People Wasting Time in Language Class (Photo by Ilya Sonin on Unsplash)
As I don’t tire of saying: People don’t learn languages in classrooms. If you ask me, “Pray tell, which language class should I take?” I’ll invariably say, “None.” “Alright, I know you’re not a great admirer of language classes, but which one is the best, which one is the most useful?”
– “The one you don’t take.”
You notice that in these fake conversations I tend to be rather snarky. Nonetheless, it’s true. Today I would like to discuss one major reason why language classes also don’t work. Also? Yes. We have discussed many a time why they are inefficient and illogical, costly and counterproductive. There is another reason they don’t work. That one is psychological in nature.
Why Language Classes Don’t Work
What language teachers know – you can ask any of them, really – is that usually the people coming to their classes aren’t the most accomplished language learners. In fact, they tend to be the ones that haven’t succeeded in learning any languages, and chances are, despite the best efforts of the teacher, they won’t really learn this one either.
Now, if you are one of those people who take language classes, you could make sure that you will be in the small minority of learners who actually succeed in learning the language by keeping one very important truth in mind: You are responsible for your own language learning. You; not the teacher, not the government, not the course-book producer: You and only you.
Holy Trinity of Language Learning – Mindset
As I said here among other places, the first constituent part of the Holy Trinity of Language Learning, namely motivation, really refers to having the right mindset. You learn by doing the right things, i.e., reading and listening, and doing them attentively and enough. Motivation, the right-mindset, however, is the sine qua non, the necessary condition, without which no serious (let alone efficient) learning can take place.
When people talk about this aspect, they often say that we must be open towards the new language and the adjacent culture. Quite right. If you despise the bloody frogs, hate baguette, and will never ever go to France; well, you’re not going to learn French. That’s all true, good and important.
However, there’s another part to it that is even more important. You are the learner; it is you who is supposed to learn the language. Nobody can actually teach it to you. You have to do the work. You are responsible for your own learning.
Paradox: Language Teachers Can’t Actually Teach Us
To get back to the classes, let us see what the problem there is concerning this matter. Yes, they are inefficient; yes, they are often based on wrong principles. Also, the learner expects the teacher to actually teach. You come there, pay good money, or else have somebody pay him good money, and then you expect to be taught. That’s not how it works.
No matter how much money you pay, you must get used to the language by spending enough meaningful time with it. You can’t be taught a language.
In an ideal situation people wouldn’t go to classes at all. The second best situation would be this: People went to classes for motivation and some guidance, for tutelage and comradeship – but they would do all of their learning at home. Today, people expect to learn in class. They come there, they maybe even do some homework, and then they expect to learn the language in class.
That can’t possibly work. You need 100s, in the most difficult (read: linguistically distant) languages even over 1,000 hours of meaningful time with the language to reach a high level of fluency and proficiency. Not only can’t you get these sorts of hours in language classes – at least not in a reasonable time-frame and without mortgaging your house. Most of the time spent in class isn’t meaningful to begin with.
Take Charge of Your Learning and Don’t Waste Time in Language Class
Instead of being exposed to thousands and thousands of words by reading and listening, learners in class tend to read short, artificial texts, if any, and spend most of their time on working on rules – in one way or another. That might involve doing exercises, or writing short texts using a certain tense etc.
When it comes to speaking, you will be forced to speak too early, and everybody else in the room (sometimes even including the teacher) is actually bad at speaking the language. This way, you will waste time and nerves speaking when you don’t have anything to say yet. Worse, you will listen to your peers mangling the language, with bad accents, unnatural phrases and many, many mistakes.
This way, you might get most of your input from your fellow learners and short, boring, artificial learner content. This is no way to learn a language. On the face of it, it’s absurd. (To be fair: The vast majority of classes are the way I describe them, but there are exceptions.)
So, if, for some reason, you still choose to attend a language class, please keep in mind that your teacher can’t possibly teach you the language. You have to do the learning or acquiring. You have to listen and read, attentively, and for a long time. Eventually, you have to speak – and also a lot. Don’t waste time.
Do that and you will learn. Language learning is simple but not easy. It could be so much easier, however, if everybody remembered this obvious truth: We all are responsible for our learning ourselves.