This seems so obvious but it can be challenging as well. Obviously as we learn a language our hope is to be able to use it. The issue is that we always wait until we think we are "good enough" to actually start to use it. We'll wait until we have a large enough vocabulary, grammar, confidence, etc. The problem is that this is actually slowing down the progress.
Nobody was able to walk on their first attempt. The first word you ever said when you were a baby likely wasn't some novel idea. The first time you do something, you aren't going to be good at it. The sooner you get working on it the sooner it will be able to improve. You can spend hours, days, and years reading how to ride a bike but until you get out and start riding you won't see that improvement.
More than anything, you have to be willing to make mistakes. Don't be worried about saying something incorrectly. You'll find that people get excited when you are speaking their language and will go out of their way to help you instead. Not only that, but you learn more from your mistakes than from your successes. I figured out pretty quick the different between "don't" and "haven't" with regards to Mandarin. If you recall, the first time I tried to tell somebody that we were hungry because we "haven't" eat I accidentally said we "don't". That's a pretty big difference in those regards and the reaction I got proved that as well. The more willing you are to throw yourself out there and make mistakes, the more likely you are to see improvement.
Friday night Jessie and I watched The Chronicles of Narnia and I thought it'd be fun to try to translate it in real time as we went. It wasn't long before I was asked to stop but it was cool to see that I was able to translate quite a bit more than I expected. I've done this before with a Dr. Seuss book and the same reaction happened. I was more successful than I thought I would have been. Sometimes you have to stop holding yourself back and just trust that you can do more than you thought.
This week I did a lot of planning for future improvements that I'm hoping to see in about a month. I realized I had some goals earlier in the year that I may not have completed so I'm going to try to see which ones are still within reach without going off my main path just to check off a box. This week I went for my 5 minute monologue in Chinese. I used it as a way to talk about a challenge that I've faced when trying to practice Chinese.
Not even going to try adding subtitles for all of this. My video editing system right now is lacking to say the least. Instead, fun activity for anybody who speaks Mandarin to use it as a chance to listen. Again, I made plenty of mistakes along the way. There's words I don't have in my vocabulary, word order was off, I couldn't think of what to say, etc. but the important thing is that I can give it my full effort and not back down.
Literally thought to myself, "Why am I always sitting in the same seat?" so I stepped outside. Guys, I went outside!
Until next time.
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