Luckily, in 2009 I came across Steve Kaufmann's book and the amazing LingQ.com website. It was such an eye opener to read that mistakes don't matter, that uncertainty is good for the brain, that language learning is like walking through fog. One day it will lift and there you are!
Thanks to the wonderful LingQ tutors and forum members I have now overcome my nearly pathological fear of speaking or of making mistakes and am happily working on my French and Spanish, am dipping into Russian, Italian and Swedish as I fancy. I have even started to learn a bit of Japanese. It seems that, for me at least, languages need a little rest from time to time in order to settle in the brain. They seem much stronger when I then return to them, the initial anxiety attached to them having gone. Absence makes the heart grow fonder? I am also using German much more than I used to do.
In this context I want to mention Vera F Birkenbihl, a prolific German author who advocates decoding languages before one attempts to read or to speak. I used her approach to get an overview of Arabic. I didn't follow her method too closely as I didn't have any audio material and at the time was already attending evening classes. For my next language, I might follow her instructions but using LingQ material. I suggested to her she might want to contribute her story to this project and I hope she will do it. She has a good tale to tell.
The greatest pleasure I have gained from continuing and stepping up my learning is that I can now enjoy French and Spanish literature, practically without recourse to a dictionary. I think this even outweighs my delight in being able to speak ´foreign´.
Another welcome side-effect of being an ardent LingQer is that I don't buy as many “Beginners XYZ” anymore. Life has become less expensive. I have found that I can learn a language from scratch with the resources on offer, especially now that word for word translations are available for some beginners material.
