The Stages of Language Learning|VIDEO
Maybe you remember how it all happened that you first started learning the fascinating Blablah language? No?
Let me help you freshen up your lazy memory like an ambitious cucumber refreshes an elephant.
#1. The Inception Stage
You’ve heard of Blablah first when you were in a club. It was unexpected, you were already trying learning Glotty, sure that it would help you get higher up your career ladder so you weren’t even thinking about hooking up with anything else. But when you heard those first melodious sounds of Blablabese, you were instantly thrilled and curious and tentative. Since you were too timid to find out more about it, things ended up there, in mystery with an exotic flair to it. To your luck, though, Blablah appeared again a couple of days after, while you weren’t thinking about it and it surprised you and intrigued you again. And you thought that maybe the time had come to be more active in pursuing Blablah.
#2. The Love Stage
You thought Blahblah was the most beautiful language in the world. You could do nothing but think and talk about Blahblah all the time, much to the annoyance of your friends. In fact, most of them devised complicated strategies to avoid you rather than hear for the 37th time within 25 minutes of how Blahblah excelled and surpassed all other languages.
But, truth to tell, you barely even noticed their absence because the only people you really wanted to hang out with were the ones that ‘got you’. So you became instantly friends with anyone who shared your (love) language interest.
Your nights went either sleepless so that you could study Blahblah, or dreaming that you were talking in Blahblabese. Not even your meals were a Blahblah safe zone: as you ate the original Blabby bought from the Blahland shop at the corner, you bobbed your head in sync with the Blahblah song on your mp3. This actually was a tricky task itself, but you didn’t mind going food-less for B’s sake, anyway. So you bobbed and blabbed as tiny pieces of Blabby flew from your mouth into the air and started rearranging themselves in an exquisitely delicate pattern on the kitchen wall.
#3. The Hate Stage
“What do you mean they are all exceptions? I’ve wasted three hours writing those verbs conjugations off the top of my head!”
You get furiously mad, but you tell yourself you should cool down, after all it’s not Blahblah’s fault. It’s probably just its Langaling heritage that causes it to be this random at times.
It’s true that you need clarity, certainty, something rational to deal with, but you know yourself that it was this unpredictability, this novelty and obvious defiance to the rules that pulled you in at first.
So you turn your flashcards and move on recalling how Andy told you to give this another chance, that time was all that you needed to make it work.
Thinking about it, you can’t really pinpoint why all this frustration and anger have got hold of you lately. Maybe you set up some unrealistic expectation about the level at which your progresses with Blablah should have been at by now. Maybe you jumped into this thing too quickly. You tell yourself that perhaps all that you need is simply to slow down, that you were going way too fast and none of you were ready for it, yet.
So you turn another flash card and move on.
Until you recall of the horrid figure Blabblah caused you to make in front of your boss’ friend.
“I’m through with this!” you say with an exasperated voice and then throw away the flash card at hand…
Which incidentally flies all the way to the kitchen and get stuck to the Blablah inspired food pattern on the wall.
#4. The Fondness Stage
Alright, so maybe Blablah was not the most perfect language out there, but you had to admit it was still pretty cool.
It’s true you didn’t have much time for it now, what with school, the job, your group, not to mention your newly found hobby of mural pattern arrangement.
But that doesn’t mean that you guys will never see each other again. You will definitely use it…someday.
Maybe you and Blablah will meet at the movies, at the library or at a club. If the time is right, and luck volunteers a spare Cupido, who knows, the sparkle might be rekindled again..
This is painfully accurate
Ooh, great to know someone else has experienced this 🙂
Let’s see how your Cantonese/mandarin story will be like 😉