The four habits of highly effective language learners.
Habit 1: Having an Inmersive Learning Strategy.
People who embark on the project of learning another language often do so with an end result in mind which seldom has specificity. A carefully worded statement of intention that is their vision.
“I want to learn to speak English!” Is seldom followed by “so, everyday I will do something related to the language that has to do with a real interest in my life”; and in that lack of specificity lies the reason people fail to reach their objective in the allotted time.
The reality is that the big majority of people have the hidden, unconscious perception that they will need nothing more than to go to classes a number of hours a week and that will be the extent of their contact with their learning project.
This reminds me of the old anecdote of the scrambled eggs with bacon where the chicken and the pig set out to make some scrambled eggs. The chicken provides the egg, and participates. The pig puts in the bacon…and is committed.
Commitment is the n°1 differentiator between an effective language learner and one who constantly fails to reach any lasting results.
In order to reach results, effective language learners commit to actively seek activities that connect them with their vision of the end result that is their project, everyday.
Effective language learners seek opportunities to put to use the concepts they learn in class in the context of their everyday lives.
But how exactly is it that they do that?
Well, the first thing effective language learners do is calculate the costs of the project before committing to it.
They know that they will have to invest in time, money and emotional effort and adjust their time tables to make room for this additional investment. Identifying the costs let’s them determine whether they’re willing to pay the price of commitment.
The second thing is having the proper mindset.
—“I have no time to dedicate to my language learning project other than the class time”. “I don’t know anyone who speaks the language to practice with”. —
Effective language learners short-circuit complaining with proactivity. So, “I have no time to dedicate to my language learning project other than the class time” becomes “I’ll associate activities in my schedule that I already do, to my language learning project”.
And “I don’t know anyone who speaks the language to practice with” becomes “I’ll expand my social circle to include people who speak the language by going to language exchange events, joining clubs where the language is spoken and asking already existing friends and acquaintances whether they know people who speak the language that they can introduce me to”.
“The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The realist adjusts the sails”-William A. Ward.
And finally, the last and very essential thing is implementation.
In today’s world knowledge is readily available two clicks away, literally at the tip of our fingers for anyone to get. It is not a knowledge problem that we have—It’s an implementation problem. In order to achieve our vision of the end result planning the work is important; but working the plan is fundamental.
Perhaps the most important thing an effective language learner does is identify the key actions that they must do everyday in order to reach their goal and schedule it into their day.
Arranging to implement is a sure fire way of guaranteeing the end result. Perhaps it will be “read a short article every morning when I wake up” or “listen to an audiobook on my way to work”. Whatever it is, scheduling and subsequently executing it is the most effective way of seeing results.