Skip to main content

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. 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is going on with the 把 structure ?

The 把 structure The reason behind why you need he 把 structure The 把 structure is mostly used to add emphasis, the emphasis is added in the verb/result as it changes their usual position. This structure can be quite confusing, because in most western languages we don't have a structure that is remotely similar, so there is not a direct translation.  Even though this structure is quite hard, it's also really important, in my opinion it is fundamental. In addition, you will encounter this structure early on in your language journey. In my case I learned this structure in the GoChinese 400, and I'm also I'm pretty sure it's part of the HSK 3 coursework. What is the infamous 把 structure?  This structure is quite strict, from what I have learned up to now, the 把 structure never changes. It always follows its original pattern, which is : Subject+把+Object+Verb+ Result   The main uses of the 把 structure: 1)To emphasize that an action has finished Subject+把+Object+Verb+好了/忘了 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

有面子什麼意思?

 The meaning of "Have face"  You probably have heard the question 你有沒有面子? or some variation of it. This expression is really popular, and it's often used in TV shows, videos, movies, etc. The direct translations of 面子 is face, but in most cases that's not the meaning that they are referring to. In most cases this expression refers to someone's reputation, honor or pride. But depending on the situation, the meaning can slightly change.  Common Phrases  To care about your reputation / have a reputation   - 有面子 : To have a reputation. This reputation has been giving to you because of the power you hold or your place in society.  -面子很大 : To be well respected by people (have a big reputation). Usually this expression refers to someone that's famous, rich or simply someone that's perceived positively by people. -愛面子 ： Someone who really cares about their reputation and they are constantly trying to protect it.  -要面子 : Someone who is constantly protecting th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Study Chinese by using comics, novels, etc.

How to choose the perfect novel or comic to learn chinese  Where to buy Chinese books  To find books written in Chinese can be a bit complicated, there are a lot of websites that are usually recommended, for example: books.Taiwan, book depository, purple culture, cypress books and more;   In my case, I opted for another option because I tried buying from books.Taiwan but for a strange reason the order never went through, I think the problem was that all of the cards I tried to pay with were from Mexican banks, so I decided to buy them from Amazon, but as you can imagine there's not a lot of variety, additionally Chinese novels, comics, etc. are hard to find in that platform, because a lot of them don't appear if you look up their title in Chinese, in my experience the way I found the most books, was by searching: the title of the book (Chinese edition), and also by searching for the author instead of the book, another thing that's important to mention is that I used the U...
Post a Comment
Read more