This experience that I'm going to talk about is not something that I have a name for, to be honest, it's just a little thing that I noticed happens. What I'm going to talk about is losing your morale while practicing having conversations. In this post, I'm going to talk about when you'll feel this, how you will probably feel (at least how I felt), and what you can do to get over it.
What You'll Feel
I have mentioned in previous posts that you need to learn the basics (here) then after you learn the basics you need to start moving on to listening practice, speaking practice, and overall conversation practice. Once you start feeling more it will be even more of a head pain. When I was just getting into the "correct me" phase, my girlfriend and her family really took into that. They would correct me for every little mistake that I made. Even though I wanted this I could feel the fatigue of constantly getting something wrong and thinking through what I wanted to say.
Mainly, you'll feel demoralized, because you're not used to being so wrong at something all the time. It's really just your ego talking to you telling you to quit because of this. You're an adult, you've spoken English your entire life, and anything you messed up you could easily fix or just learn. But now, it's different, you're struggling, you don't know the answers and they are hard to find. Learning Spanish could have even been your new year's resolution but now you're not prioritizing it because "other things have become more important"
IT'S OK
It's demoralizing, but that's what makes learning a language so worth it. The fact that it is hard, but the constant hours you put into making these small corrections is a like a sculptor who is chiseling the bad stuff on his marble. He knows what he wants it to look like, and he knows that he has to work little by little to get there, but he knows it will be worth it. That's what your language learning skill is. It was originally a big block and you hammered large chunks away at the beginning with learning the basics.
How to Say:
Hola
Como estas
Yo, tu, usted, nosotros, vosotros (for you weirdos), and ustedes
Now you're taking a smaller hammer and chiseling away at the smaller stuff to refine your language sculpture.
When You Will Feel It
You will feel this as you get out of the beginner phase. This part of learning Spanish is really when a lot of people quit. They know enough to say "I know Spanish" to their friends and family, but they don't know enough to actually be fluent and have conversations. These kinds of people that get hit with this constant morale drainer and give up are the kinds of people who just study vocab all day and are more infatuated with the fact that they say they are learning Spanish without making the actual effort to become fluent.
ARE YOU ONE OF THESE KINDS OF PEOPLE?
You need to have a constant reminder in the back of your head that after you get out of the beginner phase it only gets harder. The higher you go up the harder it gets and the less stuff you will learn per day. For example, as a beginner, it was easy to conceptualize the present tense, how to say "hi", colors, and numbers. As you get into the intermediate phase you will move into speaking and conceptualizing more complex things while having a conversation. It will be a lot of conversation and information to process while practicing and the mere fact that you can do it in English without a problem will be pretty demoralizing to you.
It will start in the intermediate but this problem will actually get a little better (as in less bad) the further you go on. The constant corrections that you get during your intermediate phase will toughen you up to the point where if someone corrects you once you're in upper intermediate not only will you kind of just accept it, but you will also internalize it easier. Me, I internalized the corrections a lot easier because I hated when people corrected me. So if I didn't want people correcting me I had to learn it. My ego actually ended up helping me in that regard.
How To Get Over It
So you're probably wondering "Rey Diego Fernando, that's nice to know what will happen, but how can I get over it?"
A couple pieces of advice:
1. Awareness. Reading this article will already make you aware that this problem could be coming or you could already even be having this problem.
2. Reminding yourself that corrections are necessary. Corrections are necessary and the best part is that every correction means you're getting better. Instead of getting down on making so many mistakes focus on the fact that you have people willing to help you correct them and also that every mistake that you make now will be a mistake that you DON'T make in the future!
3. If you're talking, make too many mistakes, and then want to quit, DON'T! Power through it! Power through it, even try and repeat the same phrase or word that you messed up on from earlier so you can reinforce the correct way in your mind.
Conclusion
All in all, this problem will come, but to get past that "intermediate purgatory" you'll need to really dedicate some time and mental fortitude to Spanish. Don't allow your ego, patience, and tenacity to be the thing that stops you from learning Spanish. It's a long journey but every mistake you make is one step closer to native-like fluency!
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