6 Tips To Manage Stress When Learning A New Language
How to control the stress or anxiety generated by learning languages? This type of discomfort is so common that a term has even appeared in English to refer to it: foreign language anxiety.
In an increasingly globalized world and with a highly digitalized economy, learning new languages ​​has become one of the key aspects of professional and personal development. That is why, although some see this activity as a hobby with which to fill a good part of their free time, in most cases there are a series of pressures that generate the need to learn English, German, French, Mandarin, etc
This doesn’t have to be bad; The society in which we live will always be exposing us to challenges and situations that require us to make efforts for months or even years, even if they hardly give us any advantages in the hard initial stage of this type of project (anyone will notice that having dedicated 15 hours to studying English, we barely It is used to exchange a couple of words in everyday conversations in another country).
Now, not everything is a matter of having a good memory to “accumulate” vocabulary or having an innate talent for the pronunciation of exotic words; knowing how to manage the stress that comes with learning a new language is essential to progress efficiently and not give up without having reached even an intermediate conversational level. In this article you will find several tips to achieve this.
How to manage stress when learning a new language?
When studying languages ​​relatively different from Spanish, such as Korean, Russian or Japanese, it may happen that you feel overwhelmed by the feeling of not understanding anything and of barely making progress from one day to the next, even if you have started an intensive learning plan. This is one of the most frustrating experiences faced by many of those who need to at least understand a new language and have set a deadline to reach a certain level of fluency, but it can occur even in those who have simply set out to learn vocabulary without any hurry.
These situations, if not managed properly, cause us as students to internalize dynamics of self-sabotage that limit our progress and can even cause us, after several months of effort, to throw in the towel, interrupting our language studies and forgetting what we have learned in a short time because we do not continue “reinforcing” it through practice.
Therefore, it is very important that you put these tips into practice to manage stress when learning a new language.
1. Make sure your syllabus is adapted to your level
When learning languages, it is important to know where to start; Trying to “solve” the puzzle of a language that we do not master without detecting its fundamental parts to get started is like crashing into a wall. That’s why, It is best that you first test your level to know what type of lessons correspond to you
2. Avoid looking at the index over and over again
There are people who, when setting out to learn a language in a certain amount of time, tend to review again and again the index of the syllabus that remains to be studied. This, far from being an action that helps to make informed decisions about how to manage the available study time, is actually a pattern of problematic behavior linked to checking what is feared, something that in practice only contributes to keep the stress level very high.
It is clear that To set a learning goal, it is necessary to make an initial estimate of everything that needs to be studied and how many study sessions it can be divided into; However, once this initial phase has passed, we do not have to look again at the overview of everything that we have not studied yet. What we have to do is pay attention to meeting the study times as planned, that is, focusing on the lesson to which we are dedicating our efforts at the present and not letting time pass without finishing it as planned. we had proposed it. If you fall into the trap of constantly looking at the long list of chapters, textbook units or lessons that you have not yet covered, what you will actually be doing is trying to calm yourself down (by checking if it is shorter than you remembered) without success.
If you notice that learning languages ​​tends to cause you anxiety problems, it is best to make it easy for yourself and not subject yourself to very long study sessions. The best thing to do to maintain emotional balance and consolidate what you learn in your memory is have short and very frequent study sessions, instead of few and very long For example, the ideal is that you can dedicate between a quarter of an hour and 45 minutes each day, except for one or two days of rest a week. This learning strategy also combines very well with one of the most effective memorization techniques: spaced repetition.
4. Focus on practice, not on passing an exam
If you are studying a language through a formal education program, such as a school subject or a language academy, you may have an extra element that makes you anxious: the need to take an exam and pass. a minimum note.
However, although it may seem counterintuitive, the best way to prevent stress from overflowing is to forget that you are going to take an exam and, instead, focus your attention on practicing from the syllabus that has been provided to you, or even going a little further. Because? Because If you become obsessed with passing, you are actually dividing your efforts by tackling two missions at once : learn a new language, on the one hand, and decipher the logic that will follow the test you are going to take, on the other.
Instead of worrying about detecting norms and generalities in the formulation of questions and exercises in your textbook, you should detect them in the language you are trying to learn; That way you will feel much more confident in yourself and you will have more flexibility when it comes to practicing what you are studying, using it in your daily life to describe the actions you are doing, to have imaginary conversations in English, etc.
Sleeping enough hours is essential both to memorize well and to have the ability to concentrate and pay attention to what you are trying to learn. Something as simple as sleeping five hours instead of seven will have a very significant impact on how you perform the next day , although it is difficult for you to notice it beyond the feeling of tiredness and discomfort. In reality, you will be much less efficient when studying, and the feeling that everything “is going on in your head” will increase, causing your stress levels to skyrocket.
6. Make your experience fun
As much as possible, it is important that you gamify the experience of learning a new language, and that you do not simply see it as an obligation (imposed by society or by yourself). To do this, create a simple system of self-rewards and incentives in the short, medium and long term. In this way, you will be better at channeling your energy towards the desire to learn, and not towards the fear of not measuring up.
