Why I don’t use a silent period when learning languages

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Editor’s note: This 2011 post describes the speaking-first approach that works for me. You do not have to force yourself into a conversation before you feel safe. If you start with a quiet listening period, give it a purpose and a point when you will begin practising the speaking skills you want.

If your end goal is to speak, then a silent period to prepare (while you study, listen, or brace yourself for the glorious coming of your ready day foretold by language learning prophets) can become a comfortable way to put off speaking.

It's amazing how much this is promoted by various methods I see floating around. For a perfectionist, the silent period has an obvious appeal: you cannot make speaking mistakes if you do not speak.

Because “everyone knows” that if you make a single mistake in front of another human being, the whole world will point their fingers at you and guffaw in unison for weeks straight – your reputation will be ruined, and you'll likely die of embarrassment. Yeah, right(!)

A note from the Fluent in 3 Months team before we get started: You can chat away with a native speaker for at least 15 minutes with the “Fluent in 3 Months” method. All it takes is 90 days. Tap this link to find out more.

Deal with that bothersome speaking thing later

A silent period can also feel like a solution to the embarrassment problem: postpone the discomfort and deal with it later. I've got another thing I like to say to shy people.

I even see people online proudly promoting the exact amount of hours they have not spoken a language! I shit you not.

It's like speaking is this icky gooey cootie-filled gremlin that you must avoid at all costs until you are ready to face it. Um… isn't speaking the reason you are learning the language in the first place?? If it isn't then that's fine, just be honest about it.

I say this not because I learned my mistake many years ago, but because I keep making this mistake and it keeps on costing me. It's human nature to want to feel ready before getting started on a potentially embarrassing task of speaking a language when you aren't prepared, but you eventually have to say something to make progress in speaking.

In my own projects, long silent periods have delayed those difficult first steps. And yes, I won't lie to you – it does suck and feel frustrating the first few times, but then you get used to it quickly and start to make dramatic progress.

There's no magic at play here, it's pure necessity that changes how you focus your efforts.

Those first speaking attempts matter. If speaking is your goal, studying alone does not replace them.

My recent silent period mistakes

Despite how much I talk about this, I still have to apply it properly myself every time I start with a new language. I'm human and prone to making bad judgement calls even when I know from lots of experience it isn't going to help me.

I've had a slow start to speaking Tagalog because (apart from other lazy excuses) I wanted to cover “just enough” material until I was ready, but all that grammar and vocabulary that I've been learning hasn't helped me at all when people enthusiastically start speaking to me in the language.

I can impress locals with pronoun lists and random (irrelevant) words (actually, rest assured, they weren't that impressed), but I have only started finally conversing this week, and the only thing that made a difference was the fact that I tried. All that grammar and vocab isn't actually making me speak better, it's just the fact that I've got momentum now that I've started!

I realized that I've been wasting my time and I've got a deadline I'm aiming for, so all this taking-it-easy was getting me nowhere.

I'm still confident I can reach my goal of conversational in time, but wasting several weeks will cost me and mean I'll have to work extra hard in the remaining month.

When I took on Hungarian, I intentionally decided to “ease myself in” with a few weeks of study preparation. Result? I could argue with people at depth about Hungarian grammar not being that bad, but I couldn't actually say anything in the language! It was silly – but all that knowledge had backfired and just made me hungry to want to know more before I really got started.

The more you study the more you feel you need to study. You see all that awaits you and it gets intimidating – it's a vicious circle.

Get out of the vicious circle and take a plunge

The approach that works best for me is to stop thinking so much and get into real conversations. Then you have completely different things to think about and you will work in a different way that vastly improves how you speak. Yes, you'll study too – but your studying will be different this time and have real purpose and immediate application.

Yeah, I know you're “not ready yet”, and please don't make me tell you again how many ways you can find natives to speak with in person even if you can't travel. Feeling unready is not always an accurate measure of what you can communicate. Someone imaginative can use 100 words to get their point across way more than someone unimaginative with 5,000 words and a sense of feeling unprepared ever could.

For me, the best approach is to speak from day one and build the habit. It's advice I talk about all the time because when I've applied this it has worked tremendously well. Various lazy excuses mean I don't do this every time, and that genuinely slows me down and I hope I stop “easing myself in” during future language learning projects. It's time wasted.

My success story of immediately speaking

In case you haven't read it yet, I highly suggest you have a look at how my first week in Germany went. It was the most successful start I've ever had to a language mission, since I ignored all doubts about what I didn't know and how I wasn't ready yet, and just spoke the little I did know right away.

After just 3 months I was awarded an excellent mark for the oral part of my C2 exam. I do not think I could have achieved that oral result by using a silent period.

“Practice makes perfect”.