Making mistakes is the key to learning. As long as you aren't driving or texting while you are learning! (NOTE: Do not drive and learn. Keep your mind focused and free.)
When your brain (in cooperation with hands or fingers and your eyes) makes a mistake, it is for your good. It now becomes a challenging problem to solve. I tend to stop and stare at my paper or interface and ask, "Now, why did I just do that?"
Why did I make the same mistake for the umpteenth time?
If you have ever been in school, and a teacher handed papers back, you'll know how this feels. Someone next to you got that problem, but you didn't. It was fascinating to me why I never understood at the time, but days later, it was so clear. Your brain starts to give you clues. Now, how did that happen? How did I get so stumped? What happened to me? I tried very hard at studying and learning this subject matter.
If you're making mistakes in Spanish, stop and ask. Am I going to give up? Am I not cut out for this? Well, I am telling you this page and blog (blog supplement) is perfect for you. THE MORE MISTAKES you make, the MORE YOU LEARN!
Nobody gets this. Sales people, marketers, or other tutors do not get this! They sell everything to you in a super - fast speed, and say you will improve faster than with this person or that person, this company or that company. WHAT THEY FAIL TO SEE is that each company or person EXISTS. They exist to SERVE a particular group or component, and so hurrying learning without MAKING MISTAKES IS WHAT SLOWS DOWN THE LEARNING PROCESS. Men are used to this, more than women.
I am the kind of person that wants to move at a pace with individuals at my level. The more mistakes or errors a class makes or an individual makes is WHAT clues me into WHERE OR WHEN they became stymied in the learning process. ROTE TEACHING and demanding effort is NIL when it comes to self - study or a correspondence process. WE LEARN BEST when We move along our own pace and not at a PACE of a MARKETER or a PACKAGE. WHEN YOU DECIDE TO BUY THOSE MATERIALS, set aside a TIME TO LEARN and to WORK WITH THEM. Do not RUSH THROUGH MATERIALS!
I'll give you an example. Once at the library, I saw a method of learning language ORALLY. I thought to myself, this might be the way to get that language to digest within my system. INSTEAD, it slowed me down and I felt PETRIFIED about listening to the CDs. WHAT HAPPENED is that my brain said to me. THEY ARE TALKING TOO FAST. THEY ARE NOT ALLOWING ME TO SEE THE WORDS. THEY ARE NOT GIVING ME TIME TO SEE THE WORD, and the PRONUNCIATION. IT FEELS like a guy trying to teach me or RUSHING ME TO DRIVE on an expressway WHEN I WOULD PREFER DRIVING in my own backyard.
I allowed the CDS to stay at my place, even renewed them. STILL NOTHING!
Years later, I found similar materials, but this time, there were books and tapes together. I was able to follow along, view the words, their spelling and placement, and assemble the parts that way. The problem with that language I chose was that the sounds of the words seemed very far away. I could not relate to them. Even in print, the words, their sounds, and spelling had no meaning to me. The spelling had nothing to do with the pronunciation. I worked slowly instead on a book with a pronunciation guide. In this manner, I was able to figure out why the words were slurred and did not match the spelling from left to right.
You may guess which language I was trying to teach myself from the clues. If not, that's okay. English may feel this way to foreign students, and so I am aware of the mental confusion from day one. In fact, I decided to undertake learning of that language, because I wanted to know what primary learners or foreign students went through WHEN confronted by something so strange to them. Take the word, "enough" or the word, "cough." How would you explain that to students whose teachers demanded effort and hard work? How would you explain that to students whose teachers demanded perfect scores and rushed through all activities, the only benefit being they improved them in the fastest time and covered more ground in that instance?
Think about this as a student in a class. Are you at a good match with the instructor or coaches? If they rush you, do you learn? Do you need pressure to learn? Be rushed more? Be pressured more? A heavier hand?
What if you never made a mistake, because they were that good? Then what? What if they timed you in speed and speediness of thought and activity? Is that what the course was for in the long run? Check to see whose method is faster?
That sounds like sales and marketing, not learning at first.
Be careful of that if someone decides to try a product on you without figuring out who you are first, your level, and if you can afford a package? Well, if you like marketed products, there are many. Go there first! Try them out.
I am very curious, for instance, about "Rosetta Stone." I still remember going to Downtown Chicago to teach Spanish to an individual, and he had Rosetta Stone on his desk. He allowed me to view some tracks. It was fascinating! The problem was that while I thought We were making headway, someone had started to tutor him jointly, someone that I once saw in my inbox of my computer.
WHAT A SMALL WORLD!
I enjoy making mistakes by myself. I enjoy that process. I gage my progress that way. As I said, as long as no one else is copying you while you make mistakes, or if you aren't texting or driving while learning, life can be very grand!
I decided to resurrect this self - study idea, because I found other tutors were rushing my clients. I still don't know how they did this, but yes, they got them to fly all over the world, very soon, very fast, and very proficient so that they were able to work in other countries and use their businesses outside the states. That wasn't what I wanted to do with my students.
Anyway, I think effort and speed are good for certain methods or personalities, but you never get to read between the lines, and decide why the language appealed to you in the first place. Did you really want to learn it? Why did you want to learn it? Did you achieve your objectives by using that method or tool for learning? You have to match those things with your personal learning levels.
So, if you do like making mistakes and learning from them, join the club! Learn at your pace, and make more so you can wonder what an extraordinary thinker you are. You are different from your classmates. You fit in. You stumbled at the right places, and now, you understand why others do also.
Language learning places you in an empathetic construct next to a person. You begin to see why people that are native speakers or are of that homeland stumble and make errors as well. It gives you peace in a space with a stranger. You no longer view them as a competitor. You can learn something in a space of time that they may not have to learn, but you see them for who they are instead of a person that rushed through all of life and got to a place where they never were supposed to be, meaning that wasn't their original objective in a way.
Language learning is fun! It allows you to identify with others and their mistakes in life. For example, have you ever seen a person speed through life while driving a car? They never slow, pause or stop. IMAGINE their homeland without stop signs, traffic signals, and the fact that they have blinders on when they come to the states. They have selective vision? They just don't see signs and symbols on the road. Would you report them if they were a stranger? Would you report them if they were driving erratically? WHAT IF they just didn't know they had to stop or slow down for speed limits? What would you do if they spoke their own languages but could not read English, and they were driving all over the world, with accident - prone streaks and tendencies?
Would you think they were doing this on purpose? Language slows us down to think, plan, engage with others in a similar setting. What if all people could drive that way? Take RULES OF THE ROAD and SIGNS AND SYMBOLS along with practice seriously?
There would be fewer mistakes, and the mistakes they learned from would be through practice, and not DRIVING FASTER at an earlier age. IT WOULD be their corrective measures. Driving would be as breathing is, natural and graceful, timed to your own needs and gaged well according to others you see on a given plane in time.
Think in English going to Spanish in America first. Try to, if you are a Spanish speaker first. Try to do both, if you're good at both at once. If you're an English speaker, you'll benefit from making mistakes in Spanish. Remember that! If you're a Spanish speaker and you want to teach students the art of conversation and colloquialism, then bravo for you. Devise your tools and use your own time and leisure to help people.
This site is primarily for English speakers that wish to go their own pace with Spanish, make mistakes, and learn from them. Do not RUSH as on a road. Do not ELEVATE YOUR SPEED if you are worried about securing positions in another country. GO WHERE your pace is. Select instructors that fit your pace and learning needs. If you are a Spanish speaker and you're trying to learn English here or learning Spanish, contact me today at writeinspire@yahoo.com (Ask for Ms.A!)
We can tailor something for you!
*****Don't forget to write in your journals and keep them dated! You can visually ascertain your level that way as time goes by.
I'm glad you stumbled upon my page today!
