Are you afraid of Mistakes?
¡Hola hola!
When people are learning something new, normally there’s always something they have in common. In my experience dealing with people that are learning Spanish, the something that most students share is fear. Specifically the fear of committing mistakes when trying to speak the language.
This fear is absolutely normal, and more so when you’re doing something new and out of your comfort zone, especially if you’re a perfectionist like me. The problem is if we don’t fight this fear early enough, you might be thinking you’re learning a lot and think “in your mind it sounds great”. However when you actually speak it’s usually quite different, then you feel bad, normally thinking you’re “bad at languages” and that it’s not for you. Many students even feel like dropping out if they don’t get back that motivation to keep learning. As a teacher I like to think that I motivate my students enough when they’re feeling down about failing at something, because if me as the teacher doesn't motivate them, who will? Most of the time we’re our worst enemies, and just because we’re not doing it “perfect” we’re just bad at it... WRONG.
Just because I agree with this feeling of fear when making mistakes doesn’t mean I agree with not fighting it. That’s the first thing I like my students to do, speak. Even if it’s only words and vocabulary, you need to speak and write, it doesn’t matter how much you know at that point. The priority is to remove that fear, to feel confident enough that if you make mistakes you just correct yourself, or someone else will correct your mistakes and that’s fine!
I will speak from my point of view as a Spaniard living in the UK. I do know how to write and speak English quite well as I can hold conversations without problems and be understood, BUT, the big but… I am not native in English. I didn’t grow up in the culture, neither did I have British people around me at all. As much English as I know it will never be the same as my native language, there will always be something. But you know what? That is absolutely fine because even native English speakers make mistakes when they’re talking and even more so when writing!!! It’s the same in Spanish and in any other language, natives will make mistakes too, so imagine a learner!
Another thing to add is the accent, when I’m speaking English I try my best to keep proper English pronunciation, but I don’t want to lose my original accent, why? Because that’s who I am and I shouldn’t be changing my accent just for others, if your pronunciation is spot on, you will be understood in Spanish even with English accent. The pronunciation is the key, not the accent.
This is why I’m really annoying (if you’re my student you know this) with the pronunciation in the first two blocks that we learn, because I do believe that if you learn how to pronounce words properly it makes the learning easier. I see a lot of people that have learnt a lot of Spanish but when they speak to me their pronunciation is mostly wrong, and no one would be able to understand it, and that’s a shame. The reason why I want my students to fully understand how to speak properly in Spanish, is so they can hear themselves speak properly and keep themselves motivated, otherwise if you don’t hear yourself properly you will start doubting yourself, and we don’t want that!
I do make mistakes in English when I’m speaking, but if I realise quick enough, I will always correct myself, or if others are around and they correct me I will pay attention for the next time. I don’t feel useless anymore or stupid, I’ve learnt that making mistakes is a completely normal thing, to the point where I have even corrected the English of English native speakers!
But correcting each other and mainly coming from a school background is not a bad thing! We need to learn that correcting each other's mistakes is how we learn and educate ourselves, it’s not something negative, but positive, and we need to accept that. This is the first step to be okay with mistakes, accept that you will have them no matter what.
The second one is to accept that you will correct yourself or someone else will, and don’t get offended or angry about it! Just think of mistakes as something good, something you can learn from and get better! If you just get angry and annoyed you will definitely not listen and will repeat the mistake again in the future. Stay calm, think about that mistake, use your knowledge and find the reason why that mistake is a mistake. Learning is not only memorising, but understanding why something is correct or wrong and using that in your favour.
My main recommendation for this issue is mainly to speak out loud, don’t just repeat the word in your mind and think “I’ve got it”, make sure you say it out loud so you can hear yourself if the noise you’re making is correct or not. No one will laugh at you for trying, and if anyone does, trust me, that human is not worth your time so just forget about it and ignore that person. People will usually correct you in a nice way, or just try to understand you knowing the level that you’re at.
As a native Spanish speaker I can genuinely say that I appreciate it so much when people at least try to learn my language, and not just ignore it and think that “with just English I’m fine”. That kind of mentality is the one that I find annoying and even hate depending on the way is said. If you actually try to pronounce stuff and show interest? It doesn’t matter how many mistakes you make, you will be so much more appreciated than those ones that don’t even try.
Don’t ever feel bad again if you make mistakes when learning Spanish, embrace them and learn from them. That’s how you will get to the point where you know you’ve learnt the language, when you correct yourself before anyone else does…
Thank you everyone for reading! I hope this has helped you out, if it has I will feel a little bit more useful! Just as a spoiler ending… “Are you scared of asking questions?” That’s another topic I will definitely be writing about, as a lot of people not only are scared of making mistakes but to ask questions too! For another time.
¡Hasta pronto!
Álvaro Villamor Augusta
AVA Spanish
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