“Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.” Dale Turner
Raise your hand if you started walking without stumbling or falling. Which of us learned to speak by using full, complete sentences and correct conjugation? When did we decide that in order to be successful, we cannot make mistakes?
Every ‘self-help’ author, every guru of self improvement, all of the most successful people out there say that we must make mistakes in order to succeed. They are the material from which we build the foundation of our experience. It is even said that we cannot truly learn without making mistakes. This is especially true for language learning.
· Experience is making mistakes and learning from them. Bill Ackman
· If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes. John Wooden
· You can only go forward by making mistakes. Alexander McQueen
As Gerhard Ohrband says in The Go Method, ”Our quest for perfection will always lead to frustration.”
So what do we do about it?
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Understand that you are going to make mistakes.
· Laugh at your errors. There are thousands of very funny situations where people have misused language. I recall once when I wrote an essay in Spanish about my favorite food – shrimp – and my professor told the whole class how much I enjoyed eating little people.
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Learn from your mistakes. Keep a journal of the words or phrases that you have completely botched.
· Ask others to correct you if there is a misunderstanding.
· Don’t confuse having an accent with making mistakes.
· Above all, don’t be embarrassed of your errors to the point that you stop speaking.
Push through your errors, and like the runner in the marathon, you will reach a second wind. We’ve all had those breakthrough moments when suddenly all the words fall into place. Shoot for those moments.
Keep learning –
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