Alan's weekend words November 24th

How to keep motivated when learning languages
Hello again. Sorry it’s been a while since I left a podcast episode. I’ve been very busy lately.
I’ve decided for this podcast to go back to my "chatcast" idea – where I talk as a would in a conversation – as much as I can do. It’s funny, but very few people who listen to these podcasts give me feedback or comments. In fact I just realised that I rarely give feedback to other podcasters myself - and it’s quite difficult to know why. So, rather than keep mentioning this, I’ve decided to make podcast knowing that there are around 1000 views per week – so obviously people must find them interesting.
I always feel more like making a podcast at weekend – it’s not just because I may have a little more free time to make one, it’s also a time where I tend to reflect on things a bit more. You know, when I’m not at work or so busy with things.
As you know I enjoy learning languages – but just as importantly I find that it is a way of better understanding other cultures as well.
Recently I started an evening course in Mandarin Chinese. Now this language is very difficult to learn for westerners I think – at least it is for me. We have a very enthusiastic lady teacher orginally from China who speaks English very well indeed and can explain the lessons very well too.
I find that starting a new language is very much like walking through a thick fog where you can’t see very well at all. As you learn, the fog clears little by little and it then gets easier to walk along. Another analogy for language learning is like making a very large jigsaw puzzle with many thousands of individual pieces. The secret to success with jigsaw puzzles is to look for the correct pieces and then you can discover the true picture when you start to complete it.
With Mandarin – there are very few clues to find from English. The only word I’ve heard so far that sounds a little like an English word is "ka-fei" which is coffee.
What impressed me is the enthusiasm of the teacher. She tries to link words to real situations. Also, she tries to make the language and culture join together not only through the lessons themselves, but last Sunday, she organised a Chinese meal for her students at a Chinese restaurant in Manchester "China town" . I found that having some chinese food and discussing language at the same time – helped me see how language can be made to be more "real" by a good teacher who wants to keep students’ motivation high.
Motivation and time are the key to learning anything – not just language, but as languages take some time to master – then keeping motivation as high as possible – it something that we should strive for.
Personally speaking, I have moments when I lose my motivation to some extent and I devised a list of things to help to keep interest high. I have to admire my Chinese teacher who herself must have her own list on how to motivate students to keep learning well.
My list is as follows:
Realise that motivation goes up and down and that everybody can have moments when they find language learning difficult. Sometime we also feel a bit lonely and this is when language classes can help as we can then see people making similar mistakes to ourselves and also making improvements too.
One we have realised that motivation can vary – then find ways to take away the some of the reasons for low motivation. Tiredness for example – if you’re tired – don’t work too hard!
Look for interesting things about the culture or history that are reflected in the language for example why do we call the game "Rugby football"? Learning the history behind this can make us enjoy the language more.
See if you can find someone who speaks the language in your area, or find a correspondent that speaks the language you’re learning - penfriend or business contact
Read some magazine articles rather than serious books when you find books are very difficult or tedious. Reading short articles can make reading more fun and less tiring.
Keep your "eye on the ball" that is – make sure you are honest with yourself about progress – many people think that they are not learning so much and become demotivated – but if they really think about it – they are probably just not learning as quickly as they would prefer.
When a topic interests you – look up some related words/phrases: e.g. Christmas:- Yuletide, Christmastime, the season of goodwill etc.
I think that will be enough for today – I don’t want to demotivate you by making this podcast too long.
Christmas is not far away – I’m looking forward to a trip to the Christmas markets in Cologne in December – so this should motivate me to keep learning German – I’ll look at some words relating to Christmas now…
Take care
Until next time