Written by: Stephanie Kable, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
People with a fixed mindset don’t learn languages. They say they are not good at languages. They’ve never been good at it. They think it’s just too difficult and it’s probably too late for them to speak a foreign language fluently. However, there are people who adopt a growth-mindset - and we see a lot of them at Live-English.net - who, no matter their age, their work situation, how busy they are with their family, they always find time to learn.
People with a fixed mindset don’t think they can change. They don’t like change, whereas people with a growth-mindset embrace change and use it as an opportunity to learn and improve. So how do you get a growth-mindset?
Be Aware Of What You Don’t Know
The first step to have a growth-mindset is self-awareness. There is so much that we don’t know, not only the knowledge we know we’re lacking, but also all the different fields of knowledge that we don’t even know exist! When learning a foreign language, a fixed-mindset person would be happy with whatever level they reach as long as they can communicate in that language. But a person focused on growth would like to broaden their vocabulary, know more expressions and idioms to speak like a native, grasp the subtleties of grammar, get to know the local culture, and have a better accent write like a native, etc. And even someone with a decent level knows there’s so much more to learn about.
Get Clarity
Once we are aware and accept that what we don’t know is endless, it’s time to make a list of the centers of interest that we’d like to go deeper with, then we should prioritize them and make a plan on how to reach our objectives. We need to be strategic with our choices. Are our skills aligned with our goals in life? If we decide that it’s time to improve our skills in a certain language, we need to determine how we want to improve our language skills. Are we going to read an article a week, watch a video, practice speaking skills with a private teacher, take part in a conversation Club to practice with other learners? The possibilities are diverse and correspond to different needs and objectives. When we have clarity on what we want to achieve, the answers become obvious.
Keep The Momentum
The enthusiasm we get when we start learning is amazing. The secret to being successful is to keep the motivation over time despite the difficulties and challenges.
In order to keep the momentum, we need 2 elements.
The first one is to be able to measure our progress. We want to achieve concrete, achievable objectives. If our big goal is to speak a language fluently, an achievable objective would be for example to review one grammar rule and to make sure we apply it properly when we speak until we get to the point we don’t even need to make a conscious effort anymore.
The second element is to make ourselves accountable. A teacher is the best person to keep us accountable and make sure that we book our 2 lessons a week, that we read or practice our writing between lessons. Accountability is often under-estimated. But the main reason why e-learning (learning independently with an app) fails is the lack of accountability.
Be Patient
An important part of the learning process is failure. There will be periods of times when learning will be more difficult; we will feel a plateau in your progress. It doesn’t mean we’ve reached our maximum potential. It’s just a natural learning process, a time to digest all the new content we’ve learned. Typically, learning a language starts slowly, then there’s a steep acceleration that turns into a plateau. The plateau may be quite long, but by persisting, we’re just getting ready for a new steep acceleration.
Dedicate Yourself To Lifelong Learning
The question is not how long it will take to reach our goals. The question is: how far can we go? Once we reach a milestone, we’re in for the next goal; we keep growing.
When personal growth is at the center of our life, there’s nothing to stop us. Every situation is an opportunity to grow and improve. We like following the news, let’s follow news websites in the language we want to learn, we want to watch movies, let’s make sure we watch them in the original language. So even when we are not formally learning, we should take every opportunity we can to get more exposure to the language we want to learn.
Learning a foreign language requires a growth-mindset. Don’t say “I can’t” or “I am not …” anymore. When we are on the path of personal development and growth, we get stronger in our mind, our level of self-esteem improves, our sense of fulfillment and happiness increases. Besides the proven effects on us, let’s not forget to enjoy the journey, because, after all, learning a language is fun!
Stephanie Kable, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Stephanie Kable is the CEO of Live-English.net, an English online school that helps professionals worldwide feel more confident with their English as a second language. Through online one-to-one and group lessons via Zoom, the team of native-English teachers provides an efficient, convenient, and fun way to improve English speaking skills. Stephanie holds a B.A. in Management from the University of Paris-Dauphine (France) and an M.A. in Information Systems from Institut Mines-Telecom - Business School (Paris, France).
Fond of languages, technology, business, and personal development, Stephanie combines all these fields of knowledge to offer unique English courses focused on each learner's needs.
