Kristina Boiko Language Teacher

If you can describe your personality with adjectives like outgoing, talkative and extroverted, but with speaking English you get timid and look blank...this article is a "perfect match".

Decrease anxiety about learning English with mobile gaming It's normal to experience some anxiety when speaking a second language. When paired with large class sizes and limited opportunities for practice during class time, however, this anxiety can limit a person's ability to perform in the language classroom.

📕Learning in English speaking country is better than learning at home📕
The main argument is that you have more chances to speak the language. Moreover, Cambridge Dictionary even gives this example sentence for phrasal verb pick up (=learn):
"When you live in a country you soon pick up the language." 🤦🏽‍♀️ You do, when you consciously LEARN IT.
Language is not a virus though, you don't just pick it up by visiting the country and walking around the people who have it. Definitely neither you learn how to swim by taking a shower.
Let me leave here one more proof from my personal experience: having moved to Spain 4 years ago and finally speaking fluently the local language (which I have been learning with a great effort so far), I still keep meeting people without a proper level of Spanish after 20 years of their stay🤷🏾‍♀️ Towards that end, I would like to conclude that traveling abroad, seeing places and meeting people from different cultures is one of the most meaningless things a person can do. I also believe in seeking better education - abroad or at home. THERE IS A CHANCE to acquire a foreign language perfectly in your country in the Internet era, without spending additional costs on learning abroad. Don't let this myth keep you from mastering ANY language🙌🏻

You might agree that being strongly motivated helps you to learn easily. I would even say if learning is easy and fruitful.
What about the majority, which finds the process of acquisition of foreign language difficult, scary and almost painful?
You might set off for your happy journey full of strong motivation and get stuck with a feeling of frustration and desperate along the way.
Still, strong motivation is not needed, but you will need at least a bit of intention.
For those, who count themselves to a ”fail squad” and hardly find any reason or strength to start learning a language I would recommend to start with a of Mel Robbins. In case you are still not familiar with it!
For those, who identify themselves as bookworms, craving for a gasp of knowledge, start to learn SMART.

WHAT you learn = HOW you learn

Once you start reaping your harvest by using the appropriate method, setting clear goals, motivation improves.

Share your goals and reasons for learning a language in the comments.

Everybody approaches foreign language acquisition with the mindset of something
being 😤 difficult or 😁easy
- this word is easy and that word is difficult;
- this grammar is difficult and that one is easy.
We all have the Difficult vs Easy mentality and dualistic approach to learning and it DOESN'T HELP
If you see a legal document written in your Native language you will most likely label it as being difficult. But to a lawyer, legal documents fall into the easy category.
What am I trying to say?
❌STOP calling words and grammar Easy or Difficult
❌STOP fitting everything into those two categories.
Instead, use frequent (=common) vs uncommon (=rare)
- Using the Difficult vs Easy categories is very inhibiting;
the brain shuts down making it harder to take in new information
- Using the Common vs Uncommon categories is more liberating;
the brain gets more open making it easier to absorb new information.
It is a very simple yet powerful shift in thinking about language learning
which makes it much more focused and efficient.

poster credit to Anna Parini

Myth #2 Too old to learn

There are certain age limits about learning a foreign language they say.
Children learn faster and easier they say.

Well, let me explain some details about these statements.
The truth is that past a certain age people start learning language consciously. At some point, it even has its benefits – knowing a grammatical structure gives you more opportunities than simply repeating, in comparison to what young learners tend to do.

👌Accuracy.

🙌Fluency.

🗣Pronunciation.

These are the main aspects of acquiring a foreign language.

Pronunciation is what really depends upon the age. Here we speak mostly about muscular plasticity, so crucial for achieving a native-like accent.

Language accuracy means the correct use of grammar. Correct means no mistakes.

Language fluency is reached by a fluid use of the language. Fluid means smooth and continuous.

How to prepare ourselves for the future world.

John Dewey: 'We must prepare our students...for their world.' "The world is moving at a tremendous rate. We must prepare our children not for the world of the past...but for their world--the world of the future."

There are perceptions that native speakers of English make better English language teachers.

Myth #1 lies in the equality sign that the majority of learners use to place between these two terms.

While it is beyond the scope of this short post to fully debunk all the above, I would like to briefly outline here why these arguments are flawed.

Knowing something isn’t equal to Teaching the same thing.

🔸 'All sorts of people are fluent, but only a tiny proportion of them are sufficiently aware of the structure of the language that they know how to teach it.' 🔸
David Crystal, British linguist.

Ex. Being a brilliant musician doesn’t make you an exceptional music teacher

Ex. Being an honorable sportsman not necessarily lead to a career of a first-rate coach.

Here are a few more analogies, which come up to my mind:
🎶When you look at a musical score you see scribble, but a composer hears music in perfect harmony.
👑The same happens when you look at a chess board –you might see chaos, but to a grand-master, it is all patterns, right moves needed to succeed in the game.

The most important thing is not whether the teacher is a native speaker or not, but rather if they possess all important teaching skills. The job of a good teacher is not to give you the next “best move” but to teach you to see those patterns and possible combinations by yourself.

"Marek Kiczkowiak, the winner of the TeachingEnglish blog award, argues that those perceptions need to be changed.

1. Students prefer NESTs(Native English Speaking Teachers)
2. Students need NESTs to learn ‘good’ English
3. Students need NESTs to understand ‘the culture’
4. NESTs are better for public relations

1: The first argument gets repeated like a mantra and has become so deeply ingrained that few attempts to question its validity. Yet, I have never seen a single study that would give it even the slightest backing. On the other hand, I have seen many which confirm that students value traits which have nothing to do with 'nativeness', such as being respectful, a good communicator, helpful, well prepared, organized, clear-voiced, and hard working. Other studies show that students do not have a clear preference for either group. It seems then that it is the recruiters, not the students, who want native speakers.

2: On the second point, I believe it's a myth that only NESTs can provide a good language model. What I find troubling is that many in the profession assume language proficiency to be tantamount to being a good teacher, trivializing many other important factors such as experience, qualifications, and personality. While proficiency might be a necessity – and schools should ensure that both the prospective native and non–native teachers can provide a clear and intelligible language model – proficiency by itself should not be treated as the deciding factor that makes or breaks a teacher.

3: As for the third argument, most people will agree that language and culture are inextricably connected. But does a ‘native English speaker culture’ exist? I dare say it doesn’t. After all, English is an official language in more than 60 sovereign states. English is not owned by the English or the Americans, even if it's convenient to think so.

4: Finally, the almighty and ‘untouchable’ market demand. Show me the evidence, I say. Until then, I maintain that a much better marketing strategy is to hire the best teachers, chosen carefully based on qualifications, experience, and demonstrable language proficiency, rather than on their mother tongue. We are not slaves of the market. We can influence and shape it.
As Henry Ford once said: 'If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have told me: faster horses'.

Perhaps most significant of all, being a Non-native speaking teacher might actually give you certain advantages as a teacher.
✅You can better anticipate students’ problems,
✅Serve as a successful learning model,
✅Understand how the learners feel.

Both groups can make equally good or bad teachers. It’s all down to the factors: personal traits, qualifications, experience, and demonstrable language proficiency.

💡Your mother tongue, place of birth, sexual orientation, height, gender or skin color are all equally irrelevant.

You would agree with the statement that we are all surrounded by a "tricky" reality of our brain, which is full of illusions. They can be good- to protect us from danger, pain, stress etc. But sometimes they play a bad joke. In order to avoid producing more and more useless ghosts, let's clear up the most common myths about learning a Second Language:

Myth #1 Native speaker = best teacher

Myth #2 Too old to learn

Myth #3 Strong Motivation Needed

Myth #4 Go abroad

Myth #5 Mistakes are OK

Myth #6 Understanding is everything

Myth #7 Talent is important

Myth #8 Practice makes perfect

In the next publications, I would try to debunk all of them in order to get some free space for your real aspiration about learning languages!

🖍Feel free to propose any other myths in the comments. I am sure there are many more of them, keeping you away from efficient learning.

Speaking a second language shows benefits in Alzheimer’s.

👩🏼‍🔬Researchers in Italy have studied bilingual people with mild Alzheimer’s to understand how speaking two languages daily throughout life could be beneficial by increasing their so-called ‘cognitive reserve’:
💡Although the bilingual individuals were on average older and had fewer years of education, they performed better on the memory and thinking tests
💡it was found that more energy was used in other brain regions in the volunteers who were bilingual, and that these people also had greater brain metabolic connectivity 💡The brain of bilinguals is more resilient to the damage

Would you not wait and start training your brain now?