Some people here in Greece share various assumptions about language learning which I find particularly disturbing. One of these assumptions has to do with the idea of 'finishing' a language. And these people usually mean that if you have managed to attain some certificate (some refer to them as 'degrees', which I find particularly annoying) you have 'finished' the language in question.
I believe that trying to finish a language is totally
a bad idea, even dangerous, I’d say, mainly for three reasons:
#1 BECAUSE IT
LEADS TO PERFECTIONISM
The idea that language is somewhat finite is completely
absurd. A language can never be finished: even native speakers have to study it
again and again if they want to use it smoothly. That is why this idea can lead
to perfectionism, and perfectionism in language learning is a motivation
killer. Since the finishing line can never
be visible, the task of language learning becomes both vague and unreachable.
#2 BECAUSE IT
LEADS TO FEELINGS OF DEPRIVATION
During your course of learning a language, it’s
possible that at some point you’ll just feel like exploring other languages. That means you’d like
to check whether you like them, and if you do, you’d really like to start
learning them. However, the idea of finishing a language makes this forbidden:
you think you should try to finish what you have started first, whatever this
is supposed to mean! So, you end up feeling somewhat deprived, even angry
towards your new language, which just refuses
to finish in order for you to move on.
#3 BECAUSE IT
LEADS TO INACTION
Finally, it is possible that sometimes we just get stuck
in our learning and we need a break. When this had happened to me, I thought
this time could be used on a new
language. But then I felt I just had to finish
the first language in order to pick a new one. And when I forced myself to go
on with the first, it just didn’t work, and guess what happened: I stopped
studying altogether!
Instead of trying to fit into others’ expectations and
try to ‘finish’ a language, it is important to be able to create your own personal milestones to look
forward to. In other words, to pinpoint certain moments that from that
point onwards you will regard as milestones, and which will give you the courage
and the strength to move on with your language learning, which never finishes,
of course.
One such milestone for me was the moment I finished
reading the first English book I
ever read. Since then my English is much better, but at that precise moment I
felt I had really made much progress, and I still look back to that moment with
feelings of pride and accomplishment.
Thanks for reading!
