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How to overcome frustration when learning another language

Learning a new language 

Learning a new language is amazing, it will give you a lot of new opportunities, a new perspective and a new hobby, the best part is that there are so many languages that you can choose from, and you can learn as many languages as you want to, but as in every beautiful story you will encounter some problems, but this post is here to help you move past them.

A little background on my language journey 

My mother tongue is Spanish, but ever since I was little I was taught English and to be honest I never realized how much I was improving as time passed, then a little more than two years ago I started to learn Chinese, it was difficult for a while, but I overcame all of my difficulties and that was the first language in which I saw my progress, but when I got to a point where I was comfortable with my Chinese I decided to learn a new language: Korean and this is where I really started to struggle. 

But why did this happened ?

When I started to learn Korean I was so excited, and you could say I was high on the language everything was new and exciting, but after some months I couldn't help to compare my Chinese progress with my Korean progress I kept feeling like maybe I just wasn't good at Korean, because every time I didn't know something my brain kept saying, "but I can say this in Chinese why is it so hard to do it in Korean?" sometimes I felt that my progress was just too slow because I was once again comparing, and I started to feel a bit frustrated with the Korean language. 


How to overcome frustration 

The first thing I want you to know is that you are not alone, sometimes we tend to only show our progress and how much we like the languages that we are studying, but everyone feels frustrated and burnout in a certain moment.

To put an end to the frustration, you have to get to the root of your problem, and for this you can ask yourself the following questions: 

1) Is this language harder, or did I just forget how hard it was to learn the first one?
2) Is my progress slow, or am I just comparing the progress of two completely different languages?
3)  Do I really suck at this language, or am I comparing my progress to a language that I have been learning for a longer time?
4) Am I using the right resources? 
5) Am I dedicating enough time to this other language? 
6) Which part of the language I find the hardest? And how can I work on that?

After you get to the root of your frustration you will be able to surpass it, and understand that maybe your progress is not at the rate you expected it to be, but every single small victory will lead you to fluency. 
You are completely able to learn whatever language you want to, it will take time, and a lot of dedication, but it's going to be worth it, and whenever you are doubting yourself just know that we are all in this road together. 

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