Becoming Fluent

by Richard M Roberts

  For all of their strengths, given the various ways heuristic strategies can fail, it’s no wonder that highly motivated adults sometimes abandon their foreign language studies. They blame themselves or their teachers for the failure, when a lack of insight into the decision-making process set them up to fail in the first place. Perhaps saddest of all, once the decision to abandon foreign language study is made, a final heuristic rears its ugly head: the hindsight bias. This is when they look back at the failure and say to themselves, “I knew it would happen all along.”7

  Caution: Contents May Be Habit Forming

  If it’s been a while since you were a student, you probably don’t relish the prospect of developing study habits for learning a foreign language. However, just studying a little bit every day is one of the most efficient ways to allocate your time. Fortunately, the successful formation of habits is something that psychologists know a great deal about. Unfortunately, it is also something that is discussed in a very simplistic way in the media, so what you’ve heard about habit formation may not be entirely accurate. It is necessary, therefore, to start by addressing three questions about habit formation.

  1. Does it take twenty-one days to develop a new habit?

  In 1960, Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon, published a book entitled Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life. In this book, he made the claim that a whole host of phenomena require twenty-one days in order to effect a change (e.g., “People must live in a new house for about three weeks before it begins to seem like home”). It’s unclear how he arrived at this magic number for so many different things. Subsequent research, however, has shown that there is no preordained timetable required to form a new habit.8 So don’t think about study habits in terms of quantity—think about them terms of quality.

  Try to incorporate your target language into your life as much as possible—but do it in a meaningful way. For example, there are language books that include vocabulary words on adhesive strips that can be attached to objects in your home. If you were studying Spanish, you might put the label for la cuchara (“spoon”) next to the spoons in the kitchen drawer. That way, theoretically, each time you use a spoon you’d see this word and make the association. Unfortunately, many people might just read the label, and because it feels familiar (“Yes! la cuchara means ‘spoon’!”); they don’t realize that they are only thinking about the word in a superficial way that does not make the kind of associations that lead to long-term retention.

  Rather than putting labels on all of the objects in your home or office, a better habit to develop would be to remind yourself for each object you encounter that it has an equivalent in your target language. Even better than putting a label next to the spoons, when you pull a spoon out of the drawer, ask yourself if you remember the Spanish word for spoon. If not, look it up, then think of a way to associate this word with other words in the target language. Once you start remembering the word consistently when you see the object, then start making sentences using the word, for example, Necesito una cuchara para comer mis Corn Flakes. This habit of thinking more deeply about the language will pay great dividends—and you won’t have to wait twenty-one days to start seeing results.

  2. Do setbacks mean that you’ve failed?

  Despite the best of intentions, life events can interrupt consistent study habits. You may find yourself setting aside foreign language study for days or even weeks. This can be frustrating, but it doesn’t mean that you should abandon your goals.

  The development of new habits has often been studied in the context of smoking cessation. One of the best predictors of whether people are ultimately successful in giving up smoking is the number of times they’ve managed to quit before, if only for a few days or weeks.9 So if you find yourself “falling off the wagon” of foreign language study, don’t take it as a sign that you can’t do it—hop back on that wagon and try again. Remember too that relearning is faster than learning, so whenever you do start again, you’ll have a head start.

  3. If a little study is good, is a lot of study better?

  Call this the fertilizer fallacy: if a little bit of the stuff in this bottle will make my begonias grow faster, then why shouldn’t I use all of it? The reason, as many gardeners have had occasion to learn, is that fertilizers contain soluble salts that cause root burn: the plants’ ability to absorb water and other nutrients is reduced, and the plants become dehydrated, turn yellow, and wilt.

  You don’t want to give your brain root burn. Studies have consistently demonstrated that learning information a bit at a time, what cognitive scientists call distributed practice, is superior to massed practice, which is just another term for cramming.10

  Suggestions for Developing Effective Language Study Habits

  1. Determine what is realistic.

  It might seem obvious that it is important to set goals in life. Everywhere you look, you are encouraged to “Aim High” or “Reach for the Stars.” Those are fine sentiments, but the real question is how? Cognitive scientists have long studied goal-setting behavior. The ongoing research was summed up by Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, who wrote: “Specific, high (hard) goals lead to a higher level of task performance than do easy goals or vague, abstract goals such as the exhortation to ‘do one’s best.’ So long as a person is committed to the goal, has the requisite ability to attain it, and does not have conflicting goals, there is a positive, linear relationship between goal difficulty and task performance.”11

  Locke and Latham’s conclusion would seem to bode well for the adult language learner. Clearly, learning a foreign language is difficult, but most adult language learners who are committed to this goal have the requisite ability to attain it, as long as they keep conflicting goals from interfering. Why then do so many adult language learners end up feeling frustrated or disappointed or dissatisfied with their language learning experience? How can you keep this from happening to you?

  If your goal is to achieve native-like fluency in a “super hard” language like Chinese or Arabic by the end of the year, you may be setting yourself up for failure. A goal like that is virtually impossible to achieve, so it would be very difficult to figure out a plan of study for attaining it. You’re much better off setting realistic, short-term goals over a period of time as a way to accomplish the long-term goal. If you can achieve these subgoals, you’ll be more motivated to stick with your plan of study as time goes on.

  2. Go public with your goal.

  Once you’ve settled on a goal that is realistic, it can be highly motivating to share it with others. If you simply toy with the idea of undertaking foreign language learning, you may never get around to starting. If you share your goal with your spouse, or a friend or sibling, they’re likely to inquire periodically about your progress. It would be embarrassing to keep telling them that you haven’t even begun, so this can be another form of motivation.

  3. Find a study buddy.

  Some people who start running find it helpful to run with a partner. It’s a lot easier to blow off your daily run when the only person it affects is you. It’s much harder to skip a day when your running partner comes knocking on your door. Unfortunately, finding someone who wants to study the same language may be difficult. And if one of you already has some knowledge of the language, this can make the less knowledgeable partner feel like they’re behind. If you’re taking a course, you might be able to partner with a classmate of similar ability. You also might be able to find a study partner online.

  4. Study at the same time each day.

  Most of us have a preferred time of day for accomplishing important tasks. Some find the quiet of early morning to be best for study and writing, while others are night owls, and do their best work late in the day. As an adult language learner, you probably have a good sense of what works best for you. Studying every morning before or after breakfast, or late at night, before a midnight snack, might be options to consider. If you’re consistent about this, then the time of day will s
erve as a trigger and reminder for your study.

  A Sense of Self

  As you consider your goal of learning a foreign language, there are many factors you need to keep in mind: your motivation, how much time you’ll have for study, and whether or not to take formal classes in your target language. You’ll wonder whether you’re too old for such an undertaking (you’re not!). How much support will you get from friends and family? Will the effort required be worth it? How will it feel if you expend a great deal of effort, only to be dissatisfied with your level of fluency? Only you can answer some of these questions, but it may be helpful to consider some concepts from social psychology that are relevant to these issues.

  The term self-efficacy was coined by Albert Bandura in the early 1970s to refer to a person’s belief in her ability to accomplish something: to perform a task, reach a goal, or overcome an obstacle.12 However, it’s important to understand that one’s self-efficacy can vary greatly from one domain to another. Perhaps you’re a wizard in the kitchen: you can assemble a tasty and nutritious meal given almost any set of ingredients, you frequently watch cooking shows, and you love to try out new recipes. The self-efficacy you possess in this sphere of your life is high: you love to challenge yourself, and you derive a great deal of satisfaction from your mastery of cooking. In another sphere, however, your feelings may be decidedly different. If you’re one of the many people who find internal combustion engines to be a complete mystery, you will have low self-efficacy with regard to automotive matters. You might feel helpless and depressed when your car isn’t running well, and a visit to the repair shop may fill you with dread. You never understand what the mechanic is talking about, and you have no way of determining whether the bill for repairs is reasonable or not. So clearly, one’s perceived level of self-efficacy can vary greatly across the different arenas of one’s life.

  An important thing to remember is that low self-efficacy can be a trap: it can keep even the most motivated person from trying to master things at a later point in time. Unfortunately, experiences that shape self-efficacy may happen early in life, and the memory of an unfortunate episode can last a lifetime. For example, in talking to people about the subject of this book, Richard and Roger frequently encountered negative reactions to foreign language learning. “Oh, I’m not any good at foreign languages,” they might say, averting their eyes as if this were some sort of moral failing. “I studied Spanish in high school, and barely earned passing grades. The teachers made fun of my accent, and I hated studying something that I knew I would never use.” So a negative experience with one language can lead to a generalized low self-efficacy with regard to learning any foreign language, in any context, and for any purpose.13

  If you have feelings of low self-efficacy, then failing to achieve your hoped-for level of fluency might be the expected result. Psychologists have a name for that as well: it’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because you expect a certain negative outcome, you may sabotage your efforts at mastery without even realizing it. And low self-efficacy can have a pernicious effect on your motivation, the time you spend in instruction and study, and may ultimately lead to abandoning the enterprise altogether. And this outcome will make sense to you: “I never was any good at French when I was a sophomore, so I’m not surprised that I can’t learn it now.”

  How, then, does an adult overcome feelings of low self-efficacy in language learning that may have persisted since childhood? First of all, be sure not to confuse self-efficacy with self-esteem. Self-esteem refers to your overall evaluation of your worth as an individual. You can have a healthy level of self-esteem and still have feelings of low self-efficacy for certain domains (such as language learning).

  Second, the best way to overcome low self-efficacy is to take practical steps to develop mastery in the desired domain. Because self-efficacy is based on doing, not being, it can be transformed through learning. The goal of this book is to help adult language learners develop a sense of self-efficacy for language learning, even if that has not been their experience in the past. Rather than think about language learning as one domain, break the different aspects of language learning into more basic units. Then start building self-efficacy by first emphasizing those aspects of language learning in which you generally do well in other domains. For example, if you know that you have a good verbal memory, then concentrate on building a large vocabulary. If you know you’re a person who needs to see or hear things repeatedly before they make sense, then load up your iPhone with practice conversations. If you know you thrive on structure and organization, then create detailed diagrams as reference material. And if you’re more of a free spirit, make impromptu phone calls to a fluent friend to practice your conversational skills. It doesn’t matter what you do to get started, as long as you do what you’re good at. As you continue to improve, your self-efficacy will grow. As an adult language learner, you have the gift of insight—something younger learners lack. Don’t be afraid to take advantage of it.

  Trying Hard Not to Try Hard

  Martina Navratilova was a force of nature in the tennis world throughout the 1970s and ’80s. She won dozens of singles and doubles titles, and was clearly one of the strongest and most consistent players of her generation. One of the cruel realities of the sporting world, however, is that you can’t stay on top forever. By the late 1980s, Navratilova had passed the age of thirty, and younger players were beginning to threaten her. At the French Open in 1987, she lost to the eighteen-year old Steffi Graf. In the same year, she was beaten by the sixteen-year old Gabriela Sabatini in the Italian Open. When interviewed about these defeats, Navratilova’s response was revealing. She said:

  I was afraid to play my best. I felt so threatened by those young kids coming up, Graf particularly, wondering whether they were better than me … I daren’t give those matches 100 per cent.

  The idea that a world-class tennis player would intentionally undercut her own performance may seem quite strange. Why on earth would she do this, particularly against opponents who would seem to require all of her skill? Navratilova herself provided the answer in the very next sentence of the interview:

  I was scared to find out if they could beat me when I’m playing my best because, if they can, then I am finished.

  Welcome to the world of inverted logic known as self-handicapping.14 And it’s not just tennis stars or other athletes who fall prey to this destructive behavior. Self-handicapping is doubly harmful because since it leads to failure, and neatly provides a ready-made excuse for that failure.

  Imagine a college student who has an important exam the following day. The test is in a course he’s been having problems with, and he’s not sure how well he will do. Nevertheless, he spends the night before drinking with his frat brothers instead of studying. Paradoxically, this student now has all of his bases covered. If he does poorly on the test the following day, he can make what researchers call a situational attribution: “I would have done okay if I hadn’t gotten drunk last night.” This makes sense—everyone knows that taking a test while hungover will not truly reflect one’s ability. But now imagine the other possible outcome: the student actually does well on the exam. Now his success seems even more impressive: “I got a good grade even though I spent the night drinking with my buddies. I must be freakin’ brilliant!”

  Research has shown that individuals will do almost anything to avoid a downward revision in their perceptions of themselves. And as both Navratilova and this hypothetical student demonstrate, this includes doing things that are actually quite harmful (deliberately not playing at one’s best, or not studying for an exam). However, this also means that they won’t perform as well as they could have. Apparently, this outcome is preferable to the one in which the student studies hard, and fails the test. And Navratilova was able to convince herself that she still could compete at the highest level of her sport, even as she allegedly allowed other, younger players to beat her.

  As with self-efficacy, self-handicapping will
vary depending on the context and situation. Researchers have characterized self-handicapping as either situational or as chronic. Letting your young nephew beat you at chess would be an example of the former—you don’t want to crush his spirit by playing your best when he’s still learning the game, and it won’t keep you from trying as hard as you can to defeat your brother when you play him. However, self-handicapping can also become a way of life, as in the case of someone who persistently abuses drugs or alcohol.15

  Keeping this discussion of self-efficacy, self-fulfilling prophecy, and self-handicapping in mind, therefore, may lessen anxiety about trying to achieve proficiency later in adulthood.16 Don’t assume that a particular outcome in the past is predictive of what can be achieved now and in the future. Capitalize on what works well, and don’t let fear of failure keep you from trying your best.

  Getting in the Zone

  In your pursuit of proficiency in a foreign language, it’s important that you study topics that are neither too easy nor too difficult for you at any given point in time. This is particularly true if you’re studying a language largely on your own. If you already have a working knowledge of Greek, for example, it wouldn’t be very helpful to spend all of your time studying basic vocabulary or completing elementary exercises, although as we will see in chapter 7, some overlearning can be beneficial. Although it may make you feel good about yourself to effortlessly rattle off simple phrases like “Where is the train station?” ultimately, rehearsing only easy material is not the best use of your study time. By the same token, if you’re a beginner, then jumping into a difficult topic, like the grammar for a language’s subjunctive mood, is not time well spent either.