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Patience.
Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your
English. If things take time to sink in, make sense or execute don’t worry. If
you keep on at a steady pace then you will, almost without realising it,
achieve the milestone that you are aiming for. One day you will suddenly
realise that you know something, really know it in your muscles, that
you have been struggling to master for a while.
Remember that language
learning goes in a series of plateaux and is not a straight, onwards and
upwards, line. You may feel that you are not making any progress for what
seems like a long time and then suddenly, almost overnight, you get it! With
patience these steps will happen and you will see and feel them. This will give
you even more confidence to keep going!
Perseverance
This attribute helps you to pick yourself up, even
after you have had a setback, and push forwards. It is easy to give up. It is
easy to say I’ll never do this. Let’s say you took an exam and didn’t get the
result you wanted you can shrug your shoulders and say that you’re not ever
going to get the grade you need or you can learn from the experience and
get back on track. Sometimes when you have this experience you need someone to
support you and help you to keep going and find out where you went wrong.
A mentor, however, can only show you the way and encourage you. At the end of
the day YOU are the one who needs to draw on your inner strength and focus on
your dream again and take action to move closer to it.
Performance
By performance here I mean actually using your
language. Speaking and writing as much as you can and making sure that you have
an audience to receive this performance and sometimes even rate you on it! I
speak to English learners every day and many of them tell me how they don’t
have opportunities to speak or they can’t find anybody to look at their
writing. Then I speak to others who have found themselves language buddies
online and they speak every day and assess each other’s writing! You have to
try to create opportunities for yourself and it’s so much easier today with the
internet.
Be brave if you can’t find a group then why not start
one yourself!
The fact of the matter is that languages improve with
use and so if you need to improve, then you have to use them. You cannot rely
on your books alone you MUST get out there and speak and write.
The more you perform the better (especially if you
have good feedback) your performance will get.
Practice
The difference between practice and performance is
that one is ‘real’ and the other is preparation for real. If you speak then
your purpose is often other than the words and sentences – it is to
communicate something to someone. When you write it is to convey and message,
or information, or get an assessment in an exam. On the other hand when you
practise you are trying to perfect your skills for the performance. It’s rather
like training in sport or rehearsing in music. It is in the practice where
you can experiment with new words and phrases or a new style or new
ideas. Practice is the focused way in which you get your skills to performance
level. It is here that you can try things out, experiment with new words and
phrases or new approaches to writing. You can ask people if you are right
or gauge someone’s reaction to your new style or new vocabulary. Try and
test, test and try, and you will broaden your language for the ‘real’ times.