FROM a site graciously given to me by Carol Laux *** Hola/Bonjour/Ciao/Oi/Dia duit/Saluton/Hi/Guten Tag Bob !! (If you subscribed to this by mistake, unsubscribe instantly here, but I really hope youll stick around!) Were on day 2 of the 5-day series of your introduction to language hacking! In this email, youll finally learn of the secret to make sure you dont frustrate native speakers whenever you try to practice with them. Check it out! Convince native speakers to eagerly help you improve! Since a lot of people had shared their own language struggles with me in their response to my introduction e-mail, Ive seen first hand what your biggest fears and challenges are in moving forward with your target language. One challenge to overcome that I think deserves particular attention, especially when I see how much it is on peoples minds, is this idea that you will frustrate those who speak your target language if you dare speak it to them, and they simply wont want to help you. I wrote a whole post about this, but theres something that I didnt cover in that article deserves attention. The problem is that it might feel awkward. They stop you mid-sentence and theres that annoying pause, and you try to act grateful, but they can feel the tension and will not correct you again because of it. If they are your friend, they genuinely dont want to make you feel bad. They might not even do it a first time for fear of this awkwardness! Well, this is what I do: I turn things around and encourage them to find as many mistakes as possible. For instance, if Im dating a girl who speaks the language, then for every mistake she corrects I give her a kiss on the cheek, or alternatively when Im with guys, for every 10 mistakes they correct I owe them a drink. Or I turn it into a competition; the first person that manages to correct 20 mistakes gets entrance to the nightclub, or a dessert (if were eating together) on me! This completely changes everything since correcting mistakes is no longer an awkward moment, but is actually a fun game for the other person! Im sure you can think of less expensive alternatives!! Anything that you know would motivate the other person, try it as an incentive! And of course, even more important than that is that I genuinely thank them each time with a warm smile. It is indeed annoying and frustrating in my mind that I have made a mistake, but they are helping me so I should show that appreciation rather than express my frustration. Mistakes are going to happen no matter what, so you have to live with that and just accept it as a natural part of your language learning story. The smile and thank-you is further reinforcement for the other person to help you even more!
Posted on: Sun, 16 Feb 2014 16:23:16 +0000
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