Knowing yourself is the key to language-learning success
Firstly, I need to make a confession. I should have written this last week. But I didn’t, and as I get older (and hopefully wiser) I know exactly why I didn’t do it.
It’s because my mood and my work habits are unpredictable. You might describe me as a perfectionist, but I know that perfectionism is really just a type of fear. That means I have a strong tendency to make easy things, like sending an email, very difficult for myself.
But I’ve been the same way for more than 40 years, and I have slowly learned to accept myself, be kind to myself, and more importantly, try to be realistic about what I can and can’t do.
The reason I’m talking about this is because all my experience teaching students has taught me that the key to successful language learning is mindset.
Learning a language isn’t easy
Being a language teacher is essentially the story of supervising failure. The reality is that most students who try to learn a language will give up. The reason is simple: learning a language is really hard. If you don’t have the right mindset, failure is guaranteed.
At the start of a new year, a lot of people are tempted to make false promises to themselves. I can’t tell you how many times I have promised myself that this year I will be super-organised, and super-disciplined, and I will have lots of free time to finally get everything done.
But every year, I prove to myself again and again that it is just a fantasy. And as I get older I realise the importance of being honest with myself, because my fantasy land does nothing but make me feel disappointed with myself. It makes me want to give up.
And I don’t want that for you.
You are amazing!
This isn’t a negative message. It’s a message of joy and hope.
Achieving your goals in English will not require you to be a different person, but simply to focus the time and energy that you have on using your English to do the things you want.
If you can read and understand this email, please take a moment to realise how amazing that is! You can understand another language. You can do something that most people only dream of. That’s a result of all your hard work, and nobody can take it away from you. You should be proud.
Whatever negative experiences you had in the past like bad classes, bad teachers, embarrassing mistakes, or others making fun of your accent, are in the past. Let it go.
You now have the power of language, and it’s time to ask yourself what you want to do with it.
Communication First
The gift of language is really something very special, and the worst thing you can do is waste it on things that don’t mean anything to you. My hope for you this year is that you use your English to communicate with others about things that are meaningful to you.
That’s exactly what the Canguro Academy is designed for.
In the Academy our motto is: Communication First, and everything we do, from the live classes, to the video courses, to the Speaking Challenge, are all designed to focus on what you have to say, not how you say it.
We want to make English something you use, not something you study. I hope you make that your goal too!
See you in class!
Christian