There are many categories of learners and there are hundrens of combinations we can create and experience, until we reach the point where we feel that we have accomplished our goal.
There are people that have mastered a craft completely for free and people who have spent a lot (and I mean a lot) of money and they have just a degree of a language they have never used or they don’t feel confident to believe they can speak it.
After twelve years of teaching and failures of myself I cannot even count, I think I have a positive reply to your question, weather you can learn Greek on your own, if you focus on the following four characteristics.
- Have the habit. Make time for it. We need to be real here. A teacher can show you a way and help you reach faster and confidently your goal. They also make the journey pleasant and fun. Your decision of having a teacher or not meets at a crucial point. The fact that you make the time for this, the fact that you add this habit in your every day life. No teacher can ever help you if you don’t make the time for it (I mean even five minutes a day), no desicion to use free sources can ever help you reach this goal. If you don’t make the time for it.
Repeat after me.
This is my habit from today. I practice it. Because this is who I am.
Practice gives us the confidence we need. End of the story.
The reply to your question is “Yes, you can learn Greek on your own. If you add Greek in your every day life, starting from today.
2. Be an independed learner. Either we have a teacher or not, we need to understand that we need to take initiative and have discipline in making the time and search for sources to expose ourselves.
I learn Greek. I don’t do this to impress anyone or have expectations, I do this because this is what entertains me.
An independed learner is not the most talented, the smartest or superior than anyone of us. They are those people who stimulate their curiosity and search for replies to the questions that arise.
It is as simple and as difficult as this sounds. I learn means I search. I welcome myself to the community of the learners and I adapt in their attitude. Because this is who I am.
3. Let the information in. Do this without judging. I have talked about this in my article Five Myths We Need To Overcome To Learn A Language about the fact that learning a language is an introvert hobby, while people think the opposite.
It takes a lot of time of letting the information in our brain. Sometimes, you need to see it like this:
Behave as if you have mastered the language. Listen to things, expose yourself to videos and podcasts as if you are fluent. Do it without judgement. Read. If you don’t let the information in, you cannot have the information out.
It is exactly like inhaling and exhaling.
If you don’t inhale the language, how can you exhale it? People feel dissapointed afterwards and they blame themselves.
This is a never ending circle that blocks the procedure of learning and has nothing to do with the procedure of learning.
It is more relative to confirming by habit what a teacher in the kindergarden had told us about us, than the procedure of learning.
4. The important part of getting obsessed with it. I don’t talk openly about it with my students, because I don ’t want to sound disrespectful towards someone’s problems.
But here is what I did to obtain some extra room in my brain, because my memory is very weak and I had to find room for new kind of knowledge so as to overcome my difficulty of being stuck and repeating the circle.
I took seriously my overthinking problem. It is an issue I have had since my early years of life, I obviously inheritated it by my grandma (my mum’s mother) and clearly immitated this behaviour by my mother and I lost the control of it.
We need to play with this and make it flexible.
If I remember what an idiot told me five years ago, I can remember new vocabulary.
Soon I was astonished when I understood that I didn’t lack memory, I needed to train myself how to play with the target of my focus.
Believe me it works.
Of course I don’t speak about real problems that worry us and that we need to fix and find solutions, I mean the extras we occupy our minds with, which in reality they prevent us from finding the real solutions to the real problems.
Learning something new can relax our mind so as to perform better towards our real problems.
Now you will ask , what I will win from this?
In the end of your life, you will have eliminated the time you spent in this unique life of yours wasting your imagination with creating fears an dialogues that never existed, rather than creating yourself. Also in this life you will have learned Greek.
If this is not a win, I don’t know what it is.
Worrying is creativity. We create something negative.
I fight with this every day. I don’t always win. But I come back.
I have students who have real problems, I mean…real problems, and they never cancel a meeting. Everytime I tell them we could leave it for next week they tell me “This is my way to cope”
I am very happy these people are in my environment, because they help me evolve strong and cope with my problems.
They make me a better student and stronger version of myself.
And this is the best part that makes me content in my job.
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Thank you for your time,
Efi Asvesti
Founder, Teacher & Copywriter
@MyGreekTeacher.com
