Why is it important to make mistakes when learning a language?

And how do we overcome this fear of failure?

One of the areas of learning English that holds so many of my students back is their fear of making mistakes. This is especially true of my adult learners and I even see this trait in myself when I learn something new. However, as with learning any new skill, it’s completely natural to make mistakes along the way. In fact, making mistakes when learning a language is not only normal, but actually essential to improve your skills.

Let’s take a look at why making mistakes are useful in your language learning journey.

“Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow.”

-Mary Tyler Moore

The main reason why making mistakes is so important is because it’s a natural part of the learning process. In fact, I don’t think it’s possible to learn anything without making mistakes. Think about a child learning to walk, they repeatedly fall over again and again when they first start learning this new skill. But over time, they gain the strength, coordination and balance needed to take one step, then a second and finally, to be able to walk unaided for longer and longer distances. But even then, as they get better with their walking, they might still fall over. And that’s perfectly natural.

Learning a language is similar, in that we need to have the knowledge of vocabulary and grammar to start putting together sentences to express our thoughts and feelings. At first our sentences are quite simple but as we experiment and make mistakes, with some correction and help, we start to be able to express ourselves quicker and easier.

“The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake- you can’t learn anything fom being perfect.”

-Adam Osborne

If we think of a child learning to speak a language, this is exactly how they progress. At first they use very simple words and sentence structures and with more exposure to the language, as they learn more vocabulary and grammatical structures, they are able to start creating more complex sentences. Do they make mistakes? Of course. They make many! But this is how they learn.

As adults, it’s very common to feel nervous or self-conscious about making mistakes because we’re conditioned into thinking that making mistakes is bad. We’re already so accomplished in many areas of our lives that the thought of not being good at something, of having to go back to the very basics and to struggle to understand and be understood makes us not want to even try. But it’s in the very act of trying, of making mistakes that we learn and improve.

My suggestions to my students (and also to myself as I improve my Mandarin language skills) is to not take things so seriously. To enjoy making mistakes, to see if we can notice which mistakes we make and then to start noticing when we make them less and less. And to focus more on the process of learning instead of the end result of being able to speak the language.

Making mistakes is an essential part of learning a language so we might as well embrace it and have some fun along the way. Get in touch if you’d like to learn more from me or find out more here about my one to one classes.