Don't worry about where you are with your
English right now compared to where you’d like to be or where you think you
should be. The important thing is to see your goals clearly, and accept
where you are right now, because this is your starting point.
I once heard a yoga instructor tell the class, “Don’t look around
the room to see where everyone else is. That’s not your path. In order to
change you must accept where you are right now. That is your point of
reference.”
Maybe you would like to be fluent in English. First, notice where
you are on that trajectory. Now that you have your point of reference, envision
your goal. For example, you can focus your mind on speaking and understanding
English fluently and writing proficiently. Imagine yourself effortlessly having
a conversation in English with native speakers, and visualize yourself
corresponding in English easily via email at work and however you see it fit in
your life.
You can apply that strategy to just about any aspect of your life.
Maybe you would like to be healthier. Perhaps you're feeling uncomfortable in
your body, either regarding body image or physiological health issues. You can
do a self-observation exercise and take note of where you are right now and
what you are not happy with. Then you can envision yourself as you'd like to
be... how you want to look, how you want to feel, and be specific about the results
you want to see. Imagine yourself already there... but really feel what it's
like when you have met your goals. Now bring that same feeling back to your
reference point. The step-by-step goals over time that you need to accomplish
your overall vision become clearer. Make a plan of action for yourself and create specific,
measurable goals so you can celebrate the small successes along the way.
By knowing where you are right now, and clearly focusing on your
goals as you take steps to work toward them, you can have great success. Of
course, dedication and repetition are integral to the time period it takes to
reach your goals. Increased time and energy investment in your plan of action
produces faster results. So actually, it comes down to how much you really want
to accomplish your vision and how much time and
energy you have to put into it. Your effort will yield the fruition of your
work.
Sometimes it’s difficult, I know. It’s frustrating when you want
to express yourself but feel blocked by your lack of precision with vocabulary
or the amount of time it takes to retrieve the words you’re searching for in
your mind. It’s actually much easier to just let go of that block by releasing
your fear of making a mistake. It doesn’t matter if you make
mistakes. In fact, that’s what learning is about. We make mistakes and we learn
from them, when we have the courage to just do it.
Think of your private instruction time with your English coach as a safe haven. You can
make all the mistakes you want and you’ll never be judged by them. It’s the
perfect time to practice letting go of your inhibitions and letting your English flow. If you make
a mistake, you can receive the guidance of a compassionate and knowledgeable coach.
Eventually, with practice and repetition, you won’t be making those mistakes any more and your English will be
more fluent. You will notice that you feel confident enough to talk to anyone. Remember that
you are in the environment of someone who understands that the process of
learning a language is much like the journey through life. We stumble and
fall... and we get back up stronger than before.
Languages
have always been a fascination of mine. As a native speaker of
English, I never really had to speak another language, but I have always
wanted to speak and understand all languages. Perhaps that has to do with my love of human connection. The more languages I speak, the more opportunity I have to connect with other people and understand more about who they are.
I
started with Spanish in high school, and after traveling to Costa Rica my senior year, I
decided to declare Spanish as my major for my undergraduate degree. In college I made some friends who were students from Spanish-speaking countries and I traveled to Spain and studied abroad in Mexico for a semester.
Later I met a
group of Brazilians in Philadelphia where I lived at the time, and
through immersion I started learning Portuguese. After a few months of
hanging out with my Brazilian friends and listening to Portuguese, I
began to speak the language quickly and native speakers would often
think I was Brazilian. Surely, knowing Spanish gave me an advantage in
learning Portuguese, but I noticed something important in my process of
language learning. It took me years to learn Spanish in school, but my
Spanish improved drastically after spending time in Spanish-speaking
countries. Even though I was in Philadelphia where the native
language is English, by surrounding myself with native speakers of
Portuguese, it was much more effortless to learn the language. Eventually I signed up for some classes in Portuguese to learn how to read and write. But then life happened and I didn't really practice the language for years until I discovered Livemocha.com in 2008.
At the university, I
took a year of intensive Italian classes with a
wonderful professor who believed in teaching by immersion, so he spoke
only in Italian during class. He became my inspiration when I began teaching Spanish after graduation. At first the immersion approach was quite daunting, but
eventually it became easier. His technique was to repeat over and over
the phrases of the lesson. He went around the room having each of the
students respond to his prompt. Then he had the students practice the
same type of dialog in pairs. At the end of that year I went to Italy.
While I felt fairly prepared to interact in the target language in nearly any sort of conversation, I realized that all the hours spent in the
classroom paled in comparison to just a few days completely immersed in a
country or culture where the “real” language is used.
A
year later, I met a French guy who I ended up being married to for a few years.
I had taken a year of French my first year in college but it seemed so
difficult, that I gave up, almost resenting the language. After a few months with my
ex-husband, I realized that I needed to learn the language to
communicate with his family and to travel with him to France and
Senegal. His parents came to visit, and after several weeks of
hearing them interact in French, I was able to speak better than I ever
could after a year of French classes. I began to love the language once it became familiar and comfortable to me. After traveling to
French-speaking countries a few times with him, I was able to navigate the
language almost like a native. Of course, after the divorce I never
really practiced my French anymore, and now that 8 years have passed,
I’ve forgotten so much. That’s not to say it isn’t still there,
somewhere in my brain for me to access. If I want to resuscitate my French skills (just like my rusty Portuguese skills), I
would need to do some review with a software learning program or language classes and travel to a country where the language is spoken, or hang out with a
group of native speakers here in California.
I
have realized that the key to learning languages is immersion. In
order to learn a language well, it’s necessary to spend time speaking
with natives and observing them speaking amongst themselves.
Learning languages in schools and with software programs is fantastic for
learning the foundation of a language and for reinforcing vocabulary and
grammatical structures. It’s very important to have this didactic
practice to develop proficiency, as well as live speaking practice with
natives to develop fluency and the natural patterns of the language.
After
I graduated college, I started teaching Spanish in a high school.
Well, I had a brief job in between as Content Manager for a start-up online
Spanish bookstore. But as was the destiny of many of the internet
start-ups in the early 2000s, that particular one didn’t have the funds
to make ends meet, so by chance I ended up in teaching. As it turned
out, I loved teaching and I was a natural at it. What I most enjoyed
was the human connection with my students and feeling their happiness as
things were starting to click for them with the language.
As
many Americans do, I found a second job a couple years later. I
started teaching private English classes in the evenings to foreign
adults working in the Philadelphia area. I discovered how much I
enjoyed this work as another layer of connection with others opened up.
I’ve met people from all over the world and through them I’ve learned
new perspectives about life and our human existence. It has also been
very satisfying to watch my students progress on their journey of
language learning. They know that speaking English puts them at the top
of their respective industries, given that English is the international
language and it also opens them up to entirely new life opportunities
such as connection with others.
I
feel honored to help my students in this process of learning the
language of the culture I was born into. Growing up fascinated with
foreign languages, I never realized how fortunate I was to speak English
as my native language until recently. To this day, I really don’t
know how it turned out that English is the international standard, but
it is. If I can be of service to others by helping them improve their
English while sharing my patience, compassion and knowledge of learning
languages and combining that with my personal development coaching, then I feel that I am contributing to greater global awareness
and connectedness. I believe that the world is becoming more and more
connected and interdependent. Or perhaps our new technology is simply
allowing us to realize that it always was that way, that we never really were
separate from one another. We are all here at this time, sharing the
human experience on this beautiful planet. Teaching English is a
bridge that I use to contribute to the expansion of human connection and self-awareness.
I
am an English Language Instructor for Livemocha, the world’s largest
online language learning community with more than 11 million members and
growing. Livemocha’s coaching program launched in April 2011, and
since then I’ve been giving online private instruction sessions to people living all over the world.
It’s amazing that our technology
has reached the point where we are able to have live video conversations
via the internet, opening the walls of the virtual classroom to the
entire planet. I am grateful to have access to this technology because
it has opened up a whole new dimension for online learning and human
connection across borders.
I
have heard a lot of students say that they are timid to speak English,
or afraid to speak with natives because they feel their English is not
good enough. These students who have courageously shared their
vulnerability with me, have inspired me to write this blog as a
motivational guide for my students in their process of learning English.
It may also be valuable for anyone who is learning another language.
In
this blog I write about some universal issues in learning
languages and some interesting things about the English language and the American culture. You will find
personal development topics and life perceptions interwoven here in order to motivate students to know themselves better, take action toward their goals and build confidence in their
abilities.
My life philosophy has a lot to
do with the concept of fluidity and flowing through life, as I learned
from my teacher, don Américo Yábar, in the Andes Mountains of Peru as well as my studies in
Oriental medicine. There is a certain flow of the universe, and when we
are aligned with it, we move effortlessly through life. When we get
caught up in the struggle of resisting or fighting against the current,
life is difficult. But as soon as we let go and align ourselves life
begins to flow again. I strive to align myself with the flow to
optimize my life experience and it is my intent to help my students get
into the flow with their English studies and life outlook.
My private instruction sessions are student-directed and have the element of fluidity. I use a spontaneous approach to the topics of conversation and
practice in order to be in alignment with what is coming up for each
student at any moment. Everyone is working
on certain things in their work and personal life,
and basing our topics of conversation on those things allows the session to be relevant for each student. And so this blog is entitled, Flowing
in English.
Meredith Miller
English Language Coach
Personal Development Coach
Metamorphosis of Being
