Positive thinking

Many people steer clear of learner languages as they believe it to be too difficult, or that they are no good at languages, or because they didn’t enjoy language lessons at school. Even those who do decide to learn a language often so it as something difficult and may not believe that they’ll ever get to grips with the language.

Such negative thinking doesn’t help. Instead it’s better to think positively, and to believe that you can learn a language. You don’t have to be a gifted linguist or have some kind of special talent for languages, or to be a genius. In fact anybody can learn a foreign language – you need motivation, dedication, patience and a fair amount of time.

There will be things you find difficult – perhaps the pronunciation, remembering the words and/or some aspects of the grammar – but don’t let these things put you off. In fact you may find it helpful to not worry about the more complex aspects of the language at first and to focus on learning the easier bits. You can go back to the more challenging parts later, by which time you will have a come across at least some of them and will have a degree of familiarity with them, even if you’re not sure what they are or how they work.

So remember – you can learn a language, it is possible, it won’t necessarily be easy, but it’s not horribly difficult either.