Productive and unproductive mindsets in foreign language improvement
Unproductive: I am only allowed to consume content that corresponds to my current level in that language.
Productive: I strive to consume content that native speakers with similar personal and professional interests consume.
The unproductive version is especially hideous.
Imagine we would apply this mindset to the way we teach babies and infants our native language.
You would make sure that they hear language only at their level, that is, beginner level. You wouldn’t allow them to be around when adults are speaking, and we would turn off radio and television. We would discourage them from speaking to adults. If we speak to them, we would speak in “their” language.
I hope you understand that this would have disastrous consequences. This could even be considered criminal neglect.
Yet some of us give themselves a similar treatment when learning a foreign language.
We shy away from realistic, authentic content like podcasts on professional topics or journal articles. Instead, we watch “Easy German” (fill in the language you are learning) with subtitles and search for texts to read that are exact our level.
With babies and infants, we, hopefully, understand that they learn by being around adults that speak normally with them and among themselves. Children learn mostly by observing, internalizing and imitating the way adults speak.
If we eliminate that, we make native language acquisition very arduous or almost impossible.
This learning process starts not after birth but already in the womb. During pregnancy, unborn babies start learning their native language by listening to how their mother and others speak.
You need to do likewise. You need to radically expose yourself to content that reflects the personal and professional situation in which you want to operate later on.
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Yes, it is “unpleasant” and “uncomfortable” to not be able to understand everything right from the start.
Believe me, for us as babies it was neither.
If communication was perfect, back then, we would not have had to cry so often or to throw tantrums.
(This is an excerpt of my upcoming book: “B2B selling in foreign languages”)
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Gerhard Ohrband is an international trade facilitator, business psychologist and author of 9 books from Hamburg/Germany. He speaks 21 languages and assists B2B sales executives in selling successfully in foreign languages.