yourself don't put pressure on yourself not to speak don't put pressure on yourself to speak don't put pressure on yourself to speak well speak when you want to and let it all come out rely on your instincts don't put pressure on yourself Don't think you're going to master the basics.
We often hear this, just master the basics, as if there's something basic,
whether it be a vocabulary item or a structure in the language.
First of all, you can't master it.
It doesn't prevent you from acquiring more words, from acquiring more familiarity with the language.
It's a bit, again, like the golf swing.
Whenever I try to have a perfect golf swing,
try to remember all the things that I'm supposed to do, I play more poorly.
If I just swing naturally, with confidence, I do better.
In fact, one of the things that triggered this video was an audiobook that my son suggested to me,
because we played golf yesterday in Palm Springs and it didn't do very well as usual.