Friday, December 16, 2011

It will just click...

Anyone who has or is learning a foreign language has heard stories about the person that picks a language up within months. Or the person that has perfected the language and has no accent. Or we sit in language class comparing our progress with every person sitting in that room. Or I've even had people tell me, one day the language just "clicks". I've heard this multiple times. One day it'll just click for you. You know what, it never just clicked. I never felt this magical click. The one click that would bring me from dazed, confused, stumbling over my words to confident, fluent, and graceful foreigner.
But you know what has happened. In three and half very long, very painful, very lonely years, I've slowly started to understand more and more every day. I started to speak. But after those first really hard years, now I'm pretty comfortable here. I don't struggle to understand anymore, speaking doesn't freak me out. In fact, none of that is really hard to do anymore.
So to those of you that have been working hard on a language for a while, and it just hasn't clicked. Here's some bad news, it might not just happen like that, but that's ok, just keep working hard at it, it will come. I promise!

Any language learning tips or experiences?