I tweeted this a few days ago and posted a screenshot of this to my Facebook. The comments interested me. As a general whole, people agreed. With that said, this particular comment on Facebook caught my attention and inspired this newsletter:
I should be clear: this commenter doesn’t hurt my feelings. In fact, I understand where he is coming from. A lot of what I post online is simple and common sense seeing as language learners often struggle from not knowing about or not following through on the basics.
For example, the other day I spoke with someone who has been learning their target language for over 4 years. Her hope is to become at least conversationally fluent, and yet almost all of her study time is spent on Duolingo. That’s a mistake I see all too frequently, hence why I posted the tweet above.
Why People Struggle to Learn a Language
It goes without saying that everyone has their own unique challenges when learning a language. The good news is that the solution to people’s personal roadblocks are often simple. They only need to make a few small tweaks to get onto the right path.
Don’t overthink the language learning process. Keep things simple. Despite being a mental workout, it is a reasonably straightforward process for the “Average Joe/Jane” to reach at least an intermediate level, if not higher. You will need to dedicate a few hours a week of practice/study time, but there is no need to feel confused about how to spend that time. There are tried and true methods that guarantee progress.
If you are not finding language learning to be straightforward process, book a time to speak with me here or reply to this email. I’ll point you in the right direction :)