When you've never studied foreign language and you also happen to be an adolescent - anxiety runs high! Aside from just being uncomfortable, this is what the profession refers to as "affective filters." Identified and described by Stephen Krashen decades ago, affective filters are mental blocks that prohibit comprehensible input and negatively impact one's ability to thrive in a foreign language setting. The piece that many may not realize is that they can affect novice learners and advanced learners alike.
When your affective filters run high, your language learning ability is low. Here they are at a glance:
- anxiety or stress from not recognizing what you hear
- embarrassment, low self-esteem, low confidence
- fear of making a mistake
- fear of speaking in front of peers (or colleagues)
- fear of failure
- fear of not being able to speak with perfection or flow
All of these things can manifest themselves in the classroom setting and are easily recognizable during any Q&A activity I've ever done or observed. The confident student doesn't think twice upon being asked something in the target language and simply responds, but the student who lets the affective filters get the best of them shuts down or shuts off actual listening (and thus comprehension). These students answer with an interrogative or can't answer at all because they have convinced themselves they couldn't do it... before they even started or attempted to.
While all of this is quite normal, allowing affective filters to get the best of you can make or break the classroom experience. Check out these tips in taming your affective filters:
Tips - they may sound simple, but they work!
1) Remain positive with a "can-do" attitude - perhaps easier said than done, but positivity works!
2) Keep Open Ears - don't shut down your brain or shut off your hearing from actually listening!
3) Mind over matter - psyche yourself into it! Focus on what you can do, read, hear, recognize, etc.
4) Trust your teacher! Good foreign language teachers don't expect perfection - they simply want effort! Meet them half way and your experience in foreign language could go from scary to amazing! Your teacher knows you are learning and you don't know everything - that is okay! If you sit in an immersion style class and participate and walk away only getting 50% or 30% - that's okay too - the better question is did you try? Did you continue participating even though you didn't understand 100%? If the answer is yes, then you did your job! Keep it up and comprehensible input will only increase while anxiety decreases, and that 50% will rise to 80%!
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Second Language Acquisition research shows that just putting on a (genuinely) happy face can significantly impact your performance in learning a foreign language.
If you're just starting to learn Spanish (or any other foreign language) and you're 13 or OLDER - then your chances are already down by half! Sorry if this is discouraging, but the optimal gap of acquiring & retaining foreign language is from birth to age 7. This means, once kids hit puberty, their chances decrease significantly and are no better than a 40 or 60 year old in learning a language. Therefore, it's even more important to go into the Spanish learning experience (whether it be a class, workshop, or professional development) with an OPEN mind, OPEN ears, and a SMILE! :)
