The 3 Biggest Language Learning Myths

(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi and welcome to The 3 English Experts. I'm Birgit. I'm Dave. And I'm Rebecca. And welcome to this episode. 3 English Experts is your English podcast to help you speak better English and create a positive and happy mindset for your English learning journey. Hi everyone and welcome to another episode. And today we'd like to talk about three of the biggest myths about language learning generally. And we're all going to cover our sort of areas of expertise. In a second, Rebecca is going to kick off with a sort of a mindset myth. I'm going to follow on with a communication style topic. And then Birgit, of course, is going to go towards the more grammar teaching that kind of topic as well. So, if we move on, first of all, with Rebecca. Rebecca, kick us off. Set one, please. Okay. Yes. Hello, everybody. So, I'm going to kick off with, I think it's one of the biggest myths that we hear. And I think we all as trainers have heard this one before. Language learners, successful language learners have a talent, a special talent. So, we hear this all the time, either from a positive or negative. Oh, I was told in school, I didn't have a talent for languages. And other kids were told, oh, she had a talent for English, let's say, or a talent for a foreign language. So, it comes from school. Often it starts at school when people are good at something. Maybe they're good at maths or languages or sport or whatever it is. This is not just related to language learning. Or they're told by their parents, oh, you're so talented at this particular thing. I think this myth also comes from results. For example, people say to me, oh, wow, you speak amazing German or, oh, your Spanish is good. You must be so talented at languages. And I always think, well, you didn't see all the hours of language learning that went into that. You know, it wasn't a magical hill that I took and suddenly I was able to speak Spanish. I spent a long time learning and doing vocabulary and practising. So, I think this myth comes from different places. It's either school or your parents, maybe, or just people don't see what goes on behind and they just assume, oh, we've got a talent, so it's easy for you. I heard someone say to me that, oh, well, you're going to learn Japanese and so it's going to be so easy for you because you have a talent and it's not easy at all. So, what is the problem with this? The danger of this is it creates what we call a fixed mindset. So, people believe either on the positive way, I have a talent, I don't need to try anymore or the negative way, I don't have a talent, therefore, I might as well give up. There's no way I'm ever going to learn something because I have been told I cannot do it because I don't have a talent. So, you're creating this fixed mindset, which is quite dangerous. There's a very nice book. I've got it here on my desk to remind me by Carol Dweck, very famous psychologist from Harvard, I think. And the book is called Mindset. It's a very popular best-selling book, but she talks about growth mindset, how when we're told as children, especially as children, you have a talent, sometimes they stop trying because you should really reward effort. Well, you did well, well done for doing well in your test because you tried really hard, you did learn or you did something rather than just saying, oh, you have such a talent. And she talks about the danger of this, that if you say someone has a talent, they quite often then can develop imposter syndrome because then they become afraid of making a mistake. Oh, well, I have a talent. What if I make a mistake? That means maybe I'm not talented. Maybe it's an imposter situation. So, then they start to avoid. This happens in all kinds of things in sport, music, languages, school, all kinds of things. And for the other kids, when you're stuck in this fixed mindset, then perhaps they just avoid doing anything altogether. And there's been lots of studies that show that it's actually effort and persistence that produces results. There is sometimes a bit of time. I'm not saying people don't have any kind of talent. We have an affinity, perhaps, to be good. Maybe you have a really good memory. For language learning, it's good to have a good memory or have a good system of learning or maybe a good ear, for example. You can have an affinity, but affinity will only take you so far. It's effort that brings you success. Which brings me to my second book that I'm going to recommend, which is a book called Grit by Angela Duckworth, another psychologist, also a New York Times bestseller, very popular book. And she talks about how it's perseverance, it's grit, it's resilience that gets people success, that is the success of people rather than this magical talent. So, she talks about, for example, a military academy where it's very, very difficult to get into this academy in the States. And all of the candidates at the beginning are considered to have great talent, but it's the six-week boot camp or whatever it is that separates the ones who are going to succeed. They're all talented. They all have great physical ability and the mental ability, but it's all about, have they got the resilience? Have they got the perseverance? Are they going to continue? What can you do about this if you're stuck in this kind of mindset? Action builds confidence. Confidence, again, is not something that you're just born with. Small steps, taking action can build confidence. It could be the smallest thing that's like start learning your vocabulary, start listening to a podcast, start watching a series, join a conversation class, get going with your learning, join an online course, whatever it is. And these small steps are effort and they will, over time, bring confidence. Do we have any thoughts on that, Joyce? You're also a language learner. It's big, it's got a hand up. I do. Hello, everybody. Yes. Yeah, very good points, Rebecca. Thanks for sharing this with us, the effort and persistence. And when I hear this, you talk about how people are so stuck in their mindset because that's learned early on. I think we're in our school system, which dates back to, I don't know, mid 1950 or something, or even longer. We're so used to, it's either or we get marks and then we have a label and people stick to that. You said that before. I still remember somebody told him he's no good at English. Yeah, we need to learn or as a society, it would be nice to talk about this earlier on with children to open up and say it's not either this or that, and that we would be taught these important issues. That's the thought that comes up to me when I hear this. Absolutely. A lot of it does come from the school system. I think it is slowly changing. I think education systems are changing and they're realising it's also that it does come from the people around us. You know, it's a natural thing to say, oh, he's got a talent. So there's another interesting point in the book, in the grit book, I think it is where this group of experts are played to lots of piano music by a pianist, a very good pianist. And it's actually the same person doing both pieces, but they are told one is a natural talent and one got her talent through hours and hours of practise. And they're not told which one is which. And then they say which one and then they choose. They say, oh, it's the one with the natural talent sounds better. It's the same person. So they have this bias. They already have this bias. Oh, the talented person is somehow superior. And if you have to try, then you're not that good, which is makes no sense at all. Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the best football players of all time, is known for his work ethic. He doesn't just rely on talent. He spends hours and hours and hours and hours of training. If you have an affinity, it's what you do with it. And even if you don't have an affinity, a lot of persistence practise being told, oh, you're no good at English. You decide what you do with that information. Do you believe that or do you choose to do something different and go against that? Yeah. And in my case, I can strongly confirm that that was my only option to go forward then at that time when I was in England, because I had not so many options to go. Obviously, this one worked for me. So I stayed persistent at getting better at English. But this affinity is, of course, important also. But I want to say this talent. We even have a programme. Yeah. Britain has got talent. I mean, that's made bigger even. Yeah. My question is, are people in Germany, because you both lived in Germany, are people in Germany more concerned about comparing each other to others, themselves to others than in Britain or maybe in the places where you live now? Can you say something about that in general? Or is this common to this? Do we share or everybody shares this? I think everybody shares it. I mean, there does seem to be quite a perfectionist issue in Germany, a lot of perfectionists. Yeah. But I think that comparing and feeling inferior or comparing yourself to others, that's something that everybody, I think all societies have. Well, I don't know if all societies, but in my experience, it's quite common. But this perfectionist thing, I also have clients who were like really, really good at school, for example, in English. And then later on, for whatever reason, it dropped down because they didn't use it. They didn't go and work in an English speaking company. And then they come back later and they have serious imposter syndrome because they're like, why? I should be so much better than this. I was really good at it at school. But if you didn't carry on, then it's normal for it to drop down a bit. It's still there somewhere. But again, you're being pushed into this kind of fixed mindset. Well, I should be good at this because I was really good at school. And therefore, why am I bad now? And then the more these negative feelings build up, the more you avoid doing the thing that you actually want to do. My last example, I mean, a couple of examples. There's a famous guy. You've probably seen him on YouTube called Benny Lewis. He's called the Irish Polyglot. You might have come across him. And he's famous for learning, learning lots and lots of different languages. He speaks various languages. He was told at school he was terrible at languages. He was never, ever going to learn French or German or whatever it was. And he's gone on. He's a big advocate of this situation, that it's not about what you were told at school. It's about curiosity. It's about perseverance. It's about resilience. It's about motivation. It's about self-efficacy, the self-belief that you can do it. There's so many, not just like I say, not just the language world, in other areas of business, business, sport, all these kind of things. But it's effort that always in the end outweighs talent. So try not to fall into that trap. I just want to finish with a Dumbledore quote. I do love this quote. Harry Potter. So of course, Harry Potter is the ultimate. He's got a special gift. He's the chosen one. He has a talent. But if you think about the books, he still tries. Not everything comes easy to Harry. He still has to work hard. He still has to try. He still struggles. And there's a nice Dumbledore quote where he says, it's not our talents that define us, Harry. It's what we do with our, what we do with them or what we do with our potential. And I think that is so true. Anyway, getting a bit deep here. Wonderful. Yeah, very much. Thanks. So I'm going to pass over to Dave. So we've done myth one. Language talent is a special talent that we're born with. So myth number two, Dave, what are you going to share with us? Well, first of all, I think with the perfectionism in Germany, but perfectionism anywhere, but in particular in Germany, because we live there or we work there, this idea of trying to get up to native speaker level, the aim to do that, it's okay. But my myth today is native speakers are automatically the best communicators in English. I'm sure you can probably relate to this going to meetings, things like that in web calls, whatever it might be. And there may be awesome native speakers, English native speakers in your meeting. And some may be very good communicators, but often they aren't. Why? Because they speak quickly. They often use phrases, idioms, slang, colloquialisms that maybe not everybody knows, even though other people do speak good English, maybe they just don't know those. They also make cultural references that maybe is only a British thing, an American thing or something like that. Of course, they assume that everybody understands them, especially when they speak quickly. And on occasions then also dominate, especially if there are maybe a couple of native speakers in the meeting, they kind of dominate things. And you sometimes see that then the non-native speakers take more of a back seat and then listen. So I can understand why a lot of people then think, oh, it's great to be at a native speaker level because then we can be at the same level as those guys and we can join in the fun, so to speak. But I think in actual fact, the best communicators are the ones actually that adapt their English. And that's not necessarily then the natives because they don't really think about it. They have no filter. They just speak as if they're speaking with their people from home. And so whatever language, whatever accent they have, whatever language they would use, they just use it and don't think about it. So in actual fact, the best communicator are the ones who are able to adapt their language to the people that are there. So if it's an international meeting with multiculturals in the meeting, multicultural, it's always good to try to keep your English a little bit more simple, more concise, to slow down, of course, to structure your ideas better so that other people can make sense of what you're saying, not to talk a lot, to ramble, as we say in English, and to try to make sure everybody understands what's going on. That is the best communicator. So it's not actually the fluency that is key. It's the clarity. So does everybody understand what you're saying? So I think that is a really big myth that native speakers are automatically the best communicators. What do you say, guys? Agree? Absolutely agree. And I heard that a lot before from my clients that they get frustrated. They say, okay, everybody's saying they don't care that's an Irish person or Scottish. They absolutely don't care, as if everybody had to speak fluent English to be able to join these conversations. I think that's frustration, criticism coming from that. Yeah. I completely agree with that. I've seen that so many times. And I think these people who don't adapt their communication style, I think there are, like you say, two reasons. Some of them just don't realise what they're doing. So they just carry on talking as though they're talking to people in their town at home. But I see that in Germany, too. You know, there are Germans who will say, well, I can't speak Hochdeutsch, I can only speak Irish or whatever. And I think, really? Really? Most, if you're a good communicator, you can certainly adapt, you can slightly tone down your accent, you can use more simple words. Or some people, like you say, Dave, I think they use it as a dominance thing. They know this is my dominance factor. I can make you feel small because you're not the native and I'm the native. I think some people definitely do that, unfortunately, which is annoying. Or they just can't read the room. Like you say, there's no filter. They cannot read the room and see, are people following me? Or is everybody lost? And that's where, as a non-native, you can actually shine if you improve your communication skills. So maybe your English is not perfect, but using some of the skills, for example, the Dave skills you introduced with the rule of three, we had PEMS, these little strategies that you can use, make you a good communicator and make people go, oh, she was like, I understood all their points. She was very convincing. And they won't care then so much about, oh, maybe she made the odd little grammar mistake here and there, or I don't know. They don't care so much about that. They want to listen, understand, be interested in what's being said rather than this blah, blah, blah. I am a native and everybody listened to me because I know everything better. I think that's nonsense. Yeah. I mean, I've been in many situations also in trainings where there are native speakers there as well. And in actual fact, they often were the ones that were not the best communicators because of that. And I can remember a couple of presentations situations where they literally used spoke quickly. And of course, if you're giving a presentation, speaking quickly is not always the best way to do it because depending on your audience, they often used slang phrases. They often used idioms. As I said before, when I told them, listen guys here, I know you're native speakers. You're very fluent, obviously compared to some of the other people who were taking part in the course. But sometimes the audience doesn't understand you. You're speaking too fast. You've got the slang or whatever it might be. And that is then not communicative. You're not getting your message across. You tell them that. And then maybe for a few minutes, when they start the next exercise, they think about these things, but they go back into their natural way of doing things very quickly. And again, whether they don't want to change or whether they can't change, it comes back to the sort of growth mindset and the set fixed mindset that you mentioned earlier, Rebecca. But I think it is a big problem. And I think more non-natives should try to speak up in meetings and in situations and maybe even make the natives aware in a nice way by certain ways of giving feedback that they should try to adapt and be more communicative for everybody in the meetings. So I think, yeah, the takeaway is really the target shouldn't always be speak like a native. It should be, is he a good communicator? Absolutely. Speaking like a native doesn't always mean speaking better in a lot of ways. Yeah. Especially in business, I think. Yeah. That's right. Cool. Okay. It's my turn now. Your turn, Birgit. What are you going to tell us? I think this with the natives gives me a good point to start from, because what you said, Dave, about that everybody in Germany, they wanted to get to the level of how the natives speak. I think that's the ultimate goal, it seems to be, because that's what language schools very often sell also. They sell native speakers, but that might be a student, somebody who has an economy or something. That's my experience. So I'm not sort of criticising, but I'm just saying this is a selling point here in this country. And of course, me as a German native giving English lessons to people who want to improve, I feel very strong about this, that I can do it, because I think I can work as a role model. Maybe that's a very strong point here. I can show people how I got there. I have so much experience in what worked and what didn't. I can give tips, and I also can go back to when they can't express themselves clearly enough in English. Of course, they can tell me in German what they want to express. That's a great benefit. A lot of people don't feel confident enough to start with the native, because they feel inferior. As we learned, native is the ultimate, so it makes them feel intimidated. There are a lot of benefits, I think people realise, which a non-native trainer like me maybe brings in. That's my experience. And what about school? How many native teachers do we have for English? There aren't many. So that's when we start. Obviously, I must admit, when I learned the other languages like Spanish and Dutch, I reflected, of course, I do like native input, but maybe I'm a little more experienced. But it doesn't really matter. At some point, I'm sure I can add to people's knowledge, to the English learners a lot. So I wouldn't be doing this podcast if I couldn't. From a different angle, and I think this angle is beneficial, and that's why we started. Our English expert thinks that's a benefit. I have a different approach. I know why some grammatical tenses are so difficult, and you see, a native might not even have thought about it. I give you an example. I had a group of girls, I think that's 10 years ago, they came to me, they said that in a conversation group with a native American, and then I asked about the present perfect tense, and they said, no, he had told them, you can always use the ing, you can always use the ing. I mean, that was this kind of grammar teaching at that point in this conversation class. Have you heard stories like that? Or can you imagine them? Yeah. I think this is like, this is the myth number three, that the best teachers are natives, the best English teachers are native English speakers. And I think that has been busted for a while now. There's so many non-natives out there who are doing really good stuff. And it was always this ticket, or you're a native, therefore you can teach English. What? There were so many. When I first started, there were so many terrible teachers who was just this like free ticket to working because, well, I can speak English, and therefore I can teach. No, can't explain grammar, have no kind of communication skills. And I think it's the same like me. So people ask me, can you help my daughter with German or whatever? It's insecurity. I can't explain the German grammar. I mean, I would have to look at it. It's the same thing with this American guy. Maybe he couldn't explain present perfect enough to a group of three ladies in a classroom because he hadn't had to do that before. So he just said, oh, I just use that. And that's it. I mean, that's insecurity answer to me. For me, it would be when you're looking for a teacher, don't focus on the native thing, focus on, for me personally, has this person learned a foreign language? Are they a language learner? Because I feel like if you're a language learner as a teacher, you have a different view, you'd have a different approach, you have a different angle. And obviously we're all English trainers, but we all speak other languages as well. And I think that makes you stand out. You wouldn't hire a swimming teacher who knew all the theory, but had never got in the water. Well, I can do all the strokes and I know how it works, but I've never actually swam. You wouldn't do that. So why hire someone who's never learned a language themselves? It's ridiculous. That's what I mean, what I feel so strong about. It's a feeling that I'm absolutely sure I've gone through all the stages. I mean, not once, but two times. Now I'm going through it the third time. I know how it feels. I know what works. I know how persistent you need to be, especially after the first two courses. You start with learning, getting into the language. Afterwards, you need to carry on. It's hard. You're not feeling the effort. You're in the output. You're not seeing any progress. Stay at it, go on and overcome that problem. I totally agree. I think the main thing as well is for me, on the one hand, the grammar, but also knowing to a certain extent the German system. So how kids grow up in Germany, learning English, for example. So you did it in the past. Your children have done the same thing as well. So you know the German system, how it works, how they teach, what's good and what's not so good. And also yourself, you learnt our grammar from the beginning and in a systematic way. We natives, on the other hand, I mean, I can't speak for Rebecca, but in my school, I don't remember ever really talking about grammar at school. And if we did, we spoke about maybe the nouns, what a noun is, what a sentence is, a verb, very, very basic things. But things like tenses, I don't really remember talking about tenses. You don't remember tenses in school? I don't really remember doing tenses. Really? I don't really remember thinking about grammar until I started learning German. French. And French, yeah. That was when I started realising, oh, this is an adjective and this is a verb. And we did do, but not a lot. It was more like punctuation and handwriting. Listen, people out there, even outside Germany, because I'm going to publish my book, the Lino and the Big Five, in English this year. So maybe that would be interesting news. If you're British, you could learn something about the grammar. Yeah, interesting. I would have never thought that. Yeah, because it's the same to every country or something. Yeah. I mean, I remember saying to my French teacher at some stage, I said, do we have those in English? And I think it was pronouns. I don't really remember what it was. But it was. Yeah. But I remember the teacher talking about it says, excuse me, miss, do we have that in English? And the teacher probably thought, what a stupid question. But we didn't have these topics in English language. We had English language, we had English literature. In English language, yeah, we did. But again, it's always different when you teach them. It's one thing knowing something, and then it's one thing teaching something. And that's a whole different. I think properly at university trained English teacher educated in England would be wonderful as a teacher. It's great knowing everything about grammar. But a trainer or somebody in the language school who is a native who does classes or conversation, I think maybe they lack some grammar knowledge sometimes or explanation. Yeah, not necessarily. I'm not generalising, but that's my experience. It's also cultural context. We've all worked a lot with Germans or German speakers. So we know, for example, that Germans are generally a little bit more direct and find this sort of the way of the Brits communicating roundabout and a little bit this and a little bit that. Again, if you're not used to that kind of style, how can you explain that? Again, it's cultural experience. It's language learning experiences, all of that. Yeah, wonderful. Maybe a last point I want to make. First of all, the word myth doesn't come easy to me. I must say, is this correct? Myth, yes. The last one is that I'm too old. I mean, that could be another one. So I can't start learning a language or English now. That's not true. I think every age people can start. Anyone can start. And it's beneficial at any age for your brain health. Yes. Yeah, definitely. The Golden Nugget. Today's Golden Nugget is we are going to suggest doing an audit, a kind of check on where you are right now with your English. So maybe you're just starting out. Maybe you're coming back to English, you've had a break, or maybe you're still going on and you're just kind of stuck. We're suggesting do an audit. Look at all the different elements of your language journey, and decide where is the wobble point? Where is the point, the thing that's not working quite properly? So is it your mindset? Are you stuck in a fixed mindset? Is that what's holding you back? If it is, like I say, I would highly recommend the book Mindset by Dweck. Very interesting book. It's also available in other languages. Work on your mindset. Maybe that's what you need to work on to move forward. You could do that with a coach like one of us. We do coaching and things like that. It's very helpful. If you're focused on Dave Smith about you feeling intimidated by the native speakers in meetings, work on your communication skills and focus on being a good communicator rather than being a native, which you think is perfect. It's not. In a lot of cases, that's not the case. And then finally, if your method, your trainer, or the system you're using is not working, reassess that. Perhaps you need a different approach. Perhaps you need to work with a trainer like Birgit, who is German but an English expert. Or maybe you need to find a different book or a different course or a different app, whatever it is. But just do an audit and assess what is holding you back right now. What is not helping my progress? What is holding me back? And maybe it's mindset, maybe it's skills, maybe it's tools or trainers or school. And just have a look at that and see if you can move forward using one of those tips. Okay. In our next episode that's going to be published, we're going to talk about how people describe you. What kind of person are you character-wise? Easy ones are like boring, lazy. But there are better and more fantastic vocabulary to talk about. Or how do other people describe you? What characteristics do you have? What are you liked for, disliked for? I think there's a lot to talk about. We will maybe talk about our own characteristics or pick some other people's characteristics. We'll see. So please, hopefully, you'll