Enjoying Content In My Native Language Is Helping Me Learn Languages
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
- I gave up many years of my life to language learning and almost refused to watch or enjoy content in my own native language. Today I want to discuss why I changed that mentality, and how enjoying content in my native language is helping me to learn languages.
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TOTALLY get this. I had the exact mindset of "I'm a failure if I'm using my native language English" so I almost never enjoyed English books, music, youtube creators, etc. I didn't even want to consider dating anyone who's native language was English, since I was so concerned with "losing" my level and "falling behind". Not giving a care and watching whatever I want, in any language I want including English, has given me such freedom and self trust in myself, about learning languages the way that I want. When we realize that, we start to really build our langs around our lives, instead of bending over backwards to make our lives fit around languages, leading us to making decisions filled with unnecessary pressure. Thanks so much for talking about this!
Absolutely! I'm glad you enjoyed it. And now that I'm in a routine, im gonna be catching up on your last couple of videos I've missed first thing in the morning! You always have such a level headed nature, and I love your content as well!
I’m also in the process of learning to find the right balance. I have three very time consuming passions. Books, video games, and language learning. The problem is I tend to go all out on one and completely ignore the others for a bit and then switch. This is especially detrimental with language learning because I lose a lot of progress each time I switch focus hobbies (or languages - I have a couple of those I switch between as well). I am regularly bombarded by that same, TL or nothing philosophy in many of the language learning spaces I’m in and it’s definitely negatively impacted me because I just kept flipping between all or nothing. This month I’ve been doing something different. I’m committing an hour a day to Spanish and then spending time reading books, playing video games with my husband, etc… some days I’ve chosen to do more, like this past Saturday when I did around 2.5 hours, and other days I get my 1 hour in and then I switch to a game for the rest of the night, or a book, or whatever. And I’m LOVING it. I’m so much more motivated to keep up with my Spanish each day when it doesn’t mean sacrificing my other passions. It won’t be the most efficient method of learning Spanish, but it will be more efficient than what I’ve done so far 😂 also, as my level increases enough for games and books in Spanish to be easy enough to be fun rather than only “work”, I think my total amount of immersion will naturally increase, but right now trying to force myself to play in Spanish or read my favorite authors new book in Spanish would be frustrating and that’s never helpful for learning.
As always, great video! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It’s nice to not feel alone in this mindset.
What's great about having fun and allowing yourself to do these other things, it'll make Spanish feel fun in the process because you won't think of it as "Ah man, time to do spanish and miss out on the world"
I just started up Hogwarts: Legacy a day or so ago, I'm already 5 hours in. Gotta have fun!
Spot on! I have the same hobbies and I also can't satisfy all three of them on a single day. 😅I started Spanish with 2h+ per day but it was too much in the long run and I soon struggled to get any input in for 4 weeks or so. I needed to adjust my goals and expectations and I'm now also on 1h per day and it works out so much better for me as well. Thanks for sharing!
@@SeaboltSpeaks And it even has Spanish audio, so it might not be a bad idea at all to first play it in English and maybe come back again in the future to play it in Spanish. This might make it even more comprehensible because of the familiarity with the content. Maybe that's what I'll do, haven't bought it yet.
Yes, amen. I have never really adapted that mindset that everything you do in life should be as fully in your target language as possible, which I'm thankful for. For me, the more I try to force something, the less I want to do it, so if I were to try to force myself to connect every hobby I do or all content I watch to Korean or Mandarin or whatever, then I would very quickly start to resent that language or language learning as a whole.
I picked up the hobby of following legal livestreamers on TH-cam about two years ago, so almost every day I'll watch some form of content related to that topic in English. Do I resent that "wasted English time"? No. It's a fun hobby I enjoy to decompress from work. Do I also often study languages and binge watch shows in those languages? Yes. That's another fun hobby I enjoy completely separately from English legal livestreams.
I appreciate learning about the most effective way to learn languages from an intellectual standpoint, and I can understand why people want to optimize their language learning to make progress faster, but becoming too obsessive about it just drains the fun out of things for many people and just causes them to burn out.
9:20 ESL here, and yeah, this happens a lot. Sometimes I think in english and have to resort to google translator to tell me how to express myself in my native language (portuguese, that is) hahaha.
Yo también estoy estudiando español, pero no soy fluido.
cheers from sudamerica, amigo !
I like to think of English content as "preparation" for Spanish lol. For example, I've been reading Sapiens in English, and listening to the audiobook as passive immersion in Spanish. it's a nice balance because I still feel like I'm able to stay "in the loop" and pursue (otherwise incomprehensible) education in my native language, and later passively immerse in that same resource to fortify whatever knowledge I've gained from it.
Reading Sapiens in Spanish was surprisingly easy because of the amount of scientific terms that share common routes with English
That's the way I'm looking at it too. It's preparing me for future use of something!
"If you're not watching anything in your target language you're a failure" xD what a toxic mindset.
Very