For some of you learning a language, communication is your primary goal. For others, it is the ability to understand the world around you a little better. Both are good and valid, and if you are comfortable that your strategies for language learning give you what you want, then they are valid too! No matter what anyone says.

There is a lot of pressure from within the language learning community to attain fluency measured by the ability to speak fluently – including a lot of YouTube videos of polyglots that alternately inspire would-be language learners, and reinforce their lack of self-belief. The Speak from Day One method is certainly not to everyone’s taste, but it does drive home the idea that language-learning is ultimately about speech – especially your own.

But when people give advice it is often just advice for people whose goals and habits resemble their own. People take their own experiences and make them general – because it feels validating! I’m a chronic advice-giver, trust me. (For more detail, see this song.) But your priorities in the language learning process should be organised according to your own goals and with sympathy for your own ways of learning – for what you actually find valuable.

So what do you want out of learning a language?!

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If you don’t want to speak yet (or at all!)

I have been learning Hindi for years but almost never speak it, partly through lack of opportunity but mostly because I’ve been pretty happy just listening. It has been more important to me to pay attention to others than it has been to be heard by them. Combining listening with other activities may make you progress quicker, in the sense of being able to understand better, but whether or not you do anything else, listening and paying attention to material you really value is the good of language learning. It is not just learning, it is using the language. I have found it hugely valuable!

In fact, for most (but not all) of the languages I learn being able to listen and understand has been my primary goal. As a result, however, my Hindi speech is a stilted and infrequent. I take a a while to find vocabulary, so haven’t felt confident doing it in conversation with a native speaker.

But here’s the great thing: now I have Hindi-speaking flatmates and I have been trying to talk to them, and the rate at which I am turning words I understand into words I can use in speech is really exciting, and faster than it could have been without the underpinning I have acquired through so much listening. (As I have started to be more creative, I have found this method useful to get me forming more sentences and to remind me of words I have never used – if you are beginning to speak maybe try it, but do what works for you!)

If you are just starting to learn a language and you are too nervous to speak, or just not motivated to, that is absolutely OK! If you want to speak later, you will have given yourself an excellent grounding for it. If you never want to speak, you never have to! As I have said over and over, it is way more fun to be bad at a language than not to speak (read: know) it at all!

If you really want to speak…

If, however, you really want to speak, find ways to do it! If fear is too demotivating in a public setting and you can afford to find a tutor, or just find a language buddy, then that is a great alternative.

If being on the spot is scary, I suggest allowing yourself to use translation technology. For Russian I found it very useful to be able to use Google Translate whilst talking to my tutor – some teachers will complain when you do this but I was way more motivated and way less nervous when I had that option. If I tried not to rely on it too heavily and always considered the words to double check that they are appropriate, the result was to speed up conversation while also exposing me to new vocabulary and grammar points, and I don’t think that’s any bad thing!

Oh! Also talking to yourself is great, in whatever language. I mean, I guess I should add the “advice is for the advice-giver” caveat, but who doesn’t love chatting to themself a bit? It’s a great clarifier.

But not quite yet…

If speaking is too scary for now but you still want to prepare to communicate in the language, try combining a lot of listening with a lot of writing. It is especially good if you can have your writing corrected by native speakers on a site like italki (or anywhere else you can find them! I find italki is a really great resource when you don’t know where else to look for correction or are worried that people are being too polite to correct you).

I reckon you could talk to yourself too. Also, while I know I would find asking for comments on a recording of me more scary than actually talking face to face, I know that there are many people who don’t feel the same. Maybe see what YouTube can do for you!

What it all comes down to is this: there are lots of ways to get what you want from a language. Maybe for you that will involve speaking, maybe it won’t. Listen to yourself before you listen to anyone else, and find strategies that work for you!