Ego and learning

[Jamie (K)]

When I lived overseas, I noticed that ego and a poor capacity to take criticism were the biggest impediments to people's progress in learning a language.

A couple of examples:

I had a favorite Czech newspaper that I read every day. After a few months I got to the point where I could understand almost everything in it. I felt like my Czech reading was "good". Then I picked up a different paper that was aimed at a different readership, and suddenly I could understand only about 60 percent. My first reaction was to feel humiliated and blame the newspaper. I got a grip on myself, and forced myself to learn to read that newspaper also. However, I see this same kind of ego attack stop some people's learning in my classes.

I learned to welcome it when the kids in my classes burst out laughing at one of my mistakes. Face it! You can't learn a language without making some hilarious mistakes! The situations where people laughed at my language were sort of a two-for-one prize, because I got to learn the correct way to say things, and I learned what was so funny. It was a double load of language learning.

And I would have made no progress at all if my friends, coworkers, acquaintances, and even children and the popcorn vendor, did not volunteer correction without my asking.

Now I have an ESL student at a corporation whose English learning is slowed by his ego. He is extremely humiliated by any sort of mistake -- in any aspect of his life -- and so he avoids situations where he can be wrong. This means it's like pulling teeth just to get him to do an exercise in a grammar book. First I have to assure him that the grammar in the book is really proper, and that using it won't humiliate him in front of important people. Then this trepidation of his makes him break every lesson down into tiny detail, which slows everything down.

With a little time, I found one very useful tool for teaching this man English. He is more cooperative if I speak a little German in front of him and make mistakes. He laughs at them and tells me what I should have said, and he seems to learn better if he can humiliate me over my German. It makes his ego feel safer or something. So, I just let him do it, and even give him opportunities to do it. I feel like I'm letting him nail my German to the cross for the salvation of his English. It seems to work.

[Yankee]

[Englishuser]

Hi Jamie,

You wrote:

[Alan]

Hi Englishuser,

It's always very difficult isn't it in normal conversation situations to correct someone when they are speaking your language as a foreign language. Personally I would probably find it hard talking in such a situation to you because I imagine on the strength of your written English that you have a very good command of spoken English as well. The only way it can be done is to ask the other person to repeat a corrected version/word of what you have said so that it doesn't interrupt the flow of the conversation. The danger of course is that it will turn what purported originally to be a chat/conversation into a lesson.

Alan
_________________
English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Too Many Words

[Englishuser]

Hi Alan,

Thank you very much for replying. I definitely agree with you: making corrections is almost impossible in a normal conversation, especially if you speak a language fluently. Besides, a non-linguist listener might not pay close attention enough to spot all mistakes you make simply because they don't generally listen to grammar but to content.

And if you Alan read this, why wouldn't you take the time to answer my native/non-native speaker question: have you ever met a person that you've falsely placed for a native speaker of English? And do you think that it's true or merely a myth that it's more difficult to achieve a convincing British sounding accent than it is to achieve a convincing American sounding accent, for instance?

[Yankee]

Hi Englishuser

If your writing is any indication of your speaking proficiency, I can't imagine an average native-speaker (American) ever voluntarily offering a correction. They'd regard it as impolite. Expecting corrections from people who are not ESL teachers is unrealistic, especially if you're already fluent.

Even if you specifically tell people to correct your errors, chances are they'll just simply forget because the mistakes aren't big or bad enough to set off any correction alarms. Or they'll agree, but still feel too uncomfortable to actually do it --- because it will still feel impolite.

I can only assume from Jamie's description that his Czech must have been spectacularly bad at the time to have elicited such an outpouring of spontaneous language assistance from his Czech friends.

Amy
_________________
Amy
.
ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English

[Alan]

Hi Englishuser,

You said:

[Englishuser]

Hi Alan,

I'm afraid you might have got me wrong. This time I was rather uninterested in accents: I was interested in grammar-related corrections. And concerning a British-sounding accent, I only asked it because it's well-known that imitating a British accent successfully is very difficult - many people say that it's more difficult than imitating for example an American accent.

[Alan]

Hi Englishuser,

I can see you have a thing about accents! If you are a mimic, you can imitate any accent. I used to write a lot of scripts for BBC radio and read the conversational bits with voices in a variety of accents. I don't honestly think that imitating an American accent is any easier than doing a British one but when you consider the variety of accents on my small island, just think of the immense variety there must be in North America.

As I have asked elsewhere what is an American accent and what is a British one? And quite frankly does it really matter?

Alan
_________________
English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Read all about it

[Englishuser]

Hi Alan,

And thanks for participating in this thread.

[Englishuser]

[Jamie (K)]

[Jamie (K)]

[Englishuser]

Hi Jamie,

You wrote:

[Jamie (K)]