Fake it until you make it?

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

Is faking it a good strategy for foreign language acquistion? Yes, we live in a world where „fake” seems to win whereever we look. Our social media feed is full with friends and not-so-friends exhibiting their massively succesful lifestyle: selfies in front of fancy cars, at VIP dinners, luxurious holiday resorts or in designer clothes. How much of this is real, we can seldom assess accurately. There are quite a few stories out, that some motivational speakers and „life coaches” climb over an airport fence as to be able to pose in front of a private air plane – and to sell their „success story” to the naive followers. CBS reported that 80% of women sometimes fake their orgasm. Advice for job interviews typically include strategies for faking certain expertise and character traits. And politicians, well, they have been known for faking it since they have come into existence!

It seems natural that many language learners adopt faking as a strategy. And I am not talking about certain „tips and tricks” on how to pass through standard language proficiency tests, with or without direct cheating involved. In the following, we will discuss two types of faking it and their effects on the learner and his or her surroundings.

Fake reporting on your learning process

Almost anybody having learned a foreign language has been asked this questions, most often even countless times: „So you have learned the XYZ language: How much time did it take you to speak it fluently?”

We as humans are social animals, and impression management is a universal strategy: We want to look good in the eyes of our fellow men. Now, most people tend to fake the answer in such situations. They will give a much lower estimate than it took them in reality. They may say, it took them only some months, where, in reality, they pursued that language for the last few years.  The logic is simple: the shorter the time, the more intelligent you must be. And, almost everybody doing this, people have come to expect ridiculously low learning times when starting a new language. When asked about my Romanian, I give, sometimes, the answer „10 years”, I can see people wondering whether my IQ is below 75, or if I have some other mental defects.

And, giving short times is a preemptive strategy to excuse our mistakes. If I say „10 years”, people will think: „... and he is still making so many mistakes”. If I say „6 months”, they will focus on all the positive aspects, because their expectations are much lower.

The effects of this are quite bad for you as a learner. If you start out learning sincerely, you will find yourself often in situations where others seem to be so much smarter than you. In group settings, I have seen it many times. „Disguised” advanced level students enroll for an intermediate course without telling it upfront, sometimes even lying about how long they have been learning, and leaving most other students in the course frustrated about how „stupid” they themselves are.

If you adopt this strategy, you yourself are at risk, because a) you may adopt unsustainable learning strategies (see below), or b) you may avoid all situations (=practice opportunities) where your fake expertise may be challenged, leaving you without any real chances to train further.

Faking through memorization

Have you ever seen one of those polyglots on Youtube demonstrating their proficiency in 30, 40 languages by repeating one phrase in all of those languages. It begs the questions as to how deep their knowledge really is. Many of us just, too, memorize a limited number of phrases and practice them to perfection.

Since most small-talk situations start in similar ways, they may successfully fish for compliments on their accent and language skills, in general.

The risk here is to become dependent on that praise and to neglect learning bottom-up how to construct one’s own sentences, instead of learning language top-down. “Fakers” may also avoid all kind of “muddy” situations where you would need to speak spontaneously on unpredictable topics. Of course, real learning suffers.

And, as almost everywhere in real life, it is much better to underpromise and overdeliver, then the other way around.

If you like the attitude of these articles, please check out my onlinecourses : at the moment, German for Russian- and Romanian-speakers, as well as on goal-setting.

If you are interested in improving your English in the area of business presentations, I know of no better address than Tom Antion. Please check him out following this link.

Stay tuned!

Gerhard

About the GO Method

The GO Method applies research in psychology as well as principles of quality management to the language teaching process. It conforms to key elements of the ISO 9001 standard, while being more specific on teaching-related issues. Customers get access to easily adaptable document templates.

Check us out at The GO Method.

About me

Psychologist and polyglot from Hamburg /Germany (*1979). Married with children. MA in psychology from the University of Hamburg. More than 15 years of experience as a university lecturer in psychology as well as a consultant for UNICEF, Terre des Hommes, IOM, the EU and private companies. Coordinator of the GO Method network, with representatives in more than 90 countries worldwide.

Connect with me on Linkedin or send me an e-mail.