S5E3: Why “best practice” might not be what you need

Full transcript:

Good morning and welcome to the second episode of season 5 of the LCP, the daily dose of language courage for people who love languages, and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway!

So to celebrate the launch of the Be Your Own Best teacher sprint, all this week on the podcast, we’re going to be asking some questions to help us look back on our school experiences of language learning, bring what’s useful along with us into the present day, and leave all the rest behind. 

And today, I wanted to build on yesterday’s episode, which reflected on the quote by Dr Benjamin Hardy who said “what got you here won’t get you there” with another quick reminder, that if your language learning routine, or your even whole life, doesn’t live up to all the tricks and hacks and wonder routines that you learned at school, at university, or that you’re reading about and hearing about now from experts, that’s okay. And not just okay in a sort of – I’m sure you’ll get there one day kind of reassurance. It’s okay in the sense that, actually, they might not be the best things for you at all.

The thing is, we get used to the idea of there being “a proper way to learn” right from when we start school. We have a routine set for us, we’re kind of shepherded from one thing to the next, the methods and approaches we used to learn are set by our textbooks, our exam boards, our educational authorities, delivered via our teachers, and then we reach adulthood, and not a lot has changed really. Except that instead of one routine to rule them all, one textbook that everyone follows with a range of best practice governed exercises to complete, we’re now surrounded by experts in pedagogy, in productivity, in memory, in language learning, all telling us how to hack language learning.

Sometimes, when you hear a trick or hack, or you watch someone showcasing the routine they swear by, it sounds like a really good idea. You get that tingly like golden feeling of inspiration and you know it’s going to make sense for you and maybe it’s even going to fix some problem that you’re having. 

But something that really bothers me is that so many of the productivity and learning hacks we hear assume that we are working in the optimal environment, or the most standard or accepted one by our society, and that anyone who lives outside that just need to find a way.

And that’s why you have to invite the tricks and the hacks into your life, into the world that you have access to, and not the other way round. Why are we talking about trying to keep a consistent routine if your shift patterns mean nothing else in your life leaves room for a schedule that looks the same every day? Why are we talking about the Pomodoro method to concentrate when there’s building work happening right outside your apartment or the internet goes off a lot? And why are we talking about “just do it, no excuses, count backwards from three and go” when you’re sleep deprived, run down, or trying to do ten other things at the same time?

And it’s not to say that those things will never change. But I worry that all this talk about best practice is feeding the all or nothing thinking that says that it’s only worth reaching for our goals when we have the perfect life to carve them into.   

So much of the time, when we’re being fed all these ideals of a world we don’t fit into, it can just send us the message that we’re always going to be doing everything wrong. We’re always going to be doing the less-than-best thing. And it’s only when we let go of the ideas of the perfect sleep schedule, and the perfect way to start your morning, and the optimal techniques for learning and revising and evaluating everything we do, that we can start to relax a little bit around our goals.

So if you’re going to work on your routines or your productivity, language learners, look at your life FIRST. Let yourself experiment. You don’t need to be on best behaviour, language learners, and real best practice is not going to be found in peer-reviewed journals. The best practice for you is what you can stick to in the life you’re living in right now. It’s what you can fit into your day without bringing in lots of tension, or feeling the need to transform yourself into someone else or sacrifice things you love.

Take inspiration from the experts. But don’t feel guilty if you can’t make them work, because they might just not be made for your world right now. Keep looking, keep experimenting, and something will fit better.

And just some reminders from this week, there are a lot of things changing around here at the moment! This September sees the launch of The Language Project website, and it’s first ever group programme called Be Your Own Best Teacher, which will take place between September and December. And to celebrate, I would love to invite you to a two week Welcome-to-September celebration and free taster of my Be Your Own Best Teacher group programme to kick off the academic year (even if you're not in formal study any more!) to help you start the Autumn/Fall in a really compassionate way that suits your personality, your circumstances, and what you’re actually trying to do with your language.

We'll be mixing workshops, journaling, coworking and group accountability calls to help us detangle our present-day language learning from our schooldays, sift through our experiences, and make sure we’re bringing all the good stuff along, and leaving the less useful stuff behind. It starts next Monday, that is Monday 11th September, it’s going to be completely free, there’s no pressure at all to join the full programme afterwards, it’s just a way for you to see what it’s all about and for me to thank you for all your support over the past year. It’s only open to listeners of the podcast, members of the LCP community, and people that you decide to invite because you think they’ll love it too. I’m not advertising this widely on Facebook or Instagram, this is just for the people who have supported me and the project and their likeminded language learning friends, so please spread the word to all the other creative, mission-driven linguists out there who want to make this process as meaningful and fulfilling as possible.

If you’d like more information, send me a DM on Instagram at @teawithemily or an email to emily@languageconfidenceproject.com.

I can’t wait to see you there! Have a wonderful day, and I will see you tomorrow.