Never compare your challenges to somebody else’s.

 

  One  thing  I  can  assure  prospective  language  students  is  that  they  will  face  some  challenges. They  may  be  minor  or  major. And  this  is  normal. One  of  the  biggest  mistakes  a  person  can  make  is  to  compare  their  situation  to  somebody  else’s  without  first  analyzing  it  critically. This  is  what  makes  it  unwise  to  do  so. Let’s  look  at  the  following  analogy, here  are  two  students  who  are  having  a  difficult  time  with  conjugations. At  first  glance, it  seems  like  a  straight  forward  issue. Their  area  of  weakness  is  conjugating  verbs. That’s  a  general  analysis  and  it  may  be  misleading. One  student  may  be  having  difficulties  conjugating  verbs  in  the  present  form/tense  while  the  other  may  be  experiencing  difficulties  with  the  subjunctive  tense.

 

  What  does  the  above  scenario  mean?. It  means  that  there’s  no  one  size  fits  all  solution  for  both  students. Each  student  will  have  to  isolate  their  area  of  weakness  and  work  on  it. Therefore, this  is  why  it’s  very  important  to  understand  one’s  individual  struggles  and  address  them. This  is  not  only  helpful  to  the  student  but  also  to  the  teacher. It  becomes  easier  to  assist  a  student  when  they  can  pinpoint  their  area  of  weakness. This  is  because  it  sets  up  the  specific  target  that  needs  to  be  addressed. Also, it  makes  follow  up  easy  in  finding  out  if  the  intervention  was  successful.

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