Language learning myths: I need a teacher

Most of the language learning myths discussed here produce one or both of two results. They may serve as an exculpatory strategy to reducing your effort, or, they make you feel bad about yourself.

Claiming that you could only learn a foreign language after having found the right teacher falls into the first category. As a teacher of a fairly conventional and non-exotic language (German), it puzzles me how many students struggle finding a suitable teacher. What to say about more unusual languages such as Icelandic, Laotian or Mongolian?

Often, the question is not of finding a teacher in your home town, which for most languages may be a challenge indeed. Now, there should be countless of opportunities online. Nonetheless, even if you find a teacher – on- or offline – he may not be the „ideal” teacher for you. You may be learning language XYZ for very specific professional purposes, and the respective teacher does not have a matching intellectual background.

Now, many beginners take this as an excuse for procrastination. They say, they will really start learning once they have found the perfect teacher. In reality, from my personal experience, those individuals will also not learn with a teacher. I have encountered that several times. Somebody approaches me and asks for lessons, but I am booked out at the moment. I send them my books and materials on how to learn on your own. They insist that they can only learn with a teacher around. When they finally made their way through the waiting list and actually land in my classroom, they are most often quite unsatisfying students.

Why? Well, the first argument why they need a teacher is, that they need someone to motivate them, they lack the necessary discipline and structuring abilities to be able to learn on their own.

The problem is that even with a teacher you will need those abilities. Success in a language course does not depend on your teacher or the textbook, but on how you practice at home, on your consistency and discipline, on setting up the right routines, and on playing the „mental game” correctly and avoiding self-sabotage.

From yearlong experience with seminars for language schools, I need to admit that, unfortunately, most language teachers, are not at all or very superficially interested in topics outside of their language. They are typically not the experts on motivation or the psychology of learning in general, on time-management, quality management and productivity research. Understandably, since many of them teach many classes per day, they focus on „delivering” the interpretation of the respective textbook in the classroom. This is a big enough challenge: to ensure classroom management, to correct students’ mistakes and to explain grammar and vocabulary.

Thus, most students won’t find their most basic problem solved: how to set up their language training routine at home. At most, it will consist of completing their homework exercises from the textbook, or of playing around, here and there, with apps and online videos.

As a conclusion: indifferently whether you are learning on your own or with a teacher, you need to set up your daily learning routine and set up a system that ensures „automatic” success. The latter includes formulating your goals on papers, measuring your progress using specific indicators and periodically reviewing and correcting the direction you are taking. If you need help in this, just check out the other articles here, or my book on that topic: The GO Method.

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.

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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.

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