Overcoming My Discomfort Zone and Joyfully Learning a Second Language

Daily writing promptWhat is your favorite season of year? Why?View all responses

My favorite season of the year is any season but winter. Winter is one of my discomfort zones, but I don’t let it get me down. I believe that discomfort zones are meant to be overcome. After many years of being held captive by the discomfort zone of language learning, I’ve recently found great joy in learning Spanish, and I’ve gotten pretty good at communicating in it.

I don’t remember the French I took in high school, but I do know that it was my most uncomfortable course. I disliked everything about it — memorizing vocabulary, learning grammar rules, having a teacher who didn’t know it very well herself, and being forced to role play trivial conversations about finding the bathroom or going to the library. Years later my wife, daughter, and I hosted a French exchange student for a couple of weeks. About the only French word I could remember was avec (which means with), so I said it to her often because saying avec always made her laugh with (or at) me.

In spite of my language learning discomfort zone, once after a trip to Columbia, South America I returned home with a desire to learn Spanish. I was living in a very small town and the only Spanish course I could find was offered by a little Bible college, so I enrolled for a semester. The teacher knew Spanish about as well as my French teacher had known French, so I didn’t learn much. Both courses taught me the same thing — the lie that says I’m no good at language learning.

However, I didn’t give up. I ordered a set of expensive Spanish tapes from the US State Department that they use to train their diplomats. I listened to those tapes over and over learning almost nothing. They confirmed the lie that language learning’s not for me.

A few years later I decided to try Spanish again. I bought several fill-in-the-blanks grammar workbooks. I saturated those blank spaces with Spanish words. After several months I thought I was on my way to fluency. I flew alone to Mexico City to see how much I had learned. When I got into a taxi at the airport I opened my mouth, but the driver had no idea what I was saying and everything I heard him say was completely unintelligible to me. He finally dropped me off downtown and I was fortunate to find my hotel because I couldn’t communicate with anyone to get their help. It was a long week in Mexico City. I came home convinced that Spanish isn’t for me.

Later my daughter started taking Spanish in high school. It was her favorite class, and she was becoming really good at it. I thought, “Why not me?” and decided to try a different strategy. My favorite piece of literature is the Gospel of John. I’ve probably read it a hundred times or more, so I know it well. I started to read part of it in Spanish everyday thinking that would be my key to Spanish mastery. It was the same story. I became discouraged and quit after a couple of months.

My last attempt was 2 1/2 years ago. I felt prompted to learn Spanish the way I had learned English as an infant and small child. All I did was listen for a couple of years and then eventually interact with people using infantile Tarzan grammar and pronunciation. Then eventually without effort I became a fluent English speaker. But how could I repeat that process as an older adult? I knew I had to finally overcome my fear and discomfort zone of feeling foolish and childish when trying to learn Spanish.

I had great encouragement from my wife, so I went to YouTube and searched for the simplest videos in Spanish that I could find. I intentionally avoided videos about memorizing grammar or vocabulary. I wanted to hear people speaking the simplest, slowest Spanish I could locate. I decided that I didn’t want to learn Spanish, I wanted to absorb it the way I had effortlessly absorbed English many years before.

So, I listened without putting any pressure on myself to learn. I noticed that little-by-little (poco a poco) I could understand a few words. That encouraged me and made me want to listen even more. Before long I was watching Spanish YouTube videos for one to three hours daily and actually enjoying it. I discovered that I could understand them better if I attached Spanish subtitles to them. I also began to read the New Testament for 10 minutes or more every day in Spanish and this time I stuck with it. (Currently I am about to finish my fifth time through it.)

Here’s a cool serendipity experience (serendipia in Spanish). After 9 months of watching Spanish videos, two Mexican families (4 adults and 5 children) moved in next door to my wife and me. One of them spoke very little English, the rest none. What a golden opportunity to practice Spanish with some lovely people. My wife even started to pick up some.

About a month later I searched online and found a Spanish immersion school in Costa Rica. My wife encouraged me to attend for two weeks and stay with a local family who didn’t speak English. Before I flew down, the director of the school wanted to interview me on Zoom in Spanish to determine which class to put me in. After our discussion he told me that I knew a lot more Spanish that I thought I did, and he put me in one of their advanced classes. I was shocked because I didn’t feel like I knew very much.

While in Costa Rica I was able to understand my teachers who only spoke in Spanish (but did speak slowly and enunciate very clearly). Although I was making many mistakes, I was able to communicate clearly with my hosts and with Uber drivers. I was amazed to find that with all my mistakes I could communicate as effectively as some of my classmates who had college degrees in Spanish.

I returned home with a great desire to become fluent in Spanish. I added Duolingo to my daily routine and continued watching videos, reading the Bible in Spanish, and talking with my neighbors. A year ago, I started meeting with a Spanish conversation group once a week. It has now been 2 1/2 years since I started overcoming my discomfort zone and I have realized that being uncomfortable and humbly making a lot of errors is a key to mastering a language. I have a long way to go, but me esta encantando el viaje. When I think back on my years from birth to English fluency, it feels like my Spanish is right on schedule.

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