Why it’s So Important to Make Mistakes When Learning English

You are learning a new language. You are OK with all the exercises in the book, and it feels fine to practice with your teacher. Then you try it out with a waiter in an English restaurant. You want to be polite but you accidentally say “thanking you miss” to a male waiter. Absolute disaster! Everyone you have ever met hears about this mistake. It’s on CNN every night for 3 days. Your friends are too embarrassed to speak to you.

Let’s be serious, this will never happen. The waiter will smile, and go and get your order. If you are lucky the waiter might correct you and help you with your English. Will you feel silly for a few minutes? Probably yes. Will the waiter contact CNN and earn £20,000 for selling his exciting story? Probably not!

When it comes to learning something new, especially languages, we can be a little too afraid to make mistakes. This is understandable when you are speaking a language. We use Language to show others who we are, and what we think. So, when we try to communicate and it all comes out wrong, we can sometimes overthink the consequences of a simple mistake. What is a language really for? Sure, it is about selling yourself and expressing yourself, but before any of that, you learn a language as a child to understand what other people want, and communicate what you want. Languages are there to help us work together. If the waiter understands you, which he will, he will get your order. You said what you wanted, and he understood what you wanted. This is a language success! Can you improve this skill? Sure. Is it a failure? Absolutely not.

Mistakes are NOT failure. Failure is when you want to order a black coffee, the waiter walks over to you, you put your hand up, and then scream “COCONUTS” at him hoping to receive a coffee. Mistakes are a very important part of learning. When you make a mistake, and you get a correction you learn two things: what was not correct, and how to correct it. Often you get a lot of suggestions on different ways you can do what you want correctly. When you do something correct straight away, you only learn that this is one way of doing something. This is good to know, and it can give you confidence, but you learn less about the language.

If you want to do one thing today to make sure that you learn English better, make the decision today to proudly make mistakes. Stand up, walk toward the next opportunity to practice your English and expect to make mistakes. You will make mistakes! We all do! Be proud of those mistakes and everything that you learn from them. Try not to shout “COCONUTS” at strangers though.

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