Why mindset is KEY to successful language learning

Someone asked me to do a video about Mindset, the book by Carol Dweck, and to talk about the mindset that leads to success in language learning. So I'm going to talk a bit about her book. I'm going to talk about some other self help books that are related, and then I'm going to give you what I consider to be the six keys to a successful language learning mindset.

So the book itself, Mindset, Changing the Way You Think to Fulfill Your Potential, million copy bestseller. I found it very difficult to read because essentially she says the same thing over and over again. She sort of says that, uh, even in preschool years, we are either sort of, Free determined to be what she calls fixed mindset people or growth mindset people.

And if we are praised too much for being smart, or if we develop the kind of feeling that we have to be perfect in everything we do, then we are fixed. Mindset people. But if we recognize that difficulties and hard work, criticism and all of this leads to growth, then we are growth mindset people.

But first and foremost, I feel it's very difficult to categorize people in this way. I think people that I've come across are to some extent, you know, fixed or sensitive, a bit. To criticism and yet at the same time, they want to grow and improve.

So I'm not sure that people can be, you know, divided in that way. I did a bit of research to see if there was any, uh, you know, brain research, neurological neurocognitive studies, which would indicate that there was such a distinction. And I found one reference, but again, lots of circular reasoning there, which says that growth.

Mindset people respond better to some kind of stimulus, but it was sort of circular in that because they respond in this way, therefore they are growth mindset people, not clear that there is this clear distinction of, of people. The other problem with her book and with many self help books is that the same thing is kind of repeated over and over again. I got the audio book as well because my wife doesn't like to listen to my Persian and Arabic when we're driving in the car.

I tried to get something that we can both listen to and we both found it very hard to hear. I couldn't get through her 200 pages, so I started looking for short form summaries on the internet, which I found, which gave me a sense of what was there and kind of confirmed that there wasn't an awful lot there. But it led me to a few other books, which I want to mention before I get into what I consider to be the six keys of a successful language learning.

The first one is Drve by Daniel Pink. He talks about how people have a need for autonomy, a sense of purpose, relevance in their lives. And I think this is true.

And I think that's another major problem I have with dividing people into Fixed mindset people and growth mindset people. I think we all have similar urges, similar needs, and this has been described as a sense of flow. And we have a task that is perhaps a little bit difficult for us, and we're able to manage that task, and then we get a sense of flow.

Being in that state of flow where almost effortlessly, totally absorbed by the task at hand, achieving some success in the task, we achieve a level of happiness and satisfaction. And I think all of us are capable of achieving that. In fact, to some extent for Carol Dweck to suggest that whether we're fixed mindset people or growth mindset, people is determined.

Preschool, that means we have no opportunity to change, which sort of goes against the idea that we can through, you know, a willingness to change, which presumably is why she wrote her book, we can alter our belief system so that we are more inclined to believe that we can improve, that we can learn, that we can accept criticism and so forth. And I think we can. I've talked before about the book, the mind and the brain and how We can influence our belief system.

I also mentioned the book by, um, the Danish writer, Think Less and Live More, where again, talks about this metacognitive therapy, whereby our belief system can influence how we deal with things in our lives. So I tend not to be of the sort of predetermined you are type A or type B school, which is more of the behavioral side of things. I think that there are a lot of things that go on in our brain, which we are starting to understand better and better.

And that we can influence what happens there. Another book that I discovered in summary is The Happiness Advantage by Sean Etcher. I hope that's how he pronounces his name.

And his point is that happiness is based on the idea that we anticipate good things happening to us. We have an ability to predict what's going to happen. When we have that feeling that we can anticipate or predict something positive happening, then of course we put effort into learning, for example, because we achieve happiness in the thought that we have some control over our lives.

He talks about an internal locus of control. We feel we're in control, and this gives us a sense of happiness. And I think the idea of happiness, as a major, Drver of our motivation, driver of our actions is an important concept.

And I'll get back to that when I talk about my six keys to a successful language learning mindset. The first key is curiosity. No one is going to learn a language if they aren't curious about that language at some level.

They may be curious about the culture, about the country. They may be curious about the language itself. They may feel a need to learn the language because of work, because of relatives, but if they aren't curious about the language itself, they won't be very successful.

So number one key is curiosity. That's what gets you going. Now the second key to a successful language learning mindset.

The second is confidence. You have to believe you can do it. You have to say, I can learn this language.

If you don't think you can learn the language, you will not learn the language. If you don't think you can climb to the top of the mountain, you won't even get halfway. So it's very important to have that sense that you can do it.

And in that regard, we can all do it. Some may learn better. Some may learn more slowly, but we can all learn.

So that confidence that we can learn is extremely important. The third mindset is one of. Perseverance or resilience, you will encounter difficulties.

You will encounter texts that are too difficult. You will find yourself in situations where you can't remember the words you need, or where you can't understand a conversation, or where you disappoint yourself. You can't quit.

You have to keep going. Because, again, as Carol Gleck points out, even going through the difficulty, you are learning. You have to believe that you're constantly learning, and if you believe you're constantly learning, you, therefore, Believe that you will eventually get to a level.

A level may not be as good as someone else. And again, referring back to Carolyn Dweck's book, you don't have to be the best. You just have to keep going and you will eventually reach your goal.

Fourth key of a successful language learning mindset is to accept uncertainty. You will be in situations that you can't control. If someone says something to you that you don't understand, uh, you're going into a conversation and you're not sure how you're going to do.

All of these things are part of that learning process. of learning the language. If you totally owned the language, if it was as good as your native language, you wouldn't be learning it any longer.

So we have to accept uncertainty. We have to accept not fully understanding as we're reading something, and not fully understanding as we're listening to something. Getting things right one time and wrong the next time.

All of this we have to learn to accept. So to that extent, with reference to Carol Dweck's book, you can't be sort of fixed mindset. You have to be growth mindset where you accept all of the uncertainty and errors that are going to come your way.

Number five key is have a mindset where you can visualize and I was playing golf the other day and someone said that it's important to visualize the golf swing. And he said that he heard somewhere that they did a test where they took, say, 10 college basketball players in the States. And, uh, 10 of them were told to practice, uh, throwing free throws for a week.

And the other group was asked to daily visualize the golf swing. It's throwing accurate free throws. And it turns out at the end of the week, the group that was visualizing performed better than the group that had been practicing.

Now in language learning, again, you visualize yourself becoming better and better in the language. Try to picture yourself a Frenchman or a Chinese person or, you know, Japanese or Brazilian. Try to visualize yourself as one of them.

That will reduce the amount of resistance you have to the language. And it will enable you to progress more quickly. So the ability to visualize is a big part of a successful language learning mindset.

And finally, we learn languages for ourselves. So it doesn't matter what other people say about you. You're not performing in front of other people.

You're learning for your own reasons. I'm quite content with my Arabic, which I don't speak very well or Persian, but I'm able to participate in the language by, you know, following news programs, which I can import into LingQ and I can. Study in sentence mode at my pace slowly, but I'm doing it for myself.

I'm not moving very quickly, but I'm taking my time. I am enjoying being in the moment. As I hear someone from Lebanon talk about the situation in the Middle East, for example, some people are totally motivated to speak all the time and try out their language wherever they can.

A large part of my motivation comes from, you know, listening and reading, but that's not to say that I am not. Not also open to the pleasure of exchanging some words in the language with someone who speaks that language. For example, uh, there's this great Canadian superstore, which is a supermarket here in Vancouver, in North Vancouver, and there are a lot of Iranian employees there.

So whenever I go there, I'm sort of looking forward to perhaps being able to use my Persian. So I went and bought whatever I had to buy and I look for a checkout. Lane where there's a person with dark hair that might be, uh, Persian.

So I move into this lane and there's this, uh, young lady there. So I speak to her in Persian. I say, "Hālé shomā chetor-é?

" And she's, Oh, no, I don't understand. She's Romanian. Well, I remembered a bit of my Romanian because I had learned Romanian.

And in order to go to Romania back, you know, seven, eight, nine years ago, I trotted out whatever little bit I was able to retrieve. She was delighted. She said, you made my day.

So then what happens? I go home. Now I've been motivated.

Jeez, I got to get back to my Romanian. So I grabbed my Assimil Romanian. I start doing my Romanian mini stories at LingQ because that, that inspires me.

It's, it's a reason that came along out of the blue and what's significant about that, other than it becomes now a source of motivation. One key thing that happens to us in life is that little sparks can come to us and make us happy. You know, I'm not a very good golfer, but if I play a good game of golf, I'll just feel happy, you know, when I'm doing the dishes, I'm happier, I'm happy.

Little things like that, that we're not aware of why they make us happy. But they make us happy and that little spark could come from anywhere. And so we need to be open to that.

And when those things happen to our language learning for very personal reasons, that can become a source of motivation. So we can all have our own different reasons. We learn languages for our own reasons.

Sort of to summarize, I think it's a little bit, um, almost pessimistic view to say that we are either fixed mindset or growth mindset. I think we are all a bit of both. We have different levels of talent, but we can all maximize the potential that we have.

And to some extent, even our level of motivation can vary. So some people are more motivated. Some people are more sensitive to some extent, these sort of characteristics exist in all of us, but nothing prevents us from having an attitude, a willingness to change our belief system, a willingness to accept criticism, a willingness to try harder to expose ourselves to the criticism of others, speaking a language that we don't speak very well.

We can all improve. So to what extent some of us fall into the camp of fixed mindset people or growth mindset people, it really doesn't matter. It's what we do with these mindsets that matters.

It's what we do with our talent, with our attitudes. That's what matters. And with that, we can slowly develop more of a growth mindset and achieve our goals, not only in language learning, but also in other activities.

Thank you for listening.