S6E13: 5 things to remember after a “bad” study session
Full transcript:
Good morning, happy Wednesday 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. And today, I just wanted to pop in and give you some things to have in your back pocket for any time that you have a really frustrating or difficult study session!
1) This isn’t about your ability. This isn’t who you are, this isn’t a final judgment of what you can do, what you’re potential is, and what you’re capable of. Competence and performance are two completely different things, and having a bad day, a bad week, even a run of a few bad years, is not a reflection on your overall ability or status as a language learner. Performance can be thrown off by so many different things, but don’t let it tell you stories about who you are.
2) Remember, it’s just a study session. When it comes to language learning, a lot of progress happens in between study sessions, so even if in the study hour itself it felt like you were just coming up against this wall, over and over again, it might click later, when you aren’t even trying, aren’t even thinking about it. And you make progress too just by coming into contact with your language every day, and yeah, the big actions, the intensive study sessions are great but they are not the only places where progress is made. The small actions and the small connections that you make between phrases, they count too.
3) Everyone has study sessions that just feel bad. Whether it’s because you’re studying a thing that just don’t get, you’re trying to write an essay but you have no ideas, you’re fighting immense mental resistance and procrastination, the inner critic has far too much to say, or you just full stop don’t want to be there, you resent your work, it’s all normal. But it won’t always be like this, and you have breakthroughs just around the corner.
4) Remember that in order to learn, we need to make mistakes. And that’s both in the language itself, the errors with grammar, pronunciation, whatever fiddly technical contortions your language throws your way, but it’s also in being a language student. So it’s also the mistakes that see you give up too quickly, give into distractions, get impatient with yourself, compare yourself with other people, try to do 20 things at once, all of those things, they’re mistakes that are almost inevitable on the path to being your own best teacher and your own best cheerleader. For the vast majority of us, nobody teaches us this stuff, and we have to learn it, by doing what we think is right, or normal, or best practice, seeing that it doesn’t work or feels bad, and then searching for a better or more compassionate way. Mistakes make you better in your language, better as a student, and better at life.
5) Your study session is over now. It doesn’t matter how badly you think it went, how much you’re telling yourself you’ve regressed or that you’ll never get this, it’s over. You don’t need to spend the evening overthinking what went wrong. You don’t need answers, you need to recharge. And so now, you still have permission to eat nice food, to enjoy yourself, to go out, to stay in, to smile, to laugh, to see people, and to sleep well.
Remember, language learners, you are so capable, and you’re doing something that is incredibly demanding and does require so much concentration, so much brainpower, so much motivation, and you’re there, and you’re showing up. Every day isn’t going to be the best study day ever, but it doesn’t need to be. Your average over the good and the bad days, probably just about works out. Focus on getting what you need, whether that’s sleep, time to completely change gears and do completely different things, time outside, or whatever it is that you think could be missing, it’s the best way to break the cycle of bad study sessions. Have a wonderful day, and I’ll see you tomorrow.