I’ve often told people that the most difficult obstacle that any aspiring polyglot or language-student will face is learning to be okay with making mistakes in front of people. In fact, learning a language without ever being corrected by somebody is nearly impossible! Making mistakes and being corrected by more proficient speakers is such an integral part of learning a language, that many of the world’s most famous polyglots have talked about how vital their willingness to look like a fool has been toward achieving multilingualism. That’s why fear of embarrassment hinders our ability to learn a language more than anything else can.
When I started studying my first foreign language (German), I waited two years before I even tried speaking to a native speaker. Once the golden opportunity presented itself and I actually took the leap, I hadn’t made it even a few seconds before I had made a complete fool out of myself. I went over to introduce myself to her, my cousin’s then-girlfriend, and said (in a falsely confident German), “It’s a pleasure to meet you! My name is Thomas.” She responded, I later realized, with “Freut mich auch! Wohin in Deutschland bist du gereist?” (“Nice to meet you! To where in Germany have you traveled?”) Not understanding a syllable of what she had said, I responded with “I’m his cousin.”
The conversation went downhill from there.
I kept talking to her throughout the day, throwing out a remark or two when I had the chance, but I spent most of the time scrambling to preserve what little dignity I felt I had left after embarrassing myself so early into the conversation. I didn’t speak unless I felt absolutely confident that I knew exactly how to say the sentence. Even for the next year after, even as I learned to understand spoken German much more, I was far too nervous to actually speak in any large capacity.
After a collective three years of German study, I decided that I needed to do something to help me to overcome my fear of speaking my second language. I had to find a way to challenge myself to face correction and criticism, as well as a way to force myself to speak uninterruptedly instead of relying on the other person to keep the conversation alive. To achieve both of these ends, I decided to issue a challenge to myself: For one week, I would post a new video on YouTube every day in which I spoke entirely in German. So I buckled down, used a copious amount of online references to make sure I was speaking at least decently well, and filmed a new video every day – each one on a new topic.
The results absolutely astounded me!
Not only did it help me to overcome my nervousness because I had so much more practice speaking, but I had also forced myself to realize that if I made a mistake, nothing happened! Everything was fine! The worst case scenario was that I would get somebody correcting me in the comments a day or two later, and even that was more constructive than it was embarrassing. I realized quickly that this was the single most useful exercise I had ever done in language-learning.
After just one week of doing this, I realized I was no longer sheepish about speaking German. Even when it came to topics I had never practiced before, it had become fun and exciting to test myself and see if I was up to the challenge!
So I would challenge every aspiring polyglot to do the same: Spend one week posting a new video every day of you speaking your target language for a minimum of 1 ½ minutes. Each day, talk about a different topic from your life, and post the videos somewhere where native speakers (or anyone versed in the language) can access it. It doesn’t matter how many takes it takes to get it right (the more takes, the more practiced you become.) or how much Google Translate you use to prep for it; this is all about practice and familiarity, not about showing off how much you’re able to do off the cuff. All that matters is that your final product is one continuous take with no editing. If you want to “go the extra mile,” challenge yourself to make at least one of these videos 4 minutes long or longer.
Here are some of the great benefits to taking the leap and trying this exercise:
1. Increases comfort in the language. After saying the same phrases over and over again, you start to gain a lot of confidence in how to say things!
2. Improves your accent. It’s simple: the more time you spend trying to sound like a native speaker, the more you’ll sound like a native speaker.
3. You can be corrected on anything you say incorrectly. This may sound daunting, but it’s a real blessing to be able to be corrected somewhat privately rather than while talking to a stranger in the street.
4. Let’s you make mistakes online rather than in the middle of a real-life conversation. Kind of goes hand-in-hand with #3. If you’re going to make mistakes, it might as well be on the Internet, where everyone is making mistakes every day!
5. It helps you retain useful phrases and terms rather than just lists of vocabulary words. This is key – you learn to be comfortable with whole sentences that are pertinent to YOU. You’d be amazed how much this helps you to survive everyday conversations!
6. You can look back and see how much you’ve progressed. It’s strangely gratifying to look back on your first video a year later and realize how inexperienced and messy you were in your language of choice. It makes you proud of how far you’ve come, and that’s something that increases your confidence like nothing else.
Try this out for one week, and you’ll be amazed at how much more confident you become in your ability to speak your language of choice!
Have you tried this method? How did it benefit you? What were the biggest challenges/obstacles? What are some other exercises that you have found useful in studying your target language?
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