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Sahh
Hummingbird
Hummingbird

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Joined: 28 Feb 2018
Age: 37
Gender: Female
Posts: 23

01 Mar 2018, 10:56 am

So here's the story... I moved to Mexico less than a year ago without any Spanish knowledge. I'm a quick learner and figured I'd pick it up in a few months. The thing I didn't consider is that to learn a language, you need to speak it. I'm sure you can see the issue here. I'm lacking the social skills and confidence to ease into a conversation, and even trying to listen and understand is 10x more exhausting than normal socialization. I can feel my batteries drain, pressure build in my head and panic set in. I was understanding some of the fundamentals and flow intuitively, but not practically and I feel like there has been a lot of pressure from the community to "just start speaking it", which in turn makes me feel misunderstood and more resistant to attempt it. A few of the times I have tried have been traumatizing. I'm now at a point of burn out on it, and whenever I think about even studying or practicing my brain shuts down. I hope it'll happen, but I'm afraid not without a heap of time and anxiety.

How do you guys cope with learning something new that is social in nature?



Kiriae
Veteran
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Joined: 30 Mar 2014
Age: 35
Gender: Female
Posts: 2,349
Location: Kraków, Poland

01 Mar 2018, 11:18 am

You don't really have to speak yet. You can focus on learning the vocabulary, grammar and listening, while still speaking in English. Once you understand what you hear and you are familiar with the words and grammar speaking will come naturally and you won't even know when you started doing it. 1 year is a very short time.