The feeling of dread when the English Tutor corrects you can feel horrible!
We all think making mistakes when we are learning a new language means we are stupid in some way or not good enough, but it is actually VERY important to make mistakes if you want to become fluent in English (or any new language).
Making mistakes in English is the key to speeding up your fluency – this is how our brains were made to learn. It’s very natural to want to avoid getting something incorrect or wrong and may seem unpleasant in the moment, but this is normal and a vital part of the process.
I’m sure this has happened to most of us, but it’s important to understand how to use mistakes to our advantage to speed up our learning progress and finally speak fluently and confidently.
Mistakes Are The Building Blocks Of Progress
We avoid mistakes like it’s the plague, with this idea in our head that we should NEVER make a mistake and if we do somehow we are less than good, when in reality mistakes are what allow us to grow quicker.
Why? The quicker we accept that mistakes will happen, the quicker we can actually make them, then the quicker we will stop making them.
When you were a baby, you made tons of mistakes, “I drinked the water, mommy”, “I not happy”, “He bad”, “I catched ball” (2 mistakes there).. you get the idea. You, and I, and everyone else made so many mistakes as a baby and now we can speak fluently in our native language.
This is how our brain is designed to learn a language.
Unfortunately, traditional methods, and schools that focus heavily on grammar and exams, have made us all feel shameful and bad about making mistakes – this has damaged us deeply on a psychological level.
So, it’s not your fault, all you have to do is ‘unlearn’ what you learnt about learning languages. Mistakes are not bad, but actually intrinsic (natural) to your learning development.
We really can make this our best friend because making mistakes, even with advanced or native English speakers, allows your brain to naturally see what is the correct way and what is not. That simple. This will ultimately lead to correcting yourself, and over some time, speaking without hardly ANY mistakes.
Fear Of Making Mistakes & Being ‘Perfect’ Will Lead To Failure
“Just imagine perfection as your worst enemy, your biggest competitor, waiting for you to fail. Every time you feed that monster, every time you decide not to speak, say no to an interview because your English is not good enough, your biggest enemy is winning, and you are losing. That is failure! Saying something and getting stuck, that’s not failing, that’s practicing. Lose the idea of perfection.”
– Hadar From ‘Accent’s Way English with Hadar’ YouTube Channel (not my channel)
The Fear of making mistakes can actually prevent you from speaking and where does that fear come from? Usually perfectionism.
We think that speaking perfectly from day 1 of speaking is the only way, well, this will ultimately, slow you down or even worse, stop you from ever speaking because you will always use this fear of ‘not being perfect’ as a reason to never even try or to give up.
I often say to my students “The only way you can fail something ultimately, is by giving up, if you accept the mistakes, become friends with them, know that they will make you stronger, you CAN NOT fail.”
We often feel when we speak, it won’t sound right or be right, but remember, even native speakers (who you are trying to impress), started off making tons of mistakes as a baby (as we talked about earlier in this post), and now they speak fluently.
So, start reminding yourself every time you fear speaking and worry about making mistakes, that the person to whom you are talking, is the future you, the version of you that you want to become soon, and in order to get where they are, you have to allow mistakes to happen.
They made many mistakes, so you will have to too.
Mistakes VS Corrections
Making mistakes in English we know now, is very important to our progress, but we have to make sure we understand the difference between ‘mistakes’ and ‘corrections’. So, are they both good?
As said before, mistakes are a good thing and very important part of the learning process. Our brains are designed this way – each time you make one your brain takes that information and learns from it.
Unlike mistakes, error corrections are actually not good for your progress.
Based on years of experience working with my students and using the acquisition approach, correcting someone does not help them retain (remember) the corrections for any length of time, but even worse, can emotionally block them from wanting to speak as just like what we discussed earlier, the fear of embarrassment or feeling stupid can make us give up.. and basically not speak at all!
Your job (and your tutor’s job) is to allow you to make mistakes naturally (which is inevitable) but NOT correct you.. or at least not in the ‘traditional’ sense!
The Key To ‘Making Mistakes’
Your only job is to ALLOW yourself to make mistakes without judging yourself. Your tutor’s only job is to NOT correct your mistakes like this, “No, this is wrong, this is actually how you say it.” Instead what he or she needs to do is simply say it correctly so you hear and read it the way it’s SUPPOSED to be said. That’s it. This is based on the acquisition Method.
So, Conclusion – Is it Ok To Make Mistakes In English?
Mistakes are a natural part of your English learning journey, it might feel unpleasant in the moment, but they really are the key (answer) to bridging that gap from where you are stuck right now to being fluent in English. Use mistakes as a powerful tool to help you get to fluency much faster. They really can be your best friend through this process and can really make things so much easier and quicker for you.