Here is a subject that should interest many of us: shyness, enemy of any wishing to learn and especially to practice a foreign language.
Often cited as an insurmountable obstacle, shyness is not necessarily a fatality or a shameful disease. It is quite possible to get rid of blockages and inhibitions at any age: this article is here to help you.
How shyness affects your learning
Sometimes traveling can help to get in touch with foreigner cultures and languages. Some schools like expanish.com offer immersive programs in order to learn and practice Spanish beating fears with real communication with natives.
Some people may feel related to this situation. If there is a problem that comes up regularly when people from all stages of life talk about their difficulties with languages, it is shyness in various forms: “I’m afraid to speak”, “I I am paralyzed as soon as I open my mouth ”,” I do not dare to speak because I have a horrible accent “. The lack of self-confidence appears as a real epidemic.
Why is shyness an obstacle?
If shyness is so problematic in the languages field, it is simply because it is an obstacle to practice. Students who do not dare to write or speak in their target language, so they do not practice, so they do not progress. The logic is relentless.
There is any advantage to be gained from shyness. It is often said that the timid would be endowed with an exceptional ability to listen, of a psychological finesse to any test, or a thoughtful temperament that would always lead them to make the right decisions. This may be true for some people, but this vision of the shy superhuman by its difficulties is a bit caricatured. Only comic characters are endowed with extraordinary powers following an unfortunate event.
To become a superhero of languages, do not wait for a miracle and stop making excuses: you have nothing to gain from being shy.
Introversion, extroversion, the great fair of counter psychology
If it is so difficult to overcome this problem because it is as commonplace as it is poorly known. After all, what’s more common than a shy, self-effacing person who never seems to want to open his mouth? This lack of knowledge leads many well-intentioned people to formulate opinions and advice disconnected from reality, such as the so-called qualities of the shy mentioned above, or the famous “It’s all in your head!“. We now know that many diseases can have a psychological cause, the fact that they “are all in the head” does not exclude medical care!
If you yourself have heard this remark and found it annoying, it is because you are aware that your fears are largely imaginary, but that you are unable to get rid of them.
Understand the causes of shyness to better fight it
This article is obviously not intended to deal with the subject of shyness as a whole, it is only about issues related to language learning.
A lack of confidence in your abilities
The main cause of your shyness is a lack of faith in your ability to achieve your goals. You think that you leave with a disadvantage, like a bad ear, a disastrous memory or an allergy to the rules of grammar. Your belief in these dogmas that you imposed on yourself is so strong that you no longer dare to question them.
So stop weighing down your shoulders with this nonsense: unless serious and proven problem, your weaknesses are largely imaginary. Breathe a bit and give yourself the right to succeed because there is no reason why you would not deserve it.
