S5E7: What would be completely wrong for you?

Full transcript:

Good morning, happy Tuesday and welcome to the Language Confidence Project, the daily dose of language courage for people who love languages and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway.

So, yesterday, as part of the Be Your Own Best Teacher launch, I asked you to try to imagine the most different path from your own to learn a language that would still yield the results you want. The weirdest, most out-of-the-box collection of activities, methods, resources, events, that you could think of. The furthest cry from all the things you’re used to and that you grew up doing at school, at university, or in language classes.

And today, I have another question for you.

What would be the worst language course you could imagine?

And of course, when I’ve asked this with clients, some of the things that come back are pretty universal: a horrible teacher or other students who make you feel stupid or anxious, unrealistic expectations or a harsh and punitive environment. But what about the things that some people would absolutely love, would thrive in, would maybe even pay good money for, but to you sounds like a nightmare?

Is it a course where you follow a really rigid routine and do exactly the same things, in the same order, every single day? Is it a course of “super interactive” extroverted types where you sit in a different seat every day, have to speak as much as possible and do lots of roleplay and improv exercises, maybe even in front of an audience? Is it a 1-1 where your teacher comes to you every day and asks you “so what do *you* want to focus on today?” Lots of writing? Old-school dictation exercises?

What would it be like? What would your time look like on that terrible, horrible, lamentable course?

This is where you can discover some really interesting things about yourself as a language learner, and actually, as a learner in general.

Because when we start to think about carving our own path, the questions we desperately want the answers to are: what would keep my attention the most? What would make me feel inspired and encouraged through the long haul? What would be the most effective and the most sustainable things I could do?

But a lot of the time, we can’t just go out and hunt for the perfect things straight away. We might not know, and there’s a real risk that even if we did come across it, we might not recognise it. So most of the time, the route to finding out what we do want, and what does work, is actually through the forest of what we don’t want. And generally, it’s so much easier to imagine what you don’t want than what you do. So start there. Start throwing out all the things that won’t serve you. Narrow it down from there.

What would drain your energy? What would make you want to run out of the room and never come back? What would be boring and feel like a slog?

Because the thing is, even if you are in formal study for your language at least some of the time, when you come home in the evenings to do your assignments, you can run your own personal classroom however you want. So figure out what you hate. Figure out why you hate it. And then promise yourself that you’ll limit or ban those things from your own personal classroom. That you’ll find alternatives wherever you can. You’re allowed, language learners. It’s okay.

And if you want to really dive into being your own best teacher and making your own personal classroom a place you want to be this autumn, I would love to invite you to check out the Be Your Own Best Teacher group programme which starts on Monday September 25th and runs all the way through til December 15th.  We'll be mixing workshops, journaling, coworking and group accountability calls to help us sift through our schoolday experiences, work out what we want to keep in our present day language learning, and how to leave all the less useful stuff behind. We’ll be diving into everything from creating our ideal learning environments, getting intentional about what kinds of tasks and activities we plan, exploring our ideas about reward and punishment, success and failure, and how our inner teacher talks us through confusion and frustration. You’ll leave bursting with ideas about how to make learning a productivity more compassionate, more relevant to your adult life, and more importantly, with a much clearer idea of what you need to learn a language, and what you’re doing just because someone, somewhere, told you you should. And if you’re curious, but you’re not sure yet, it’s not too late to sign up to the two week taster fortnight which started yesterday, where you can try everything out, it’s completely free, and there’s no pressure to sign up for the full programme at the end. If you want to join, send me a DM at @teawithemily or email emily@languageconfidenceproject.com, both of those are in the show notes, and I can’t wait to see you there!

Have a wonderful day, and I will see you tomorrow.