I almost didn’t make my deadline (albeit self-imposed) for today’s post. I’ve spent a week volunteering with V.I. tennis at the IBSA Games in Birmingham, and I’ve only just packed up my uniform for the last time as the sun is setting on Edgbaston Priory.
It’s been six days of sweaty, hard and sometimes challenging work, but six unforgettable days of incredible experiences too. Not least of those is the great opportunity to use foreign languages – both my stronger, weaker and almost non-existent ones (my three words of Lithuanian, I’m looking at you). The IBSA Games being together athletes from over 70 countries, so it’s not hard to find someone, somewhere, who speaks something you know.
International events are such a perfect match for linguistically-minded volunteers. And that’s not just the social butterflies amongst us. Meeting, speaking and helping is golden experience for anyone fighting (as I do) with a natural shyness. It offers a good level of self-challenge, but with the safety net of structured interaction in short, manageable bursts. I call it people practice, and it’s worked wonders for my own particular flavour of social awkwardness!
It’s also an opportunity to enjoy the serendipity of polyglot opportunities. Nothing ‘in the wild’ is ever predictable, and that can throw language learners off when we throw ourselves deliberately, and often over-expectantly, into a single target language setting. On an international volunteering gig, you simply don’t know what will come your way. It might be your favourite language; it could be one you haven’t touched for years, and never thought you’d use again. It’s a case of let the opportunity come to you – and you’ll be nimbler of conversation for it. Personally, I never expected to speak as much Polish as I did this week.
If you at all curious to try it out, check out the NCVO or equivalent in your country. Also, keep an ear to the ground for big events happening locally. The best leads are often by simple word of mouth.
Volunteering is massively rewarding, in so many ways. It really is the ultimate in giving something of yourself in order to grow, as a linguist – and otherwise.
Just like my fancy Philips UV-C box, sometimes, the biggest leg-ups to our language learning come from unlikely sources. So it is with community volunteering as a kind of social training, which, as a shy linguist, is something I try to throw myself into – sometimes against my kicking-and-screaming inner child – at every available opportunity.
This week, I had another opportunity for just that. In April, Brum is hosting the Union Cup, an exciting, international and inclusive sporting event that has been a couple of years in the waiting after Covid disruption. After last year’s Commonwealth adventures, it was a no-brainer to volunteer. A chance to showcase the city, support communities and get some valuable exposure therapy when it comes to interacting with lots of people. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that there’ll be speakers of lots of other languages around too.
It’s all an antidote to a very specific language learning problem I’ve experienced. It’s that reluctance to step forward and speak in a situation where I can use my languages. I’ve felt it at home and in my target language countries. It’s a complex beast, with several components: fear of making mistakes, looking silly, feeling a nuisance or a bother, and such like. Most of us feel these things from time to time, but there’s nothing like a foreign language to up those stakes!
Targeted Therapy
But the social training that volunteering offers is almost perfectly suited to target all this. For one thing, in many roles, you’re almost constantly dealing with people face-to-face. And you never know what to expect. Sometimes you’ll get the whole spectrum of moods – good and bad – in the course of a morning. Someone might ask a question you have no clue about. Something might happen that requires you to think on your feet.
In short, it’s a social training that focuses on coping with the unpredictable. And if there’s anything that typifies using language in the wild, it’s unpredictability. What else, for something as varying as its human hosts?
So, into the fray we step for our social training. And even for shrinking violets like me, people work can get addictive. I now count amongst my friends serial volunteers who go for everything that comes along. Of course, it doesn’t have to be volunteering. I have a polyglot friend who is getting lots of people exposure from bar work, which he unexpectedly loves, and is thriving on.
On that note, fellow shy polyglots – and even those not-so-shy ones who want to keep their oar in – volunteer! It’ll be so good for you – and your community, too.
Sometimes life events just seem to slot into place, like elements of some carefully crafted narrative arc. If you could read the signs, you’d have seen them coming chapters ago.
I didn’t take much persuading, then, when a friend asked me to audition for a part in the opening ceremony. And what a take-me-out-of-my-comfort-zone treat for the soul that was. I found myself in a situation where I just had to be big, bold, and throw the lot into it. And I came out feeling like I’d gained a barrowload of courage and confidence, regardless of the outcome.
Fast-forward to now, and I’m halfway through rehearsals for the show itself. It’s been an amazing experience so far, with the big day (28th July) yet to come. I’ve made new friends, found my rhythm, got a lot fitter, and discovered my inner strongman. You’ll just have to watch the show to get that reference…
Standing by my mark and my prop!
And to think that I almost brushed off the idea of attending an audition as too much of a long shot, something others did well at, not me. If there’s any lesson here, it’s simply to explore every opportunity that crosses your path. You never know where an open door will lead.
And maybe, just maybe, that smooth narrative arc of yours was up in the stars all along!
If you didn’t already know (and I shout it from the rooftops so boldly that it kind of undoes the message), I’m a naturally shy linguist. In a community where confidence seems like a necessary prerequisite for being successful – at least in speaking – it can sometimes feel like a right old hobbling.
But sometimes the best way to tackle these things is head on.
In classic exposure therapy mode, I had the chance to hurl myself headlong at my social anxieties this week. I registered to attend a mass audition for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Commonwealth Games 2022 in Birmingham. I hear your gasps; yes, I kind of surprised myself, too!
Confidence boost – my participant placard from the Commonwealth Game auditions
In terms of personal exposure, this was up there. As well as group dance routines, there were some pretty challenging individual performance tasks that took me far, far out of my everyday comfort zone. I had to think on my feet with each instruction, steeling myself to be entertaining in front of a hundred strangers.
Confidence – Fight or Flight!
In the heat of the moment, though, our brains have a special trick: do or die. I knew I had to do something – the alternative was to run away, and I didn’t fancy that look much. So I stifled my inner wobbles and chucked everything I had into it.
By the end of the audition, I was brimming. Whether or not I get a part in the live show, it was one of the most enjoyable, energetic evenings I’ve spent in a while!
That rollercoaster of emotions felt so similar to tackling shyness as a language learner. I got the distinct feeling that the whole experience had given me an overall confidence boost, and that can only have a positive knock-on effect for my foreign language confidence, too. It’s made me determined to keep seizing similar opportunities that come my way.
And apart from keeping an eye open for one-off events like this, there are plenty of practice grounds out there: language chat clubs, book groups, music jam nights, choirs and more. Meetup is a great place to start.
Put yourself out there and practise that confident self. Your languages will thank you for it.
Perfectionism is a wily demon. And it stalks the language learning community with a particularly bloodthirsty enthusiasm.
Halloween seems the perfect time to address this perfidious little monster lurking in our midst. For while it can tempt us to embrace it, driving us towards mastery (mainly through fear), it can make us very inflexible, too.
Perfectionism is an extension of a need for control. Control, in fact, is so integral to the perfectionist’s outlook, that it features as a defining characteristic for perfectionists as far back at Cattell’s famed personality questionnaire. As such, perfectionists find it really threatening when unpredictable outside variables are added to the mix.
And the most unpredictable? Other people.
The Perfectionism Challenge
Imagine my butterflies, then, when I, a self-confessed and chronic perfectionist, learned that I had to work with someone else on an academic assessment recently. The horror, the horror. And just as I cynically predicted, my random partner wasn’t a carbon copy of me. Different priorities, different attitudes, different approach… Wringing my hands in despair, I cast a glance to the sky a let out a shrill whyyyyyyyyy?
Early signs set off all of my alarms. I contacted my partner ten days in advance of the deadline; my partner preferred to leave it until the deadline was upon us. I wanted to break the task into chunks and work out a plan; my partner preferred a more organic, on-the-spot approach. This did not bode well, I thought.
You know what, though? It somehow came together.
The fact that we ended up with something coherent and submissible made me question my own stress and hyper-focus leading up to the task. There was something even a bit – dare I say it – more human about the result, which it might have lacked if it had been robotically perfect. Could it be that I might sometimes take things too seriously for my own good?
Perish the thought!
Bursting Bubbles
We do need our bubbles bursting once in a while. Being closed off to outside influence isn’t a good recipe for personal growth. And grow, we did: we grafted together a piece of work that was unique, rather than a continuation of the same old theme.
The end product demonstrated more than just an ability to memorise and regurgitate foreign language material. It showed an ability to communicate, in all its messy glory. After all, by its nature, language learning is about communicating with others. It could be just what the doctor ordered to get a dose of good old chaos now and again.
It’s no surprise that perfectionism and learner independence go hand in hand. But leave a door open to the rest of the world, too.
A shy polyglot – that should be an oxymoron, right? All those languages, and too much of a shrinking violet to speak them? Well, the more linguists I meet, the more I realise that it is a hugely common experience.
It’s a topic close to my heart, as a shy lover of languages myself (just in case I haven’t said that enough in the past!). And shyness does give my passion rough edges at times, it’s true. As much as I adore the process of language learning, live, face-to-face speaking can give me the jitters. In such circumstances, it’s easy to fear, and avoid, speaking situations.
But in fact, a love of languages is a gift to a shy person.
Exposure therapy
You see, as a linguist, you can’t hide from speaking forever. The clue is in the name. The word lingua, or tongue, in Latin, inescapably brings you to back to the mouth at some point. Even students of dead tongues (a bit of a mean misnomer, as even languages without speakers have a rich life) will mouth the vocabulary they learn (or even more).
Speaking is the inescapable conclusion of learning a language. It is unavoidable, enticing even. The very shyest amongst us will still wildly imagine themselves conversing dazzlingly and fluently with native speakers.
So, eventually, we have to face our fears. And that, in itself, is therapy. Exposure therapy, to be precise, which has long been a popular treatment for a range of anxieties.
Scared of something? Then throw yourself at it with a vengeance!
Busting your shy side
There are a number of strategies for creating your own exposure therapy in a controlled, safe way. Some cost money, they all cost a little time and effort, but they will leverage your language skills to ease out the socialiser in you.
Microtrips
Of course, the ultimate language exposure is a trip to your target language country. If you can, regular, budget-conscious microtrips can throw you in the deep end and get you practising at being social frequently.
Once there, you can seek out situations where casual conversation is encouraged. Art installations, talks and cultural events are all safe frameworks to chat to strangers and not feel like a mad person. Earlier this year, I ended up putting the whole world of Eurovision to rights sitting next to a couple at Norway’s Melodi Grand Prix in Oslo!
Before a trip, check What’s On listings, and websites of local libraries and universities, to seek out opportunities. For instance, I ended up on a free Norwegian language tour of the parliament building in Oslo a couple of years ago, and ended up having a nice exchange with the tour guide afterwards.
Specialist conferences
You can also attend a number of special events organised by the emerging polyglot community. My recent trip to the Polyglot Conference in Ljubljana was a real tonic for taking me out of my shell. The Polyglot Gathering is one I’ve set my eye on next, and looks like a similar safe, structured space for facing down your shy side.
Volunteering
You needn’t spend lots of money beating your shy nature. Volunteering at national and international events is one way to surround yourself with speaking opportunities in a structured way, for example. Look out for forthcoming events like the Commonwealth Games, where knowledgeable local volunteers are highly sought after.
Education fairs
Free conferences and shows are another way in to look out for. Education shows, for example, are quite frequent in big cities. This week I was at the Language Show Live in London, which was a medium-sized, friendly event for linguists of all levels. It attracted speakers of languages from French to Georgian, all open to chatting about learning and making new contacts.
The stands themselves are worked by an international mix of exhibitors who will be happy to talk about products in their language. In my experience, it is always a little French/Spanish-heavy, although that is perfect if those are your picks!
Whichever path you choose, remember this: your love of languages is no less legitimate for being shy. In fact, your linguistic skills can be an effective route to combatting social anxiety. Being shy and being a polyglot are, in many ways, perfect partners.
If you learn more than one language, there is one question you hear more often than any other: how do you avoid getting mixed up? There are many answers to this. But one key strategy, for me, is developing a distinct voice for each language.
When you think about it, differentiating your languages by voice makes complete sense. Languages have patterns of pitch and tone quite distinct from one another. The voice you developed growing up with your native tongue adapted to fit the phonology of that language. It’s not surprising if the fit is a little less snug in French, Spanish, German and so on – at least without a little modification.
But changing your voice can feel intimidating. Our voice is a fundamental element of the self we project into the world; altering it can feel too bold, too cheeky. It’s no wonder that school students in the language classroom can feel reluctant to really get stuck into a foreign accent out. As adult learners, we face exactly the same fear. So how can we best approach a multiple voice approach to language learning?
Have fun with it
It’s important to remember that language learning regularly challenges us to act counter to our everyday inhibitions. Whether it’s speaking with strangers, supplementing our broken speech with frantic hand gestures, or trying to mimic how others sound, linguists are so often thrust out of reasonable, human comfort zones.
The best learners acknowledge this, and embrace the challenge head on. In short, it pays to be a clown!
It’s something we are naturals at as kids, chiefly because kids feel less embarrassment when they are playing around. For instance, this is one area where you needn’t feel guilty about wallowing in linguistic stereotypes. Have a hoot combining your French with dodgy Allo Allo accents. Watch back old episodes of Eldoradoand have a go at your cheesiest Spanish. The important thing is to let go of your fear of sounding foolish through having fun.
It’s all very childish… So enjoy it!
Experiment with pitch
You can create instant results by simply experimenting with the pitch of your voice. Spanish and Russian feel more natural to speak when I lower my voice, for example – something my friends still find hilarious (even though I’m not deliberately trying to make them laugh!). (“Is that your Spanish voice again?” Yes. It is. I’m so glad you find it funny!)
On the other hand, I’m aware that the my voice is higher when I speak Norwegian – perhaps because this is easier with a tonal accent.
A lot of this is also to do with the voices you are exposed to as a learner. I listen to a lot of podcasts, for example. And through those, I hear all sorts of voices at all sorts of pitches. It has become a great, accessible way to ‘window shop’ for voices you are comfortable to use as a model. In fact, there are some well-documented techniques like shadowing, which use audio mimicry to drill your foreign language accent.
I’ve studied both Polish and Russian on my language travels. As Slavic languages (albeit from different branches), they looked and sounded extremely similar to me as a beginner. But gradually, I found a way to mark the line between them through voice.
For instance, I sometimes find it easier to think of the sound of language in terms of shape. Through this lens, Russian is a language with quite sharp edges to my mind. On the other hand, the sound shapes of Polish seem much softer and curvier. When developing my Polish and Russian voices, I place a lot of weight on reflecting these demarcating characteristics.
(Disclaimer: after lots more study of both languages, I realise how different they can both be, now! Sorry for my previous ignorance, Polish and Russian natives! 🙂 )
Own your language
All this, of course, can greatly add to your sense of ownership over the foreign language. It’s vital to claim a language as your own, if you want a life-long relationship with it. And carving out a voice, even a personality, within it, will help you stake that claim.
Finally, it’s interesting to see how this phenomenon plays out in bilinguals in the real world. Personally, I’ve found myself intrigued by polyglots who report a personality change when speaking another language. Through playing with voice and accent across my active languages, I think I can recognise that, too. Building up a distinct voice and personality in a language will inevitably create ‘another you’.
There is some research evidence to support this, too. However, the effect could be down to situational, rather than psychological factors (ie., bilinguals use different languages in different situations, and they would naturally act differently in those situations anyway – e.g., with colleagues rather than with family). Environmental or otherwise, though, it’s a fascinating thought, and one you can have a lot of fun with as a learner.
Developing a voice in your foreign languages goes hand in hand with perfecting an accent. Have fun playing around with it. And enjoy your polyglot personalities!
Language lessons via Skype have been an important learning method of mine for some time now. Thanks to sites like iTalki, learners can now connect with teachers across the globe.
But however much experience you have with online classes, there might always remain a certain element of the unreal. It’s understandable; you only see your teachers for around an hour at a time, and under controlled and limited circumstances. It’s sometimes easy to forget that they are actually out there too, in the real world.
Breaking through the invisible wall
Over the last week, I had the chance to remedy that with a couple of my iTalki teachers. It was all lucky circumstance, really. Through regular lesson chat, it transpired that I would cross paths with my Icelandic and Polish tutors. What else to do but arrange coffee and cake (as if any excuse were needed!)?
Now, for a naturally shy language learner, meeting your online tutors can feel like a rather big step. There is something very safe and non-threatening about learning via video chat – the digital platform contains the teacher-pupil relationship quite neatly. On the other hand, out in the wild of real life, we lack those digital boundaries – the nature of greetings, niceties and farewells is quite different.
Performance pressure (with get-out clauses!)
Not only that, but there is also just a little performance pressure! In my case, Polish was a particular source of this, being a fair bit weaker than my Icelandic. Combined with a bit of social anxiety, the stress we put ourselves under to do well can jam up the brain somewhat. I am a perfectionist, after all (but I’m working on that!).
Thankfully, being a fellow polyglot, my Polish tutor chatted quite happily to me in both German and Spanish as well, providing a nice way out of my clumsy polski when needed. And that is one of the perks of meeting teachers who are, in all likelihood, fellow language enthusiasts – it becomes a bit of a meeting of minds, with more than enough common ground to talk about (in the target language or not!).
That said, it’s also important to note that these kinds of meet-up are not lessons in themselves. They should be an informal hello, rather than any test of your ability. In other words, it is all about putting a three-dimensional, human face to the digital presence from my hour once a week or fortnight. That can only help to create greater rapport. And ultimately, that should lead to more lively lessons, with more to talk about.
Chocolate perks
All in all, I had two very positive experiences with two lovely people. Affirming a distance connection face to face also makes the world seem a smaller, friendlier place. If you have the chance to meet your online tutors face to face, go for it! You might even be regaled with chocolate (dziękuję, Jan!)…
Can I tell you my guilty secret? I love making a fool of myself.
Before any of my friends and family organise an intervention to curb these masochistic tendencies, I should qualify that: I love playing the fool when it comes to foreign languages, and I think a touch of the clown is an essential part of being a successful linguist.
It wasn’t always like this. In the not-so-distant past, I’d agonise over enunciating my foreign phrases so perfectly, so seriously, that I’d reduce myself to a stuttering, gibbering wreck by the time I was standing in front of a native speaker. I’d convince myself that grammatical correctness was a deeply serious business, and I’d risk ridicule if I got just one of my endings wrong. I was passionate about languages – surely that meant they were a matter of extreme gravity!
In fact, the opposite was true – by hyper-focussing on being right, I was taking the whole business of communication – the ultimate goal of language learning – to a really unhelpful extreme. Needless to say, it turned me into that paradox of the linguist who was terrible at speaking.
The turning point
It took a pretty embarrassing incident to change all that (and I’m thankful for it!). Spending a year abroad in Austria as part of my degree, I had the chance to entertain neighbours at my place. It was all a bit short notice, and I’d barely had chance to tidy up when they knocked on the door. “Come in!” I started, in German, “but I’m really sorry about all the diarrhoea everywhere!“
Yes, I honestly said that.
It wasn’t planned, of course, and – mortifyingly – nobody said a word, until a friend (stifling laughter) explained what I’d said after the event. It certainly explained the sidewards glances and smiles, which I’d put down to my not-so-Austrian accent. I felt such a fool!
Laugh at yourself
It could have gone both ways, that incident. On the one hand, I was horrified at my mistake (somehow, who knows how, mixing up Durcheinander – mess – and Durchfall – diarrhoea). I could have thrown in the towel there and then, and been put off the language for life. On the other hand, it was genuinely pretty funny – it certainly made my friend laugh, and me too, once the horror had subsided! And it underscored for me the importance of silliness in language learning.
For one thing, I will never forget those two words. Ever! I mean, how could I? The whole tragic story is etched, indelibly, excruciatingly, into my memory. But it also makes me laugh, to this day, and those happy, daft feelings are more than just the warm fuzz of nostalgia. There is lots of evidence to suggest that happy memories are ones that last longer. A wealth of psychological studies attest this Fading Affect Bias (FAB – great acronym), which seems to be one of the core drivers behind fun and play-based learning. When you fool about and have a laugh with language, it simply sticks longer. It’s one of the reasons that techniques like Linkword work so well, too.
The name of the game
Language teachers know this only too well. As a former classroom teacher and friend to many more, I can honestly say that we’re the most open bunch to in-school silliness. The language classroom is perhaps the most game-based and fun of them all (I’m biased, I know!).
However, it’s something we could all carry into our own individual learning too, at whatever age. I work in a multilingual office for part of the week, and it would be a crime not to take advantage of that as a linguaphile. It would be too easy to approach that in a very straight-laced way, and try to engage colleagues in formalised chit-chat (poor them, I’m sure you’re thinking!).
But it’s much more fun – and a heap less stressful – to have a bit of a laugh, say some silly things to practise your latest vocab, and make people smile and laugh. It’s clowning around, but it’s creating those fuzzy feelings around language learning that will make you want to carry on. I don’t expect to ever say “I need a sheep” in Polish, like I did the other day (you had to be there, I think), but I’ll definitely not forget the Polish for “I need…” after having a chuckle over it!
(Don’t) pity the fool
The crux of all this is simple: bring some uninhibited joy back into your language learning. When the time comes, you can play it straight. While you’re learning, though, clown around with words. Make happy language memories. Be a big kid. Play. Be silly and make people laugh – after all, the world’s a better place for it.
