What is your attitude towards learning Spanish?
What is your attitude towards learning Spanish?
¿Qué tal chicos? ¿Listos para el fin de semana?
This week I want to talk about the role that attitude plays in learning a language.
The reality is that attitude plays a huge part in everything that we do.
If you walk into a situation with a bad attitude, you probably won’t be surprised when everything turns out crappy.
When you go into a situation with a positive attitude, you will most likely feel thankful afterwards that everything went so well.
This is how it plays out in life, and this is how it plays out with language learning.
So here are a few alternatives for those days when you are feeling negative about the language learning journey:
Instead of: The conjugations are so hard in Spanish! I’m never going to learn them!
How about: There are so many conjugations in Spanish that I’m going to focus on learning one at a time.
Instead of: I’m never going to understand native Spanish speakers, they talk way too fast!
How about: My goal is to someday understand native Spanish speakers, so I’m going to dedicate 5 minutes to comprehension practice every day.
Instead of: My pronunciation in Spanish sucks! I can’t make those sounds!
How about: I’m going to work on my pronunciation by reading out loud, listening to native Spanish speakers, trying to mimic sounds, by looking in a mirror at the positioning of my tongue when I speak, etc.. I’m bound to get better!
Instead of: I feel like I don’t know anything! I’m never going to be fluent in Spanish!
How about: I can’t believe how much Spanish I have learned already! X years/months ago I couldn’t even X and now I can X!
So the moral of the story is that attitude counts. Learning a language is a lifelong process, and having a bad attitude is just going to make everything take longer, seem worse than it is, and take away the joy of learning. What is your attitude towards the language learning process?
Besitos,
Caro
