Following the advice I give in this guide you will undoubtedly make a lot of mistakes when you first start speaking a language. I'm certainly not offering a way to avoid these by trying to “absorb” a language in advance before trying to use it, as many courses suggest. (I'm sure there
are examples of this working, but results come about too slowly). By suggesting that you speak in the early stages, I'm actually opening you up to the possibility of making a huge amount of mistakes.
This is a necessary part of the process if you wish to make fast progress. You simply cannot avoid
making mistakes!
So, to make sure you maintain a positive attitude and keep up your momentum, you have to change your attitude towards mistakes. Rather than mistakes being the walls holding you back from speaking, they are simply bends in the road you must follow if you want to continue on your path.
The only way to make no mistakes is to not speak at all. Quite a lot of people try this approach!
I'm sure they can feel proud of having never made a single mistake in the foreign language... pity
about the minor detail of never trying and having no ability to converse other than perhaps as an
outside observer at best.
So, I suggest you try to actually to embrace making mistakes! The more mistakes you make, the more you are actually speaking, and more importantly, communicating - and the closer you are to your objective of speaking well.
Every language learner before you has made mistakes. No matter who they are. If I cared to count
them, I would have made tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of mistakes in speaking languages over the last seven years. If I only make a single mistake in a foreign language in one day, then I have not spoken enough.
great post, yet again :D
now to do part 2..