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| Photo by Artem Beliaikin from Pexels |
Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset defined a person
with a mass mentality as someone who is entirely satisfied with how he or she is
at present, as someone who does not feel it necessary to improve upon himself
or herself. On the other end of the spectrum, someone with an “elite” mentality
does always accept authorities above him or her, and he or she feels an urge to
constantly improve upon himself or herself. Those mentalities do not coincide
with social class, income or so-called aristocracy. A plumber who is always
expanding his craft is part of the “elite”, whereas some arrogant oligarchy
wasting away on his yacht is just one of the “mass”.
What does this have to do with language learning? Very
much! As in any craft or human activity, high levels of success in acquiring
foreign languages demand not only that you obtain some new knowledge, but also
that you change as a person. If you ask successful people in sports, business,
science or arts, virtually without any exception, all of them will answer that
a key to their success was working on their mentality. Almost every
professional sports team nowadays employs its own psychologist. Even amateur
marathon runners do this, if they can afford one. Why? What does psychology
have to do with football? Again, very much.
What are the typical problems among language learners?
·
“lack of time”,
·
difficulties to
concentrate,
·
inability to
maintain learning routines,
· non-adaptive
cognitive styles: unhealthy perfectionism, black and white thinking,
catastrophizing, negativism,
·
inability to
properly plan, monitor and appraise one’s own activities,
·
looking for feedback
and properly reacting to it,
·
how to document,
analyze and uproot one’s own mistakes,
·
remaining
motivated.
However, most language students think,
they only thing they need to speak fluently is to obtain some factual
knowledge: what is the difference between past and present tense, between the
dative and the accusative case (in languages with a case system)? Etc. Therefore,
many students spend countless hour with language apps, or watching grammar
explanations about one and the same topic again and again.
Recently, a group got angry with me. They
said: We do not need your messages that are taken out of self-development
books. We just need you to give us information on German: learning material,
grammar tables, lists, etc. At the same time, almost all of the participants
showed at least several, if not all of the problems listed above.
One student told me, the best thing to do
as a student is to observe what the majority of other students do. This is very
dangerous, because most other students do not address all the above problems.
And, most language students fail. Only a tiny fraction of all students that
have enrolled on a certain date in a language course will reach their goal of
speaking almost like a native speaker.
If you want to be successful in sports,
music, art or business, you typically look up to those that have exceptional
performances. Why do it the other way round in language learning?
If you like the attitude of these
articles, please check out my
online courses : at the moment, German for English,
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
The GO Method
The GO Method applies quality management and psychological
science to the study of foreign languages. It helps students establish
individual and clear goals, build learning routines, overcome psychological
obstacles, monitor progress and systematize the learning process.
It is the perfect approach for high performer students that
need to speak as closely as possible to a native speaker. From lesson one, it
focuses on building your own sentences bottom-up, and not memorizing phrases
like a parrot.
Gerhard J. Ohrband
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.
Contact
If you want to save time in learning a foreign language
without a teacher, please check out my book “The GO Method” on Amazon.
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