Emotion (1) - Fear

Learning English is more than just memorizing a vocabulary bookand mastering the right grammar. It also arouses different emotions during the learning process. Personally, I experience 3 types of emotions repeatedly. They are fear, embarrassment and joy.  Recognizing and managing these emotions are essential for learning English more effectively.

Fears:

Fear has always been a constant emotion throughout my English learning experience.The fear of English dictations, tests and exams were part of my childhood. The worst of all was the fear of failure. I was scared that I scored lower than 50% for my dictations, tests and exams. I was scared that I would end up at the bottom of my class, which I actually was much until secondary school. I was also scared that my parents would beat me up when they knew my results.

Generally, people react to fears in 3 ways: freeze, flight or fight. Freeze means that people have lost the ability to react to threats which cause their fears. Flight means that people run away from threats or avoid facing threats. The last one is to fight them. Extra energy is generated to overcome threats. I was in the flight mode when I studied in Hong Kong.

I avoided writing, reading and listening English, until I came to Australia to study year 9 all by myself. I had no choice but to confront my fear of English, otherwise I could not even survive a day in this foreign land. The first day when I arrived, I needed to buy some basic supplies from a local store. I had some specific items in mind before I went into the store. I used a few key words and lot of body language to communicate with a shopkeeper in there. Although I spent about 30 minutes to get few items, my fear of using English was almost completely gone during the shopping process. WHY?

When I have a specific purpose in mind, English becomes secondary. As long as I can use English to achieve what I want, I do not need to worry about getting my grammar perfect. Then, I realize that my fear of English actually stems from the need of meeting other’s expectations. Most of the time, these expectations are well beyond what reality requires me to deliver.

Of course, I am not saying that we should not learn to use proper English. However, knowing our purposes of learning English are far more important than just mastering grammar and filling our vocabulary  bank. A clear purpose defines the levels of English we need to achieve. It stops us from using over-complicated sentences and words. There is no point in talking like a professor, when you order a meal in a local restaurant or talk to your friends over the phone.

The way to minimize the fear of learning English is to truly understand your goals. Once you have set your goals, you can learn what is necessary to achieve these goals. Remember, the best feedback is from your ability to achieve what you want by using English and not from getting 100% at schools.