Tag: community

You can still be accountable even as a lone ranger. Photo by Mario Alberto Magallanes Trejo on FreeImages.com.

Staying Accountable as a Lone Language Learner

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How do you stay accountable in your solo language learning?

I know I sometimes find it difficult as an individual learner. It’s an important consideration for anyone studying on their own. But there’s a clue: one answer is to aim for less of the on your own and instead, build elements of community into the approach to study. And that’s something that was thrown into sharp relief for me recently, as I took part in the 30-Day Speaking Challenge for the very first time.

Accountable together

The challenge has been around for a while now, but I’d managed to find one reason after another to put it off. I finally bit the bullet this month, and discovered a cheery, well-oiled machine well into its paces as a regular event. Run by online teacher and fellow polyglot Jonathan Huggins, the challenge brings together daily speaking tasks with straightforward, big-hearted peer support through shared Google Docs. Simple, but motivating. I’m not sure what kept me away for so long!

The particularly wonderful thing about the challenge is the way every participant helps keep everybody else on track. You not only record, but you listen to the recordings of others learning your native language, and chip in your native knowledge where you can. It creates a huge positive vibe of mutual support, and it seems like the completion rate for daily recordings is very high. That’s undoubtedly almost entirely due to the warm buzz from peer feedback and encouragement.

Learners maintain their daily recordings in order to remain an active part of this mutual motivation club.

I’m currently two thirds of the way through October’s challenge, which I’m tackling in Polish. Some of the daily topics can be tough, but I keep coming back for more every day. It has me convinced – so much so that I’ve already signed up to do the November challenge in Icelandic!

So why has the challenge been so effective for me and others?

Social checkboxes

With language learning, I’ve long been a fan of regularity and routine. Creating a regime to follow gives scaffolding to your overarching goals, and brilliant productivity tools like Evernote help manage these daily tactics precisely with checklists and plans.

Adding a social layer to this self-management brings something a bit special to these regimes. In essence, your checklists receive a potent, people-powered turbo-boost. Suddenly, it’s not just you. It’s a whole bunch of other people you want to run with and not let down.

Staying accountable means making sure that there is someone – besides you – to give reason to your checkboxes.

Keeping it fresh

It goes beyond that a simple motivational boost, too. Letting other human beings into your learning opens you up to a whole other realm of ideas and techniques. This aspect of socialised learning ticks a crucial box: part of staying accountable to yourself as a learner includes keeping up-to-date with new or different resources.

For instance, during this current challenge I found out about the very useful SpeakPipe site. SpeakPipe offers a web-based voice recording app, which saves recordings for a month and provides a URL for you to share them with others. It’s instant, works on pretty much any device, and takes the fuss out of making a quick recording.

But what is even handier is the function to download those files to keep offline forever. Using it on the challenge has resulted in a little bank of MP3 files I can use as both a record of my progress in Polish, and as revision materials for the topics I speak about.

Staying accountable by downloading your daily recordings on Speakpipe.

Speakpipe allows you to download your recordings as MP3s to keep forever.

There is also a sneaky side-benefit to these short daily recordings. They play perfectly into the language islands technique beloved of famed linguistic impresario Luca Lampariello. In this approach, islands are rehearsed snippets of target language that you have available for instant insertion into conversation. It’s a quick fluency tip that works well, and by the end of October, I’ll have ended up with thirty little Polish islands of my own!

Accountability everywhere

I’ve discussed staying accountable in the context of the 30-Day Speaking Challenge here. But social accountability is on tap in plenty of other places besides this excellent cheerleader for peer encouragement. You can satiate your need for positive feedback by keeping up regular iTalki lessons, for example, or attending a language café.

Additionally, there are myriad other community-based mini-challenges that run regularly and are worth checking out. Some are language-based, like LanguageJam, whereas others are not specific to language learners, but can be adapted to foreign language practice, like NaNoWriMo.

And of course, there is no warmer home for polyglots than the thriving polyglot Twitter community. Share, encourage others and thrive – even as a lone ranger!

Where there are fellow learners, there are friends to keep you on track. Seek them out.

Impostor syndrome can leave you feeling exposed and anxious. (Picture from freeimages.com)

Impostor syndrome? Prescribe yourself some polyglot community!

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This week, I’m blogging from the grand hall of the Union Hotel in Ljubljana, Slovenia, as an excitable, kid-in-a-candy-store, first-time attendee of the annual Polyglot Conference. As expected, it’s been a bit of a language wonderland. I’ve been stuffed full of fresh ideas and inspiration for new projects.

But one concrete lesson it has taught me is this: impostor syndrome, that fear of not being good enough, is pretty much ubiquitous. However, more importantly, community is the antidote for it.

The sumptuous hall at the Grand Union Hotel, Ljubljana, venue for the Polyglot Conference 2018.

The sumptuous hall at the Grand Union Hotel, Ljubljana, venue for the Polyglot Conference 2018.

Now, I am naturally quite a shy person. A shy polyglot – what a frustrating thing to be. All those languages, and all that extra anxiety speaking to new people! Needless to say, it was quite a leap to book my conference ticket. But it was completely worth it, not least for the “people practice”, as I like to call it. An especially valuable observation has been a tonic for my confidence as a passionate polyglot.

Impostor alert

You see, imposter syndrome is BIG. We all feel it from time to time, even the most outwardly confident people. The phenomenon of internet celebrity plays its part – sometimes it’s hard to feel good enough when our heroes and idols appear to be such runaway successes.

It is that feeling that you are not on the same shelf as all those other impressive people. You’re a pretender to the throne, just blagging, a bit of a fraud. You can’t really speak all those languages. You know just a bit at best, and would crumble under scrutiny. In short, you aren’t really a fully-fledged polyglot – just a wannabe who can say a few words.

But let me tell you two things. Firstly, you are absolutely not alone in feeling this. Secondly, none of those fears are based in truth.

Look yourself in the face

One wonderful thing about the polyglot community is that it acts like a mirror. Be bold enough to look into it, and you see yourself reflected back multiple times. You realise the universality of your experience.

Put a few hundred language enthusiasts in a room, and it leaps out at you. We are all achieving, succeeding, thriving. In different ways, at different levels, yes. But nobody is a fraud. Revelling in a love of language learning is all it takes to be part of this club. There is no such thing as the fully-fledged, perfectly shaped polyglot.

Something quite sweet happened to me at the conference, which confirmed the truth of this.

Anti-social security

At the best of times, socialising with hundreds of unknown people is daunting. Very few of us are natural schmoozers. And so it was that I found myself, lunch plate in hand, hovering alone around groups of people that seemed so much better at small talk than I am.

Serendipitously, my forlorn wanderings were noticed. I was rescued by a kindly (and similarly floating) delegate, and naturally, we got chatting about our language journeys. It was an easy point of conversation; all delegates bore self-decorated name badges, including sticky flags representing our languages and proficiency.

A little push…

The thing was, my conference friend started to mention her experience of languages not on my name badge. Each time, I piped up: oh, I know a bit of that! And each time, the reply was the same – so where is your flag? Exasperated by my explanation that I just don’t know enough of it!, she dragged me to the table of flags and insisted that I add them.

Shortly afterwards, we found ourselves in the language room, an area with designated tables for a common ‘big’ languages to encourage speaking. Thanks to the extra flags, I ended up having conversations in old / discontinued / parked languages I never expected to use.

And guess what? I coped!

What’s more, nobody else was the perfect, native-fluency wizard I built them up to be. We simply shared the joy of language. I spoke to people who shared my fears, felt too shy to speak, but once prompted, just couldn’t stop communicating. Understanding each other’s common experiences, polyglot friends were patient, kind and encouraging. All it takes is a bit of self-belief to get going (and sometimes, a little push from someone who can spark that it in you).

You are good enough. Be sure of it.

Poppy Field - it's hard to find the confidence to stand out in a field full of blossoming blooms!

Am I Good Enough? Maintaining confidence in an Internet age 👊🏻

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Confidence is key to speaking and using languages. But in an age of Internet superheroes to measure up to, it can be hard to keep it.

The Internet has been a godsend for language learners. Not only are millions of resources within easy reach, but there is community. Suddenly, the countless others who share the passion are visible. If you grew up thinking you wondering if there was anyone like you, then the Internet finally answered that question. The downside: measuring yourself up against your fellow linguists can affect your confidence. We go from being special and unique to just one of many, and that, frankly, can feel rubbish.

How many times have you thought: wow, s/he’s brilliant – no way am I that good!

Everyday experts

We live in an age of everyday experts. People with skills can now share those skills with anyone through a blog or a website. Now, don’t get me wrong. This is a marvellous thing. Everybody can help everybody else, and all you need to have a voice, and reach out, is an Internet connection.

However, it is easy to forget that there’s an element of the marketplace operating on the web: there is competition. In the tussle win clicks, likes, and kudos, individuals feel compelled to go bigger, bolder, brighter. Consequently, writers amplify positive claims and overstate promises of greatness.

The result? We have an online language community fixated on notions of ‘fast fluency’, and language heroes with almost superhuman abilities to absorb new tongues. The issue is not just with language learning; quiet confidence-knocking goes on wherever the Internet brings people together around a set of skills. Online trainer Brad Hussey lays it bare for web creatives in this passionate post.

Fortunately, there has been some honest push-back against the fluency myth recently, such as in this helpful article by Alex Rawlings. (I see the irony of linking to an article by a polyglot hero in an article re-humanising Internet heroes!) But it’s still too easy to feel in the shadow of others in a very noisy online world.

Our idealised selves

To understand how this positive feedback loop comes about, step back and think of online personalities not as actual people, but as constructs of people. The Facebook or Twitter profile is not a true and faithful copy of the person in cyberspace. Instead, it is a construct of an identity in the 2D space of the Internet.

Naturally, those identities are overwhelmingly positive ones; we build them from what we like best about ourselves. Twitter and Facebook profiles are showcases for selves, idealised projections. As such, the Internet is one vast exercise in impression management. Erving Goffman – the sociologist who originally conceptualised this notion – would, no doubt, have had a field day with social media.

But the crux of this is simple: take everything you read online with a little pinch of salt.

Am I good enough? Finding confidence

Behind these idealised profiles are ordinary, everyday people – just like you. They share the same basic needs, desires and anxieties. You are as capable of their feats as they are of your perceived failures – only you cannot see the failures, as these rarely make it onto social media.

That’s why it’s important to start talking about the frustrations and failures in language learning just as much as the wild successes. Discussion needs to paint a realistic, rather than a fantastical, picture of what the linguaphile journey is like. It’s hugely rewarding, amazing fun and exhilarating – but it’s not perfect. What journey is? And would a perfect journey be as much fun?

So, care for your confidence. Learn to chill with your languages. But believe it: you are good enough.

A classroom ready for teaching

Teaching to learn: boost your studies by helping others

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The idea of learning through teaching is nothing new. We find the idea in an old Latin proverb, docendo discimus (by teaching, we learn), possibly handed down to us from Seneca the Younger. The premise is simple: being able to explain what we know turns that knowledge from passive into active smarts.

We might also argue that the skill of teaching is facilitating learning, rather than bound to the actual content of that learning. It’s not necessarily about what you know, but how well you can explain (and re-explain) material – even new material. In this light, a natural next question is: can we teach without being experts in that content already? And are there learning benefits for us in doing so?

Primary Languages

The Primary Languages model rolled out in many UK schools is a great example of learn-while-teaching. Many teachers are not language specialists, but rather using teaching materials that allow them to stay one step ahead of the students.

The very best materials, like Linguascope‘s elementary resources, are packaged like ready-made lesson plans, which can be reviewed before class and form a roadmap for the teacher. Great teaching in this context is the skill of presenting, explaining and reviewing content, even if you’re just a few steps ahead of your class.

Peer teaching

In the classroom setting, learning through teaching can be just as powerful between peers. Students may be tasked with learning material in order to teach it to other students, either contemporaries or those in lower year groups. The resulting ‘altered expectations‘ – the knowledge that you’ll have to teach the material you’re learning to others – transform motivations and sharpen focus on really understanding. Also dubbed the ‘protégé effect‘, educational scientists have noted how preparation to teach results in students spending longer on material. One study provides empirical evidence for this ‘teaching expectancy‘ effect.

The idea has achieved some institutional acceptance already; educationalist Jean-Pol Martin has helped to instill the Learning by Teaching (Lernen durch Lehren) model as a popular method in German schools. The modern ‘flipped classroom‘ also has elements of student-turned-self-teacher, too, reversing traditional roles.

Build teaching into your own learning

So, teaching as learning has a long pedigree, and already has some good traction in the real world. But what lessons can we take from this for our own language learning?

Bug friends and family

Share with friends and family what you’re learning. They don’t ‘do’ languages? Then break it down as simply as possible. Tell them about a quirk of your target language that you find unusual. Think you’ll bore them to tears? Then find some way to make it interesting to them. The more challenging, the harder you’ll have to think – and the more that material will stick.

To get the interest of family and friends, I’ve actively looked for things that will make them laugh in the past. Never underestimate the power of humour in learning! Funny-sounding words (Fahrt in German is always a good one), weird idioms (tomar el pelo – literally ‘pulling the hair’ for ‘pulling someone’s leg’ in Spanish) and other oddities speak to the imaginations of the most reluctant listeners. “You’ll never guess what the word for ‘swimming pool’ is in French…”

Find a learn-and-teach partner

You can go beyond sharing humorous factoids and foibles. Find a fully-fledged language partner – someone who is as motivated as you to learn the language – and devise a schedule where you take turns in teaching vocabulary or grammar points each week. You’ll be activating those ‘teaching expectancy’ effects that worked so well in the classroom studies above.

Create resources for other learners

A revision technique I learnt as a student was to condense important points into simple explanations for others. If you can explain something complicated in a new, simpler way, then it’s a good sign that you really understand it.

Something I’ve been doing recently is to revisit my Castilian by creating Spanish revision videos for beginners. It’s been a form of revision for me, activating old knowledge bases that were starting to fade through lack of use. And because of the interconnected nature of knowledge (the neural networks of our brains), switching on a few buried memories triggers and refreshed many more connected informational blobs.

It’s easy to find a platform to share your homemade revision resources these days. Starting a YouTube channel or a Facebook group could be the perfect platform for your own learning through teaching.

Teaching is connecting

At the heart of it, learning through teaching embodies what languages are all about: making connections, building bridges. Try working some of these ideas into your own learning, and enjoy the social splashback!