On motivation to learn English
The first question I always ask my students is why. I invite them to sit in front of me and say: “Why do you want to learn English?”
What I really want to know is: “What is your motivation to embark on this long, tough and often embarrassing journey?”
The answers I get are usually quite sensible: ‘I want to find a better job’, ‘I hope to keep my job’, ‘I hate my bloody job and want to move abroad’ or ‘Someone I love has already done all of the above and I’d like to visit’.
It’s all very nice and sweet and frankly quite predictable. I nod, take down a note and hope there’s something else that’ll keep them going. Something easier to achieve.
Don’t get me wrong. Being ambitious is vital. I wouldn’t be able to get myself out of bed most mornings it wasn’t for a little ambition. And it’s good to dream big too — they’re called dreams for a reason, after all. They’re supposed to keep you busy working hard for a while.
But at the same time, I think it’s important to place smaller, more easily achievable milestones along the way. I mean, if you’re about to set off on a boat trip to the Indies, and it’s 1492, you should probably consider stopping by in the US and buy an energy drink or something…
Learning a foreign language is not an easy task. As soon as you start, you realise there’s a long way to go. Always. And that can be bad for motivation: suddenly, your dream job seems further away than you thought it was. You’re at sea and can’t see land, so you start losing hope… So much that you may even think of dropping out.
But it’s exactly at this point that the sudden sight of the Bahamas saved Columbus. He may have not found his elephants there, but as soon as he could lie on the beach with his first espresso martini ever, he though: ‘Mica male!’*.
Because after all, he had got somewhere. He had reached a milestone he could be proud of. It wasn’t his original goal, the reason he got in the bloody boat in the first place, but surely it was something, wasn’t it?
When I decided to learn English, I didn’t do it to become an English teacher. I wasn’t even planning to go study in England back then. No, the first time I felt motivated to learn English was when I discovered this film:
I know, right?
But I was 17, I loved Cillian Murphy and Keira Knightley and nobody seemed to care about dubbing them in Italian anytime soon. All I could find was a low quality streaming of the film on a dodgy website. I had to watch it over and over again to understand what those people were on about. And every time I watched it, I learned something new**.
So, if you want to learn English, dream big, but start small. Set a series of goals that are easier to achieve than becoming the next president of the United States (which, as we saw, is not that difficult anyway) and aim at those first.
And after that, who knows? Maybe, just like Columbus, you’ll find that this other goal you’ve reached along the way is going to be enough to make (your) history. Or else, you’ll have motivated yourself enough to get back in the boat and, like I did, move abroad and land a job that involves speaking English (a lot).
But for now, wherever you’re headed, have a great journey.
*‘This ain’t too bad!’ in Italian, of course. He couldn’t speak English (yet).
**I just finished watching it for the millionth time and I can confirm I still remember all the lines. I do have a few problems with the Welsh songs though.
