Comfort zones in language learning
Comfort zones in language learning
It has become a cliché: If we want to become better, we need to leave our comfort zone. Having become a popular saying does not make it wrong.
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Learning a foreign language is a big leap out of our comfort zone. At least for most of us. The same would happen if you tried to speak in a different accent in your native language.
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If your native language is English, just try switching to a New Zealand accent (if you are not from New Zealand) during you daily interactions. People will react bewildered, and you will feel very uneasy.
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If your native language is Spanish, try a Cuban accent; or a Quebec accent for French.
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Therefore, most of us feel apprehensive at the beginning of learning a foreign language. However, most of us manage to settle quickly into a variety of comfort zones, which take the threat out of language learning.
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Over time, we grow to like our language learning app. Years have passed, but we still watch all those videos on YouTube with explanations or easy dialogues with subtitles. We have not made the shift to reading real books or newspaper articles, but are still using textbook material.
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Initially, we believe that with time we will lose our fear of speaking the language spontaneously. For many of us, this fear grows over time.
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The longer we stay in the comfort zone, they bigger the expectations others may have of our language skills. If people know that I am a beginner, they will have low expectations of me. However, if they know that I am already living for many years in this country, and that I have started to learn the language several years ago, they may be less forgiving.
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And, the more we consume easy material, the more we create an artificial contrast with “real-life material”. We make it sound more difficult than it really is.
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In my German courses at beginner or intermediate levels, I regularly make the following experiment.
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I ask participants what would happen if they had to read an article in a serious German newspaper. How many of the words in the text would be unknown to them?
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Then we select a random article and all participants have to underline all the words they do not know.
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After that we count the number of words for everybody and calculate the percentage of unknown to total words. Every time there is a big discrepancy between the students’ predictions and their actual results.
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Often, the estimation error is a difference of 50%. A typical student may estimate that he will not know 70% of the words, but he actually does not know only 20%.
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I have yet to meet a student that overestimates her vocabulary. In this type of experiment, all students have a bias against their own competence.
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The logical conclusion after the experiment would be. If I, the student, have so underestimated my abilities in reading serious newspaper articles, I really am ready to let go of easy texts. I can start reading something interesting and relevant for my job.
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If I do not understand only a small minority of words, I can translate some of them in every reading. Then, over the next weeks or months I will reduce my vocabulary gaps almost completely.
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However, this is not what happens.
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Few students show visible (or audible) signs of enthusiasm, relief or an aha-moment. On the contrary, most of them try to downplay what has happened.
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The experiment, they say, may be valid for isolated words. However, “I have understood nothing of the text’s overall idea.”
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While it is certainly true that knowing a majority of isolated words does not guarantee understanding the meaning of a text, most of the participants did understand what the text was about, when pressed to answer.
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What the experiment shows is that unexpected experiences of success may be a threat to our comfort zones.
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Their positive results shocked participants insofar that now they are confronted with the perspective of letting go of all their apps and easy material.
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It is a similar apprehension as for a small child asked to let go of a pacifier, or a graduate receiving the university diploma. In both cases, some of us are afraid of losing a comfortable past.
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(This is an excerpt of my upcoming book: “B2B selling in foreign languages”)
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Want to get rid of insecurity and bad feelings regarding the foreign language(s) you have already started to learn? Want to learn a new language, without going through various levels of standard courses? You feel you are making no progress?
Go to Amazon and grab a copy of my classic book ”The GO Method – breaking barriers to language learning”.
Get the first two chapters for free by subscribing to Gerhard's weekly newsletter, with advice and resources on selling in foreign languages. Just click here.
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Gerhard Ohrband is an international trade facilitator, business psychologist and author of 9 books from Hamburg/Germany. He speaks 21 languages and assists B2B sales executives in selling successfully in foreign languages.
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