We make many mistakes that hinder our progress while learning a language and often rely on our intuition. However, when it comes to language learning, intuition can be one of your biggest enemies. 

What appears intuitively logical can slows you down and cause bad habits. These are some of the most common mistakes that people make that can drastically slow down your progress.

1. Fear of Making Mistakes

Perfectionism is one of the greatest obstacles in language learning. A problem for many students is that they expect perfection as soon as they start learning, but mistakes are a necessary step and an excellent learning opportunity, not a weakness.

2. Aimlessly Learning a Language

When you learn a language, you need a clear goal in mind. Ideally, you can imagine something in the near future, a scenario where you can speak the language and it can prove useful.

Learning a language takes a lot of time and energy, and having a clear goal in mind is mandatory for your motivation.

3. Waiting Too Long to Speak

In foreign language learning, there is constantly an urge to wait as long as possible before trying to speak.

You don’t want to miss pronunciation or come across as inept, and that sounds logical. Why start before you can form a grammatically correct sentence?

However, this is another hindrance and the sooner you start speaking and making mistakes, the sooner you’ll learn. Waiting too long can cause incorrect grammar habits to set in, and it can be difficult to correct them later on.

Set Logic Aside

If you think about these mistakes, you realize that children never make any of them while learning their native language. They just babble on, making up words as they go, without caring about mistakes.

So try to incorporate this mentality in your learning process, set logic aside and approach learning with an open mind, by embracing mistakes and allowing them to teach you.

Author: Milica Madić, freelance blog/article writer from Serbia, with experience in teaching and working with young learners.