We’ve all been there: end of the day, tired, dragging your feet down the hall leading to your front door. You turn the key, step in. You find a dark, crammed hallway leading to your room. You open the door and find a room that is still a mess, with clothes to be washed, dishes from your past meals and a slightly sour smell. You have things to do for work, and things to do for your life. Oh yeah, you also haven’t studied any amount of your target language today. You start feeling stressed, sad, and demotivated all at the same time. You try to do everything anyway, but there’s no time so you end up watching three episodes of the Office. Yup.
Goede tijden, slechte tijden (good times, bad times). We all go through these moments, but how do we get through the bad times and keep our motivation for learning our target language? Truth be told, I have been going trough ‘bad times’ for some time now and have heavily neglected my Turkish. Still, I don’t want this to stop me and finally, things are looking better for me. So, what changed? What are some practical things you can do, to keep this motivation up? I started looking at some videos online, and the best one I found is by Lindie Botes.
She boils it down to some three excellent points:
Don’t force yourself.
Why did you start learning?
Treat yourself.
Not only do these sound like super logical points, they are also points other polyglots, bloggers, and teachers have identified. To them, I would like to add, one more point: prioritize your wellbeing.
Don’t force yourself
Don’t force yourself means do not overexert your grey matter. We are not superhumans. And as much as I would like to be one myself, I am realizing more and more the limitations of how much one can study. Mind you, this is something you can train, but after a while, we all are bound to get tired, especially when life throws us some curveballs. In light of this, not forcing yourself starts with setting realistic learning goals. If we don’t, we will end up disappointing ourselves and losing motivation when we fail to achieve these goals we’ve set. Speaking of which, remember the time I tried to learn turkish in a week...
Why did you start learning?
Think back to the moments that lead you to decide you would learn your target language. Was it some people you met that inspired you? Was it a cool youtube video? Did you grow infatuated with the idea of navigating distant bazaars fluently while scouting for the best ras el hanout (راس الحانوت). Did you fall in love? I fell in love. I fell in love with Turkey and the culture, the warmth and the hot days. The chaos in Sultan Ahmet, the çay and türk kahvesi (tea and Turkish coffee). The breeze in Izmir and the sun setting past the bay, surrounding you in a beautiful, summer twilight. Your friends for life. Remember why you wanted to learn. Then think about what lies ahead, what your learning looks like. It’s one thing to be in love with the idea of a goal, but to achieve it, you must envision yourself working towards it. And I’m not gonna sugar coat it, it will be a challenge. But, you can do it, step by step, 15 minutes a day.
Treat yourself
Take a look at what you’ve learnt. How much progress did you make? Chances are, you probably did pretty good! It’s important to be proud of yourself, so, as Lindlie Botes said, give yourself a pat on the shoulder once in a while. Treat yourself. Buy a ticket to that movie in your target language, buy a new, fancy notebook to learn your language in. Hell, buy a ticket to go travel to the country that speaks the language! Concrete results need concrete motivators *buys bus tickets to Istanbul*
Prioritize your wellbeing
Hey, sometimes, it’s just too much. If you need to get your life in order, do that first, and think about language learning second. This might sound obvious to all of you, but it wasn’t to me. I get very focused on things and don’t always set my priorities straight. Language learning should be fun, and for it to be fun, you should be in a good place. A good place mentally, that is. Fall back on immersion in your target language, if you can’t take for learning. And if it is really a ‘bad time,’ postpone your learning or even stop it. If it hasn’t brought you any happiness and you realized it’s not something for you, why continue? You can always pick it up, if the time is right. You will thank yourself instead of beating yourself up about it later.
So, it’s been quite a week for me! I have officially become an English teacher at Trinity School in Rome, Italy. I’m commuting a lot and I teach at three different state schools scattered around Rome. I also give one on one lessons to students at Trinity School just outside Termini station. I want to apologize for the delay in getting this blog entry out, but I guarantee you that, even though I am settling into a new schedule, I still will do my best my weekly blog and keep you lot, my favorite readers, interested with some nice new content. Let’s get learnin’.
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