Introducing The Opposite of Perfectionism | Ask Benny | Forum

Hello,

I am in a difficult place at the moment with language learning, which is in turn affecting my Russian — I can understand the news pretty well (there are some words occasionally that I don't know but other than that it is way easier for me to read and listen to the news than last year) and I am working on learning the colloquial language (literature, everday speech, etc). My listening comprehension, fluency, and pronunciation are steadily improving through listening to music and videos, and speaking to myself in Russian and having conversations everyday with a Russian on Skype, plus through various techniques such as shadowing and LR (which I am doing with the Russian book I am reading) I have made a lot of progress since a year ago, when I was writing and speaking less fluently.

But lately I have fallen a little bit into a somewhat perfectionistic mode of thinking and so I find myself reading language learning blogs and reading about methods for no apparent reason. On those blogs there are huge debates about what is the most effective way to learn — one view cancels out another view, and so on. Plus I find it challenging to spend the amount of time I would like to on Russian to make real progress. I want to try doing a mission log again to see if with better defined goals I can have the external pressure to make progress this summer. 

What I have done is isolate the times I spend on language learning blogs, and when it gets really bad — I use only Skype and block all the language learning sites in those periods as to not distract my focus. I treat them like television, shut them of when they distract from one's learning. So far, it has been successful (though here I am writing about it on a language learning forum).

I was wondering what have you done in the past in order to strengthen your confidence and willingness to let go — do things as you would like to do them, and not how another person tells you? What are some of your thoughts/advice on this matter?

Regards,

Jotraza

Good points — it is tricky to see in between what I already know —  and also best not to worry about whether I can travel to the country, Russia, in this case (which inevitably most people recommend) or the ever so usual thought of: will I become fluent or not? But I suppose like all things these thoughts pass. Thanks for the pleasant encouragement, on that note I shall go and watch something funny (Шесть кадров)