In this post I’ll discuss different phases that I’ve noticed English learners go through when they start speaking English. They are based on my personal experience and observation. So, if you are learning English, but feel stuck and shy away from speaking with native speakers, this read is for you. Understanding where you are in your learning process will help you to get unstuck and move on.
The silent phase
The first phase is the silent phase. When you first start learning English, you listen, but don’t speak because you still don’t have the knowledge to produce your own phrases and sentences. In this phase you just listen, memorize vocabulary, and try to make sense of new grammatical structures. This is absolutely normal and moving forward is impossible without going through this phase.
But the problem is that some people get stuck in the silent phase for too long while creating the illusion that they are learning. For example, if you only listen to podcasts and watch movies, but you don’t make any effort to produce your own sentences, you might have become a passive consumer of the language. The fact that you understand the content you hear is great, but now you are ready to move on to the next phase, when you start to speak and make mistakes.
The making-mistakes phase
The making-lots-of-mistakes phase is terrifying to most English learners. Being in this phase is frustrating because you know you have spent a lot of time memorizing words and learning grammar, but when you start speaking, all of a sudden, your brain doesn’t comply. You don’t remember the words you want to use and you make basic grammar mistakes. Many people find this jarring and they enter the next phase, which I call the phobia phase.
The phobia phase
The phobia phase is when we are so afraid of making mistakes that we prefer to stay silent. In a way, we regress back to the phase when we actually knew less English. The thing is that when we start learning a foreign language later in life, we feel the urge to be as eloquent in this language as we are in our native one. As adults, we have already built a mental identity of ourselves as fluent, intelligent people and this mental self-image is based on how we communicate in our native tongue.
The discrepancy between our communication skills in our native language and our second language creates an alternate identity that, in our mind, is less capable of expressing thoughts, complex ideas, and feelings. And to avoid dealing with and accepting this new identity, we choose to stop speaking because if we don’t speak, we don’t make mistakes. And if we don’t make mistakes, we mentally go back to our “original” capable identity that we have already built based on how we communicate in our native language.
The thing is, that it takes a long time to reach a near-native fluency. But when we stop speaking, we subconsciously start believing that we are not capable of communicating in our second language. This is detrimental because our subconscious mind now starts building a new self-image – one that is unsure and hesitant. And then we enter the complaining phase.
The complaining phase
In this phase, we complain how hard English is, how we’ve been learning it for such a long time, but we still make mistakes, how we can’t remember words, how we still make grammar mistakes, how we always get stuck when we want to express a certain thought, and so on. These thoughts eventually cement our new negative self-image of being unable to communicate well in another language. We become fearful and we convince ourselves that other people judge us based on our limited language skills.
I’ve met many people who are stuck in this phase. I myself spent a long time here, trust me. It’s not a conducive attitude. The most important thing to realize here is that you are not afraid of what others are going to think about you. You are afraid of what YOU are going to think about yourself. When you make mistakes, you keep disappointing yourself because you believe that you have to be perfect.
The truth is that once we’ve been stuck in this phase for a while, it’s hard to get unstuck and move on. Some people will advise you to just have positive thoughts. But the thing is that positive thoughts are not going to help you if you have a negative self-image.
Importance of the positive self-image
Some time ago, I ran into the quote:
You can never outperform your own self-image.
It’s by Maxwell Maltz, an American cosmetic surgeon and author of Psycho-Cybernetics, which was a system of ideas that he claimed could improve one’s self-image leading to a more successful and fulfilling life. In a nutshell, he argued that people must have an accurate and positive view of themselves before setting goals. If they fail to do that, they will always be stuck in the pattern of their limiting beliefs. According to him, if your self-image is unhealthy, all of your efforts to achieve something will fail.
But how can you build an accurate and positive self-image? Start with little steps and with something that you know for sure that it’s true and not just your opinion. For example, instead of saying, I always get stuck in English, you can say, I can speak some English. Instead of saying, Grammar is hard and I always make mistakes, say, I know some grammar, but some aspects are still unclear to me and I have to spend a little more time practicing these particular aspects. Identify exactly what you can do and what you still have to work on.
If you manage to do this, you will see some improvement. And when you see improvement, the positive thoughts will automatically follow.
So, to wrap it up, don’t allow yourself to get stuck in your own pity party for too long. I know it’s tempting, but it’s not gonna help you.
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Let me know in the comments below if you have ever felt stuck in English. What did you do to keep going? Or maybe you still feel stuck? Please do share.
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