Episode summary
Get out of your comfort zone, talk about something new, make a fool of yourself, and reach fluency one mistake at a time.
T.E.A. Time is hosted by English teacher Tayvin Bayless. Read the full transcript.
Hey there, and welcome to T.E.A. Time with Tayvin Bayless. In this episode, I will talk about the importance of making mistakes and share a couple of examples from my own language learning experience. I know personally how embarrassing it can be to say something incorrectly in a foreign language. Many people are so afraid to sound stupid or say something offensive that they choose not to speak at all. I can promise you that it is rarely as bad as you imagine and may even have some unexpected benefits!
So, why should we make mistakes? The first reason is that it means we are trying something out of our comfort zone. Maybe we are talking about a topic that we have never talked about before, or we are trying to use a new vocabulary word or a complex grammar structure. When we talk about new things in a foreign language, it is inevitable that we will make some mistakes. That’s okay. Do it anyway! Because, if we don’t, then we will never learn to talk about it comfortably in the future.
When we were little children we had to learn our first language. We were not born with the ability to speak in perfectly formed sentences. We spoke in broken sentences, incorrect grammar, and used the wrong words for things every day. But every day we learned until eventually, we could communicate just as well as everyone else! Learning a foreign language effectively should be exactly the same.
The second reason you should make mistakes may be a bit hard to believe. Feeling embarrassed is a really good thing! Now hold on. I know what you might be thinking. “Tayvin, that’s crazy! Embarrassment is, like, one of my top 5 most disliked feelings, right next to anxiety and depression.” I hear you, but give me a chance to explain myself. Studies show that strong emotions create lasting memories and that negative emotions are more memorable than positive emotions. This is most likely because our brains want to remember difficult things so that we can avoid or overcome them in the future. If we apply that to language learning, having experiences in our target language that generate strong emotions will help us remember the language better. Let me give you some examples.
When I was living in Japan, I did volunteer work for a local Christian church. As part of this work, I would frequently talk with and teach people about the Bible. Sometimes these opportunities to talk would be one-on-one, and sometimes it would be in front of dozens of people. One commonality between these many experiences is that I always had to speak in Japanese. One day, I was trying to share my feelings about a few sentences that I had studied in the Bible. I wanted to say the words “It was a very spiritual experience.” but I had forgotten the word for “spiritual”. I remembered that the bible is translated as 聖書 which means holy book and holy seemed like a very similar word to spiritual. So, I told the group とっても性的な経験 がありました。This word did not mean holy, or spiritual. Instead, I had stumbled upon the Japanese word for “sexual”. I had just accidentally told a large group of people that I had a sexual experience while reading the bible.
I remember one more humorous experience that I had while talking to a friend. I’m a very tall man. I am 6 foot 5 inches tall, that’s nearly two meters, and I weighed about 120 kilograms. From my point of view, the average Japanese person is pretty small. But, while I was shopping at a local Japanese supermarket I saw two other foreigners that were even taller than me! “They’ve got to be basketball players!” I thought to myself. It was such a rare sight, I had to tell someone about it. So I tried to tell my friend about these two giants, but I confused the words 人間 and にんじん, so instead of two giant people I told him that I saw two giant carrots!
In retrospect, both of these experiences are pretty funny but at the time I was so embarrassed! An interesting result of having those experiences is that I never made the same mistake again. I will never forget the meaning of any of those words because I have a vivid memory related to using them. So, though it will not be comfortable, I think that making mistakes may be one of the best ways to improve your language skills. Get out of your comfort zone, talk about something new, make a fool of yourself, and reach fluency one mistake at a time.
If you have any questions or comments send me a message through Anchor, on Twitter, or find me on italki and I’ll try to respond as quickly as possible. If you’d like to read along with the audio of this episode, you can find a link to the transcript in the episode description or on my Twitter page. Until next time. Have a wonderful day.
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