Is Perfectionism Stopping You From Becoming Fluent?

🌟 Episode Highlights

• what is perfectionism?
• is perfection helpful? or not?
• how does perfectionism impact language learning

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Transcript

Hello, hello. Welcome or welcome back to another episode. I'm Jean and today I have this jar. This is a jar full of questions. These questions are ones that I get all the time or questions about topics that I have been talking about over and over again for years. I've been an English teacher since 2019, and you might be surprised how often the same topics come up over and over and over again. 

So I collected all of these questions, all of these topics, and I wrote them down and put them in this jar. And today I am going to pick a random paper from this jar. We're going to read the question and see what happens from there. Here we go.

Okay, the question is, is perfectionism stopping you from becoming fluent? Is perfectionism stopping you from becoming fluent? 

So, the simple most straightforward answer is yes. Your perfectionism is stopping you from becoming fluent. The reason is because of the impact that perfectionism has on your general mindset and the subsequent effects that has on your ability to learn.

I'll give you an example. If you are focused on getting everything right, that creates a huge filter for what you are going to put out your output. By having such a strong filter on your output, you are likely to output less. 

And the thing about learning a language is that language learning is essentially a numbers game. What I mean by this is the more you put out, the more feedback you get, the more data you have about your current understanding and abilities. So when you have a very strong filter in place because you are worried about being perfect or getting it right, you are outputting less which means you are getting less feedback and therefore less data on your current understanding of English and your current abilities. So your perfectionism is making your progress slower.

Can you still progress even with perfectionism? Yes. But it will be so much slower. It will be slower. It will be more painful because that's another side effect of perfectionism is the self-judgement that comes with it. And this is what I mean about perfectionism having an impact on your mindset which then impacts everything else. If you have a very judgmental view of yourself, especially of your English, this is a very negative feeling. It's a very negative mindset.

And there's actually a lot of interesting research about the impact of this type of mindset, this type of negativity on your ability to learn. There's this idea within the field of second language acquisition, which is the science, the study of how people acquire additional languages after their native ones. There's an interesting idea in this field about the relationship between your emotional state and your ability to learn. The general idea is that if you are very anxious or very stressed, nervous, if you're in a very negative emotional state, your ability to learn actually goes down. And I believe this is actually called the Affective Filter Hypothesis. I'm going to double check that. So a quick Google search confirms what I said. This is called the Affective Filter Hypothesis.

And I did not realize that it is actually part of Stephen Krashen's research. Stephen Krashen is a huge respected name in the field of language acquisition. He's the one who also came up with the idea of comprehensible input. So the Affective Filter Hypothesis suggests that your emotional and psychological states act as a filter that can either help you or stop you from learning a language. So when these states, these emotional, these psychological states are very negative, it creates something like a mental block. And perfectionism especially is a very negative mental and emotional state to be in.

First, let me say what is perfectionism? What is it? What does it mean? What does it mean to be a perfectionist? So perfectionism is the concept, the idea and a person who has the qualities of that idea is a perfectionist. 

So there's a magazine called Psychology Today and Psychology Today defines perfectionism as setting, working toward, and becoming preoccupied with idealized goals that are unrealistically ambitious.

Let's break this down a little bit. 

So setting, we often use this word with goals. You set a goal and this basically means to make a goal to create a goal. So perfectionism can be defined as setting making working toward progressing and becoming preoccupied. 

To be preoccupied basically means to become obsessed with something. Your mind is very busy thinking about this thing. You're very preoccupied. 

So setting, working toward and becoming preoccupied with idealized goals. So idealized means something that is ideal. Okay. So idealized ideal ideal is like the best case, the best example, the best scenario, the best circumstances. So idealized goals would be like the best that you can think of.

Setting, working toward, and becoming preoccupied with idealized goals that are unrealistically so unrealistic. When something is unrealistic, it means that it's not likely to be achieved. It's unrealistic. So, for example, I'm 31 years old. If I set a goal to become an astronaut, that's pretty unrealistic. Is it possible? Sure, I suppose. But is it likely? Not really. Not really at all. So if I wanted to become an astronaut, that would be an unrealistic goal. 

So setting, working toward, and becoming preoccupied with idealized goals that are unrealistically ambitious. So ambitious is the adjective form of ambition which basically means the very very strong desire or determination to achieve something. Usually it's to gain things like fame or power or money. Typically not always. 

So, Psychology Today defines perfectionism as setting, working toward, and becoming preoccupied with idealized goals that are unrealistically ambitious.

So, we can apply this to language learning. What would perfectionism look like in language learning? Perfectionism in language learning looks like expecting yourself, giving yourself a goal to become fluent in a month. That's a really good example of an unrealistically ambitious idealized goal. 

So setting a very high goal for yourself like becoming fluent in 30 days or becoming fluent without making so many mistakes. That's another overly ambitious idealized goal. We have this expectation that oh I can't make mistakes or I shouldn't make mistakes.

Especially perfectionists also think that because I learned this rule before, therefore I should never make the mistake again. I see this with several of my students. Several of my students believe that because they learned a grammar rule in the past, they should always use that grammar rule correctly. And that is quite simply an unrealistic expectation. That's an unrealistic goal. It's going to take time to build up the repetition required for mastery, required for fluency. It will take time because it takes time to put in that repetition.

Another thing that Psychology Today talks about is perfectionists tend to develop such high expectations of themselves that they can become harshly self-critical. Now this is exactly what I was saying this judgmental critical mindset toward yourself that is not helping you. It is not helping you at all to do this. 

Instead, if you have the mindset of it's okay to make mistakes. Mistakes are data. The more mistakes I make, the more data I get, the more accurate I will be over time with each repetition. Every repetition is a new opportunity. That mindset will make your journey toward fluency much more peaceful, much less stressful, much less negative. It will be an easier journey, and it will also probably be faster because you're getting more data, you're getting more feedback.

So, I want to know, do you consider yourself to be a perfectionist? And what do you think about perfectionism? Is this something that helps your fluency or hurts it? 

I've presented my side, my argument, but maybe you have a counterargument. Maybe you disagree with me. If you do, I would love to hear your thoughts, your opinions. So, make sure to leave a comment and I look forward to a lovely discussion with you about this topic. 

As always, thanks for listening!

Until next time!

Bye!