Lean ar aghaidh - Continue on

Fáilte - Welcome to the seventh edition of Irish Learner Support Group!

Every month, I dive into topics to help Irish learners on their journey!

It is often said that mistakes are our greatest teachers.

While there are very many reasons I never successfully learned a language while in school, one of those reasons is something I have seen many learners struggle with.

The beginner loop.

You decide to learn a new language. Maybe you sign up for classes, or buy a textbook. You’re all ready to go, to dive head first into this new skill… and then the classes come to an end or you flip to the last page of a textbook…

In place of accomplishment, you’re filled with a sense of unease. It feels different for everyone, and of course, not everyone has this experience, but a lot of us do.

We may find ourselves feeling disappointed… I dedicated so much time, money and energy to this and I don’t feel like I know anything. We may find ourselves feeling shame… I should know this stuff.

Sometimes, that’s reason enough to give up. That’s what I did with Spanish.

And other times, it causes us to keep going back over the same information again and again. That’s what I did when I took ‘French 1’ three times.

So why doesn’t it work?

Isn’t the third time the charm? Should I have mastered all of basic French material by now?

Unfortunately, no.

While repetition is the backbone of memorization, language learning requires something else. Context.

Dia duit / Dia is Muire duit - Hello
______ is ainm dom - My name is ______
Is as ______ mé - I’m from ______

Sometimes when we focus on the baic vocabulary in a language, we find ourselves frustrated because we feel like we’re just reciting words. We know that dia duit means hello, but we know that because we are recalling the memory of that information.

We can feel frustrated and confused trying to remember if it’s Tá mé as… or Is as…. mé.

We feel lost and like we have no comprehension of the words we’re ‘learning.’

And truth be told, it’s because we don’t.

It can feel really scary to move forward when it feels like we don’t know every detail of how each word and phrase works. But it’s often through that process that we begin to unlock the meaning. When we move past just learning phrases and words, we begin to see more examples of the same structure. We begin to be taught why certain things are the way they are. We start to understand the context and logic of the language.

We also keep encountering the basic words and phrases. We still greet each other. We still introduce ourselves and ask how each other are. You will continue to get repetition, but you will also get context that will help you make sense of the beginner information.

I remember struggling with this myself. I left a beginners Irish class frustrated with myself for not understanding why sometimes there was an urú and sometimes there was a séimhiú. At that point, I was only even taught of their existence so I understood that there was a reason these random letters appeared. I wasn’t expected to master it. And yet, I found myself feeling like I needed to understand… but I couldn’t even hold a conversation yet!

Those little details came with time and the things that felt the most confusing began to feel like second nature.

You can’t paint the walls of a house you haven’t built yet.

The beginning of anything can feel like we’re missing key details, but what’s important is that the structure is there. We will only know where the window goes when we know what the wall looks like.

I could have taken the approach I did with French and kept learning the same information again and again until it made sense to me… but what Irish taught me is that I didn’t need to hear the same information for it to make sense. I needed to hear what came next.

Available at GaeilgeiMoChroi.com

So is there ever a reason to repeat content?

Yes! There are several reasons when it benefits us to repeat a level or course.

Sometimes even the best teacher or resource isn’t a good fit for every student. In that case, it is a good idea to try again! But don’t worry, your previous effort didn’t go to waste. You’re starting again with more context which can often help information ‘click’ more easily, especially when it’s presented to us in a way that may be more suitable for us.

Maybe it wasn’t the best time for you to be learning a language, and that’s okay. Sometimes life happens and we have other things that demand all of the time, energy and attention we had been hoping to use on languages. That’s okay! Languages will always be there.

If you have limited access to resources, repeating the same level of a course (especially live group courses) can help you get different things out of it! No one ever comes out of a class and understands everything. This lets you focus on the things you may have missed and if you are in a group setting, you can learn a lot just from interacting with your peers.

So if there are times when it makes sense to repeat things, why did I say it should be avoided?

The difference is mindset.

If we walk in place, we do not move down the path.

If we try to sprint ahead faster than our legs can carry us, we will fall.

But if we take small steps forward, we will move forward with time.

There are times when for one reason or another, we really do need to hear information again. Only when we make the decision of how to relearn or revise lessons based on self awareness, rather than fear or insecurity, we can use those steps backwards to move forward.

Ready to take the next steps?