Frequent train of thought: No way, I made a grammar mistake again! -> This is so embarrassing! -> Instant blushing -> Apologising -> Reformulating -> Pronunciation error -> Correction -> Next time I'll keep my mouth shut. Confident train of thought: Ups, grammar slip-up. -> Next time I'll get it right.
Speaking several languages confidently is surely not an easy task. Our brains sometimes have temporary preferences for one language and we get stuck on a word that we simply cannot express in any other language. And, according to Murphy’s law, our conversational partner(s) do not understand the language that our brain is currently stuck on.
Or we put ourselves under the pressure of speaking the languages we can “perfectly” (does your mind talk this way, too?). So we get easily frustrated when we discover that we have just made a “big” mistake and this affects the quality of the rest of our discourse. Thus we start making more and more mistakes, as our mind cannot stop ranting about the “silly” error we made in the first place.
In these moments we probably forget about the other languages that we can speak (apart from the one we’re currently using) and we keep frustrating ourselves that we don’t manage to maintain them all at the same level of fluency.
Furthermore, we may think that others expect proficiency from each language we can speak and that the mistakes we make are as visible to them as they are to us. Or that they can only hear our foreign accent when we speak.
If you prefer to listen to this article instead of reading it, I recorded it for you at the end of this page.
Whenever we consider ourselves beginners in a certain language, we often postpone using it actively in conversations until we feel we are fluent “enough”.
Do any of the situations above sound familiar?
You may take a deep breath, you are not the only one experiencing them! Actually, they are part of the process of language learning for most of the multilinguals I know. As frequently as they come up, as harmful they are for our confidence.
Let’s see how it would be like without them:
- Our mind stops criticising us as we speak (literally as we speak!).
- We appreciate more the efforts we’ve made in learning the language and getting to the stage where we are now.
- By assessing our language level objectively, we know what we need to improve and we can focus only on correcting or avoiding a certain type of mistake until we no longer do it.
- We accept our current foreign accent and work on it patiently at the same time.
More benefits?
The low voice, the stammering, repeating the same phrases only to avoid making mistakes in using new ones – forget about them! Our discourse becomes more fluent.
We no longer hesitate in adding a language to our CV and we can assess our level in this language without feeling sorry that uff, we’re (still) “just” beginners. After all, it’s one level higher than no language knowledge, right?
We can present our language portfolio to others in a convincing manner. We are now aware of our level in each language, we remember how we used one language to learn the next one better, so we can finally see our language knowledge as an asset and no longer just a part of our so-called “complicated” biography.
We can help others improve their language knowledge by giving them constructive feedback and advice on how to patiently increase their level. Our children, our adult family members and friends, they all need a helping hand here!
Last, but not least, we finally feel free! Free from social constraints, from internal and external expectations, from constantly beating ourselves up about not getting where we should be.
Living multilingually is not easy-peasy, I know. But it can be much easier if we learn to appreciate it and feel good about it.
Yours confidently,
Corina