S6E28: What secret rules are creeping into your studies?

Full transcript:

Good morning, happy Wednesday and welcome to the Language Confidence Project, the daily dose of language courage for people who love languages and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway. And today, I want to ask you something that I don’t think we talk about enough in the language learning world, which is, what secret rules are creeping into your studies?

When I speak or write, I try my absolute hardest not to let sentences accidently rhyme. When I’m writing, I also do my utmost to make sure that I never repeat the same word on the line directly below it, which is surprisingly common with high-frequency words like “and” or prepositions or whatever, to the point where if that’s going to happen, I’ll cross out the word and write it again next to it. And I think a lot of us have these little personal policies, things like “if you’re turning up the volume on the TV it has to be in increments of 5 or 0”.

But these sorts of personal rules can creep into our language learning too. And some of them are just little things, the way we like things done. They don’t do any harm, they don’t take up much time, and they’re just little things that we consider part of makes us, us. Some of them, though, can actually get in the way.

In short, it doesn’t take a lot for those little quirks and foibles and preferneces that we have to make the leap into the territory of self-limiting beliefs.

I come from a background where nobody, ever, writes in books. It was considered a truly terrible act to, as they put it, deface a book with underlines or highlights or thoughts you had while you were reading them. I used to think the same. I grew up that way, and I never really questioned it. But now, I have questioned it. And now, I buy my own books, and every single one of the books that I’ve read on my shelf has all kinds of markings in it, because I decided that, on balance, at the stage of life I’m at now, books are more useful to Present Me when I can fully interact with them, and more useful to Future Me when she can see what her previous self found the most important. It’s not that the first rule was stupid. It’s just that my needs have changed.

And equally, have you ever told yourself that it’s not worth picking up your book unless you have time to read the whole chapter? Because, our personal policy is that books should be read one chapter at a time? Or that it’s only worth starting an exercise if you know you have time to finish the whole thing? How about that it’s not studying if you don’t write anything down?

So it really is worth being aware of what kinds of personal rules and policies are underpinning your studies, and examining them from time to time. What unwritten rules are you following, and are you happy for them to stay? Are they making things easier or harder for you? Are they adding any layers of guilt or obligation that maybe don’t need to be there?

Good luck today language learners, and I’ll see you tomorrow!