The Thoughtful Language Learner: Why Self-Awareness is the Key to Your Success

Table of Contents

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1. Tired of Feeling Frustrated and Discouraged

2. Why Self-awareness is the Solution

Part I – Learning Styles

3. Feeling Energized or Feeling Drained

4. Face Value or Reading Between the Lines

5. Using Your Eyes, Ears and Mouth

6. Following the Path or Paving Your Own

Part II – Learning Attitudes

7. The Stories We Tell Ourselves

8. Rethinking Fear and Anxiety

9. What to Do When You Don’t Feel Like It

Part III – Learning Rhythms

10. How Good Rest Leads To Good Learning

11. Attaining Effortless Concentration

12. Discover Yourself and Enjoy the Journey

Self-Awareness Tools

Notes

About the Author

Copyright © 2018 by Makoto Tokudome

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.

www.mtokudome.com

The Thoughtful Language Learner: Why Self-Awareness is the Key to Your Success / Makoto Tokudome

ISBN 9781386763918

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And now, onto the book...

1. Tired of Feeling Frustrated and Discouraged

August 2006. It was another hot summer afternoon in Los Angeles, California. As usual, I was in my beat-up Corolla sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 405 freeway trying to get home from work. I was rubbing the back of my neck while staring at the bumper of the BMW in front of me. All of my listening attention was focused on the CD playing in my car. I desperately wanted to pull over and stop on the side of the road. Not because I had an emergency, but because I wanted to write something down.

Do you remember how to say, ‘I want to eat something’? the CD played. I closed my eyes for a split second and blurted out, ngo soeng sik faan. After a short pause, the audio continued, ngo soeng sik jat di je. I pounded my fist on the steering wheel. I said the wrong thing again.

Two months earlier, I had come to a huge milestone in my life. I had proposed to my girlfriend. We had met in college and had journeyed from friendship to now engagement. Although I was Japanese-American, my wife-to-be was Chinese-American. Specifically Cantonese-American. Her parents spoke English, but I had set a goal for myself to be able to converse in Cantonese by the time our big day arrived. I was hoping to impress her family and be seen as a worthy suitor for such a wonderful daughter.

This wasn’t my first time learning a second language. Although I was born and raised in the U.S. and I consider English to be my mother tongue, I grew up with mostly Japanese being spoken in the home. My parents also sent me to a Japanese school every Saturday to help me maintain my heritage language. I reluctantly attended until my parents finally let me quit in the seventh grade. In college, I had also taken some Mandarin Chinese classes. Yet this was the first time I had taken up language learning without any class or teacher. A week earlier I had picked up this audio CD course from the bookstore. On the cover, the program promised to deliver one of the most accurate and effective methods to learn a language. A 30-minute lesson for each day. I simply had to listen and repeat different sets of sentences and dialogues. Each lesson would build on the words and phrases of the previous lessons.

How would you say, ‘No thank you, but I want to drink something’? the CD continued. I opened my mouth, M goi, do ze. Ngo soeng jam jat di je. A few seconds later the recording played, "M soeng, do ze. Daan hai ngo soeng jam jat di je". I clenched my hand into a fist. I’m never gonna be able to memorize all these sentences, I muttered to myself. Why is there no transcript for this course? I was on lesson ten and about ready to pull out my hair. This Cantonese program had come with a box of only audio CDs. No accompanying book, list of vocabulary words, or dialogue transcript. Just eight audio CDs.

As I kept driving, all I could think about was the fact that my brain was like a sponge, a leaky sponge. As much as I tried to soak up these Cantonese words and sentences, I kept feeling like I was losing them faster than I could absorb them. What I had learned in the previous lessons was not going in my long-term memory. Was there something wrong with me? Why was it so difficult? It was so humbling because I kept feeling like I wasn’t making any progress. But, I kept thinking that I would have a fleeting chance if I could just see the transcript or write down the words that were giving me particular trouble. Maybe learning a language during my commute was a bad idea.

Looking back at this experience I wish I knew back then what I know now. I am a visual learner, and it was a terrible idea for me to study a language primarily through auditory input. Trying to do it while driving was also terrible for my focus and flow. Now as a language teacher and language coach, I realize that we all come to the learning process with our own styles, attitudes and rhythms. Being aware of these differences makes all the difference and helps us optimize our learning to suit our individual needs.

The Language Learning Market

Like me, maybe in the past, you’ve tried studying a foreign language. Perhaps you made some initial progress but you quickly hit some setbacks and discouragements. As the learning got more and more difficult, you started to have doubts. Maybe you picked the wrong textbook or learning resource. Maybe your approach to language learning was faulty. Or maybe you felt like you just don’t have the knack for language learning. Ultimately, you just wished you could have a promise or a guarantee that success would be possible.

In fact, many publishers and companies draw on these fears and desires to market their products. They claim that their language learning methods are the most natural or the most ideal.  They give dozens of testimonials of learners who have used their products and succeeded. They pressure us to believe that if we don’t buy their products, we won’t be able to succeed. We end up buying more programs or resources that we don’t necessarily need. And it’s no wonder that they try hard to market their products. The language learning market is a big market. As of 2015, the ...worldwide language learning market (all languages combined) reached $54.1 billion.¹ There are hundreds of companies that are vying for a piece of this pie.

There are so many language learning programs and resources on the market. How can we know which one is right for us? Even if other learners have had success, how can we be sure that it will work for us? Is there really an ideal textbook or course that we should be using? What if the language learning program we choose or the learning method we use isn’t the most important factor for success. What if there was something much more important. And what if there was something we could do right now, that was essentially free, that could immediately increase our chances of language learning success?

This book is about how to become a more thoughtful and self-aware language learner. My big idea for this book is that cultivating self-awareness can be the single most important thing you can do for your language learning. Even if you have every language resource or program at your disposal, you will not succeed in language learning without