How to stop switching back to your native language when practicing a language with native speakers

One of the most difficult things about learning a new language is overcoming the nervousness that one feels when trying to converse with native speakers. In fact, I’d argue that the biggest obstacle facing anyone trying to learn a foreign language is their own fear of making mistakes, and that causes a lot of us to avoid using our target languages whenever possible. We might do fine when we’re in a written chat, where we have the opportunity to think out what we’re saying and edit what we write, but that’s a whole different experience than a face-to-face, video, or phone conversation, in which your mistakes are unavoidably obvious. We fear criticism and judgment from the people to whom we’re speaking, and so we fall back on whatever little comforts we can find.

That’s why when we find native speakers who also speak our native language, we frequently switch back to our own language rather than theirs.

This is tragic, because while speaking a little bit of each other’s languages is very useful for communication, it can often be detrimental when trying to practice and improve language skills. Our brains are wired to find the path of least mental effort to achieve our goals. This is why, when we watch a foreign movie with subtitles in our tongue, our brains focus more on the subtitles then on the foreign language that we’re hearing. So when we have the option of speaking a language that comes more naturally to us, there’s a considerable part of our minds that really wants us to abandon more difficult forms of communication.

(Sidenote: This is part of the reason why native English-speakers are stereotyped as being terrible at learning languages: So much of the world speaks English – according to some studies, over 20% of the world population speaks English, and it is the single most studied foreign language in the world by a huge margin. So it’s much more rare for English-speakers to find themselves in a situation in which they have to rely on a foreign language than it would be, for instance, for a Latvian-speaker.)

So how do we practice speaking without relying on our native language? How do we make ourselves stick to speaking our target languages, if our brains are fighting against the very idea?

1. Make your target language the simplest option.

This is one of the simplest solutions, but also the most intimidating. Find ways to make your target language an easier method of communication than your native language. There are several ways to do this, and I’d encourage you to get creative with the concept, but I’ll give you one example:

Start a language-exchange, either online or in-person. If you want to start one online, there’s a myriad of wonderful platforms to do so, such as Conversation Exchange or HelloTalk, which allow you to find speakers of your target-language who also want to learn your language. One of the greatest feature of these sites is that they allow you to see what people’s levels of proficiency are in each language they speak! Many make the mistake of using this to find people who are already proficient in their language, and therefore won’t need a lot of help, but that’s the wrong approach. What you ought to do is find someone who is an absolute beginner in your native language; someone who speaks your native tongue at/below your level of proficiency in theirs. Why?

Because that way, you have to use your target-language to communicate. You lack the comfort of your own language, and the most facile way to communicate is by depending on what you know in your target language.

(Sidenote: to do this, you’ll need to know how to communicate with limited vocabulary. Read more about that here.)

This is the idea behind immersion. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a huge boom of people saying that the best way to learn a language was to go live in a country in which the language was spoken. In many ways, this is true! Not only does it help to be surrounded by the language at all times, but one of the other main benefits was that it frequently puts you in a situation in which you need to find a way to communicate in a second language if you really wanted to survive. When you’re immersed, learning the language becomes a way of avoiding stress and making your life more efficient, rather than a meager personal/academic pursuit that can be put off for any period of time.

The greatest part of learning a language today instead of back in the ’90s, is that there are so many ways to be immerse oneself in a language without needing to get a job and apartment abroad for a few months! Plus, if you find an exchange partner who is at a lower level in your language, you have the added benefit that that partner will generally be pretty patient with you, since they also want you to be patient with them.

2. Make a competition out of it.

Let’s say that your main opportunity to practice is with a friend/colleague who already speaks your language, and you’re not looking to put in the extra time of setting up video-calls with a new language-exchange partner. How can you increase your time speaking their language without breaking back into yours? Beyond simply saying “I’d like to only speak [insert language here],” which has a varying success-rate, there’s one method that works great among friends:

Make a game of it.

Tell your friend that you’re trying to improve your language skills and could use the practice, and then challenge them, saying, “let’s play a game! Both of us have to speak only in your language. First player who says a word in my language loses.”

This is a challenge, and you’ll have to get creative with substituting for vocabulary that you don’t know. But it’s also a lot of fun, and a fantastic way to hone your skills and get used to speaking a new tongue.

3. Eliminate “training wheels.”

We briefly touched on this idea earlier when we talked about subtitles in foreign films. The more you give your brain a “crutch” to lean on, the less it will use it’s legs. This is true in conversation, as well! Mobile translation apps, for instance, can be very useful in breaking down linguistic barriers, but can also impede our learning if we rely on them too heavily!

Learn phrases that will help you to avoid translation apps as much as you can. Learn to describe things that you don’t know the word for. Let yourself be a little lost, and even let the conversation be a little awkward, and you’ll be surprised at how much more you pick up! The key is putting yourself in situations in which you need to figure things out by context.

Let’s say that your native language is English. If you’re speaking to an Italian man, for instance, and he says, “vado in chiesa per pregare,” you might have to tell him that you don’t understand. But rather than whipping out your phone to look it up, or asking him if he can repeat what he said in English, have a few phrases ready to ask him questions or ask him to repeat or explain the parts of the phrase that you didn’t understand. He’ll likely gesture with his hands to signify that “vado” means “I go.” He might make a cross or a steeple with his fingers or imitate the clanging of bells to specify that “chiesa” means “church.” And he’ll probably fold his hands to show that “pregare” means “to pray.”

Congratulations, you just found out that “Vado in chiesa per pregare” means “I am going to the church to pray” without breaking into English at all! There’s plenty more where that came from.

There are plenty of ways to practice a new language without breaking into your own, and the more ways you find to do so, the more you’ll pick up! So don’t let the fear of stumbling through a conversation or making a grammar-mistake stand in the way of your learning. Learning a language is supposed to be an adventure, and sometimes, adventure requires risks! So be bold in your language-learning. Jump in and don’t look back.

In what creative ways have you practiced speaking your target-language? What are the ways in which you struggle to keep communicating?