Learning French can be tricky at times, but if you’re aware of potential mistakes before you make them, things become much easier! With that in mind, here are five super common language learning mistakes we see people making. Keep these in mind and you’ll be speaking French in no time.
Not Learning Every Day
Every day is an opportunity to do two things; learn something new and consolidate previous learning. Both of which massively help when it comes to making steady progress, allowing you to ensure a consistent stream of fresh learning in combination with making the most of every session and lesson. Getting into a learning mindset can be tough, but staying in one is much easier. It’s also easier to reinforce previous lessons through recapping and going over previous learning, rather than forgetting and having to learn it again. Doing a quick session every day is vital for quick progress.
Too Many Materials and Approaches
It’s too easy sometimes to think that more is better. By combining online lessons with a language learning app, while also studying a textbook and listening to online courses, you think you’re going to make faster and better progress.
This often isn’t the case. You spread your focus and brainpower too thinly, and you don’t give any individual approach enough time and energy to make solid progress. It’s better to focus on one good approach, making real learning gains, rather than try and do everything simultaneously.
Perfectionism
Whether it’s in your pronunciation, recall or learning grammar rules, it’s important to remember that mistakes are part and parcel of the process. Learn to accept these mistakes, and never let them put you off. Learning a new language is valuable because it’s tricky. It’s developing a skill many monolingual people never will, and anything worthwhile will be tricky to get to grips with.
See Mistakes as Learning Opportunities
In fact, not only are mistakes not a bad thing, they’re also a vital tool when it comes to examining your own knowledge and ability. By utilizing mistakes as learning opportunities, you can patch up gaps in your knowledge and reinforce areas where you’re naturally weak at learning. For instance, if you repeatedly struggle with pronunciation and make mistakes in this area, you can introduce much more focus on this area in your learning program.
Discipline Over Motivation
Lastly, one of the biggest mistakes we see repeatedly is people depending too much on motivation. The fact is, you can’t count on motivation to be there every single day. Instead, it’s much better to focus on discipline and habit-forming. This is the way you’re going to make solid, daily progress.
Even if you’re massively enthralled and excited by the prospect of learning French, your motivation isn’t always going to be there. It’s fun while it lasts, but there will be days when you’re feeling tired or distracted. This is where discipline and habits take over, letting you keep making that steady progress.