Why You Should Make Mistakes When Learning English?

No one wants to make mistakes. They are embarrassing and they make us feel bad. The problem is that the biggest mistake people make when learning English is, almost ironically, not making mistakes. When you are scared to make mistakes you actually hamper your ability to speak.

It’s understandable that you would feel afraid of making mistakes, especially in a school environment. A school makes you feel judged and teachers always respond negatively to mistakes. It reinforces the idea that mistakes are a bad thing. Students become afraid of speaking and they limit themselves to the words they know so they don’t make mistakes. They also respond negatively to their mistakes and end up becoming discouraged by them.

Mistakes should encourage you. You should embrace your mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes in the real world. Accept that it’s impossible to learn something, especially a language, without making a mistake. You should be comfortable with the fact that you’re just starting out and you’re going to make mistakes. Even fluent people are constantly making mistakes and learning new words and what old ones really mean. Mistakes allow you to refine your knowledge of a language as well as expand on it.

There is also the emotional factor to consider here. If you make mistakes and you feel bad about them then it’s going to push you to never even try. It’s going to make you hate learning the language. Why would you do something that you hate? You won’t. You’ll get fed up of failing and feeling miserable and you’ll give up. You also silence yourself by refusing to speak until you know how. Mistakes are how people improve and they always have been. Perfection is impossible. Don’t aim for it.

Instead of worrying about your mistakes you should learn from them. You should remember the mistakes that you make. Maybe even consider writing them all down. Then go back over the list of mistakes and write down the lesson you learned and how you can avoid making that mistake in the future. Eventually you’ll begin to embrace mistakes and it won’t even bother you when you make them.

When someone corrects you when you make a mistake they aren’t chastising you; they are helping you to learn. If you talk to someone and they tell you that you used a word wrong then congratulations; you’ve just learned how to use that word properly! Now the next time you go to use it you can use it properly and impress someone with your knowledge of that word. You shouldn’t be afraid of words that you don’t know and you shouldn’t be afraid of making mistakes.

There’s nothing wrong with making a mistake. The problem is not learning from them. The problem is being afraid of them. Accept them, embrace them, and learn from them. Before you know it you’ll be correcting other people on their mistakes! In the most polite way of course.