Learning to Get Past Discouragement While Learning a Foreign Language

By Kent Roper on 30 July 2014

Sometimes I wonder if I picked the wrong language to study.

My last serious attempt at learning a language was Esperanto, and I think I got pretty far in only six weeks. I've been learning Lao for almost six weeks, and I am nowhere close to where I was at this point in my Esperanto challenge. And I sometimes find myself a little discouraged about the slow pace.

So how do you push yourself past discouragement and speed up your language learning?

Here are 3 easy steps (and 1 not-so-easy step) in getting past language-learning discouragement and pushing yourself to the next level.

Step 1: Know what you know

This doesn't have to be a deep in-depth analysis of your knowledge of the language you are studying, but just like navigating a map, you can't know where to go next if you don't know where you are right now.

Here is where I am right now in Lao:

1. I've got the basic greetings down great. I could say "Hello. How are you? Nice to meet You. Good bye." all day long and not get tired.
2. I am beginning to understand Lao script. Lao does not use the same alphabet we use in English, so I've had to learn a completely new writing system. I've got most of the consonants down, and about a third of the vowels down. (There are a lot more than in English.) I have to use my cheat sheet often when reading Lao script.
3. I've learned over 250 words and phrases through Anki. Some of these are completely useless, since the flash cards I'm using with Anki were meant for employees of a large copper mine in Laos. (I'll probably never need to use "reflective vest" and "safety boots" in Lao, but if I do, I am prepared.)
4. I don't know almost anything about Lao grammar. I don't know how to make my own sentences.
5. On many of the phrases and sentences I've memorized, I don't know what all of the individual words mean.
6. I understand the different tones in Lao, but I don't understand the tone rules. If I read a word in Lao script, I usually don't know which tone to use.

Step 2: Know where you want to go next

I want to be able to both have conversations in Lao, and also understand written Lao.

I think what I want to do next in Lao is to continue learning to read Lao script and learn to create my own sentences. (That way I can use more than just the basic greetings and phrases you'd use in a copper mine.)

I do want to learn the tone rules, so I can better pronounce what I am reading, but I think mastering the Lao alphabet a little better has to happen first.

Step 3: Adjust course, if necessary

I am making progress in learning the Lao script, even though it is slow progress. I've found some written Lao, and I've been practicing transcribing from Lao script to the Roman (English) alphabet. I'm getting faster at that, and I don't have to look at my cheat sheet as often. This isn't always very fun, so I don't do a lot of it.

I also found an Anki flash card deck that has basic Lao words and phrases written in Lao script. Because I already know how to say most of these through other sources I've studied, this deck is helping me know how to read these same phrases in the Lao script.

Since I am making progress in reading the Lao script, I don't think I need to make a course correction there.

But I do need to make a course correction in learning to make my own sentences. This is coming along way too slowly right now.

One of my biggest frustrations in learning Lao is that I have had a difficult time finding good learning resources on the internet. When searching for "learn lao" on the Google or YouTube, about 80% of what I find is pages of the same basic greetings I learned a couple of weeks ago, about 10% is stuff meant for people who already have a Lao background but don't know the language very well (i.e. people who grew up in America with Lao-speaking parents or grandparents), and about 10% is well-intentioned but poorly executed Lao instruction.

Esperanto, on the other hand, has super useful, super easy to find resources for learning the language. What a difference between my last project and this one.

So yesterday, I tried different search terms. Since I want to learn how to make my own sentences in Lao, I searched for "lao grammar" instead of "learn lao." Bingo. I found what I needed for me to progress.

Granted, I did need to sift through a lot of garbage. In the top ten search results on Google, only two of the results were useful.

For example, I found a pdf book about Lao grammar. After a 40 page boring preface (which I didn't read almost any of of) I found the chapter 1. Here's the first sentence of chapter 1: "Lao is an isolating, analytic tone language with no inflectional morphology and little productive derivational morphology."

Okay, I think I understood some of those words. I browsed through another 30 or 40 pages before I found anything useful about actually learning to speak Lao. Clearly this was not the resource for me.

I did find a Wikipedia article on Lao Grammar which was pretty useful. It didn't go into too much detail, but enough to get me started. I also found 30 pages of notes on Lao Grammar from the Northern Illinois University yesterday. I browsed through the first 4 pages. Finally, I think I've found what I need to study to take my next steps forward.

I plan on taking my time, going through each page, until I finish or I don't find it useful anymore. I plan on practicing each concept, even if for a just a few minutes, before going on to the next concept.

Course adjusted.

Step 4: Work hard

So, I promised 3 easy steps and one hard step. But the hard step can't be avoided if you really want to progress.

Some times you just have buckle down and do work. There are things that make the hard stuff easier, though. For me, I've tried a few strategies that help me go through the hard part of language study:

1. Break down what you need to do into chunks. The first page I'm going to study on Lao grammar has 8 concepts. Instead of thinking to myself "I need to finish this page" I'm going to think "I'm going to get through this next concept."
2. Work just a little harder than you feel like. When you get frustrated, tell yourself that you can take a break in 10 minutes, and then keep that commitment.
3. Take breaks. It's okay. And it will help the material sink in. And you can come back to it with a rested mind.

What has helped you through language discouragement?

When you aren't making the progress you think you should when learning a new language, what has helped you get past that? Let me know in the comments.