It's officially in the midst of August and officially been 2 years since I started my language learning journey. In August of 2017, I decided that I was crazy enough to start learning a language far from my native tongue of English: Korean.
I had grown up learning and studying Spanish from Elementary School to High School (even eventually ending up in the Honors Spanish class my senior year of high school). While I wasn't particularly passionate about Spanish, I was able to catch on and learn it with relative ease despite when paradoxical grammar got thrown into the mix and changed all the rules I'd previously learned and memorized; I'm looking at you subjunctive tense.
I chalk this up to my father being bilingual and speaking Serbian to his family growing up. While I never learned any Serbian beyond quite basic words, learning to count to ten and greeting someone, being exposed to the language when going to my grandparents I think inclined me to learn language quicker.
When I decided to learn Korean, I assumed I wouldn't have many troubles. While I'd heard it was one of the most difficult languages to learn for an English speaker, I figured my academic success with Spanish was a testament to my ability to learn languages. In short, this would be a piece of cake.
Boy, was I wrong.
But let's start off at the beginning. I started learning the Korean alphabet, hangeul (한글), enthusiastic and motivated to learn a language with a completely different writing system. With some quick memorization and practice, I was able to sound out and somewhat read words after about a week. I started reading up on the hierarchical honorific levels, SOV (subject-object-verb) sentence structure, and finally ordered some much needed self-study textbooks. I also downloaded and signed up for some apps to aid my studying along the way. I'll never be able to escape the Duolingo owl's glassy glare.
6 months into my studying, I was feeling excited about my progress. I'd noticed how much more I could read and understand, albeit simple sentences and words. I decided to enroll myself in a Korean language class at university to not only fulfill my language requirement, but to take my studying to the next level. While my reading and writing was, at best mediocre, my speaking was eloquently put, trash. But still, I was motivated to keep pursuing language studies, eager to one day become fluent.
The next year was spent studying primarily through university classes. Thanks to my friendly and encouraging Korean teachers, I had more time to practice speaking in class and became more confident in my speaking abilities. My grammar was becoming stronger and stronger, I could use not only simple past, present, and future tenses but also more difficult grammar to express situational specific ideas. At this point, I had downloaded a language exchange app called "Hello Talk" and had even practiced speaking with native Koreans currently living in Korea. I repeatedly received praise for how good I was as a foreigner who had never lived or even visited Korea.
But after this point, my mindset shifted.
I had made friends with a Korean who had moved to Canada and wanted to practice English with me about 6 months into my language studies. We'd text daily and help each other with our language studies; correcting each other's sentences, pronunciation, and overall helping each other stay confident and motivated. But a little after a year and a half of studying, the more and more I practiced with her, the more I noticed how often she'd correct my sentences. I was making mistakes on simple grammar that I thought I'd learned in the past, my sentence structures often times were jumbled and disorganized, and I became aware of how little I could actually express my thoughts or what I wanted to say.
Sure, I could have a conversation about my likes and dislikes, what I did yesterday/what I will do tomorrow, and so on, but talking about what I was actually feeling or discussing more advanced topics was something I'd only scratched the surface of. Distinguishing the difference between written language style (mooneoche, 문어체) and spoken language style (gueoche, 구어체) which has a variety of sub styles within its structure was proving a whole task in and of itself. I was quickly overwhelmed and extremely discouraged.
I slowly started losing that motivation to study; unwilling to practice and risk the potential of making mistakes. I became more and more embarrassed of the idea of making conversational flubs. Any sort of grammatical faux pas was a failure on my behalf.
I was stuck.
But then I was lucky enough to stumble upon a journal entry I had written two years ago when I'd just started out learning. I giggled at my elementary way of speaking; the frequency with which I actually made major mistakes within my writing and often resorted to just writing the word in English if I didn't know what it was. And I realized that I had in fact had improved since that point and the only thing that was stopping me from going further was my mindset. Back then, I wasn't afraid of making mistakes or looking foolish if I misspoke. So why now did I feel like this?
To be honest, I haven't gotten quite out of that rut yet. I still will feel disheartened sometimes by my mistakes. But after 2 years of learning, I'm proud of how far I've come. It's miles ahead of where I was in 2017 and I know I'll continue down that road. My Korean friends have even said they're impressed by my skills and correct my nuance and make it more natural. And if that isn't actually proof that I've come farther, I'm not sure what else will prove it to myself.
So, after all of this, what tips have I learned to keep myself motivated?
Take a break. SERIOUSLY. When you're feeling down and making mistakes, turn your attention to something else. Sometimes pushing through that frustration only aggravates it.
Watch content in your target language WITHOUT studying it. A lot of times when I would watch content in my target language with English subtitles, I always felt I should be paying attention to what words they were using, how they were saying things, etc. While this is important for studying, let yourself just appreciate the language (and other aspects of the content you're consuming!) like you would anything else.
Check your progress. If that hasn't been obvious enough through this article, looking back at old things you've written, assignments you've completed, etc shows how far you've come. As they say, Rome wasn't built in a day!
Remember why you started. I think when studying anything, languages or not, one can lose sight of why they started doing or learning something. That passion sort of gets lost along the way. But take a step back, trying and reconnect with why you started pursuing something, and keep moving forward.
I still haven't made it to Korea yet and I'm hopeful I'll be able to go sometime in the near future. Because I've graduated from college, I'm back to self-studying and keeping myself motivated. While it's not easy, in the long run it'll be worth it.
Commentaires