There's no place like blog

 I feel like I have been waiting years for the dust of social media to settle. Would a blog still have relevance?

In slow, quiet moments in class – I’m a substitute teacher these days – I go to two blogs: Cup of Jo and Ann Lovejoy’s garden blog. The first is out of habit. I still like it even though it has commercialized. The second is a more recent addition, born of my increased passion for gardening and the happy discovery that the book author Ann Lovejoy maintains a classic personal blog.

I “go” to these blogs. I “visit” them. But I don't go to Instagram. I don't visit Tik Tok. These are not places, but “platforms”, where photos, videos, symbols, and advertisements wash over me, distract me, pull me. I still have to click away ads on Cup of Jo, it’s true. But as a blog it remains a place, with the familiarity and natural change that define all places.

Yesterday, in a science class, I visited my own blog. What was I doing and thinking in months of May past? I was glad to have a place to go to find at least some answers to the question.

All or nothing thinking & language learning

 

They don’t go together.

Binaries in our minds

I have been thinking about all or nothing thinking, also called black and white thinking. This cognitive distortion seems to go hand in hand with anxiety, perfectionism, corporate culture, and a whole bunch of cultural spheres and overtones. I’ve seen people connect it to white supremacy.

Examples:

“I want a perfect home.”

“Healthy food” versus “junk food”

The idea of a “good mother”

“It’s not worth doing if you don’t do it well.”

“There are only two options: stay together or break up.”

Pushing kids into competitive sports.

“I quit.”

I notice it in myself a lot. It makes me happy when someone punctures the all or nothing bubbles in my mind.

For example, a friend told me she signed up for a dance class because it was in her neighbourhood. Instead of searching the internet and asking around to find the best dance studio, she chose a class at a community centre because it fit into her life. What a reasonable, sustainable act.

I think about that anecdote, and feel freer to choose something, rather than all/the best or nothing.

As KC Davis put it on Tik Tok, “motivation suffocates in all or nothing thinking.” We can make an action seem so big and looming that we forget more accessible, more delightful, options. KC invites people to care for their homes without self-criticism or shame.

I want to invite people into language learning in the same way.

All or nothing thinking in language learning

Unfortunately, totality is embedded in the way we talk about languages.

“Do you speak Spanish?” (binary, all or nothing)

“Do you know Spanish?” (binary, all or nothing)

We try to get around this:

“A little.”

“Some.”

“I’m learning.”

“I used to, but I haven’t practiced in a long time.”

Underlying the question is the idea that it is possible to totally speak or know a language. This is a fallacy! I have reflected on it before, when I noticed I was “learning English”, my native language, during my masters program. 

We are always somewhere in relation to a language.

Another binary: We must be actively learning/studying/improving or we are doing nothing, perhaps even backsliding.

As if that is even possible. The mind is always moving. The environment is always prompting. But when we buy into the all or nothing idea of language learning, motivation is suffocated.

Compare:

“I need to learn Spanish.” (all of it)

Versus:

“Ooh, what is the verb for ‘wonder’?”

Or:

“I want to browse the Wikipedia entry for Spanish, find some weird facts.”

Or:

“I wonder if there is a local Spanish class this fall, maybe in my neighbourhood?”

Let’s not suffocate ourselves. There are always an infinite number of ways and opportunities to learn language.

Noticing, in gardens and languages

Once you start to notice something, you notice it more and more, both in plant identification and in language learning.

Some say that this noticing is essential to language learning. It's the key. You can't really learn, or it's hard, if you aren't noticing – whether it's a new word, a recurrent phrase, a strange grammatical ending, or the way people greet each other.

There will be an organic, individual order in which you notice things. You'll focus on one thing now, another thing in a month. Different features of a language will stand out to you more than to another person. Teachers can draw attention to language or even try to elicit noticing. But, inevitably, they will try to teach you things you haven't even wondered about, haven't even encountered.

So, if noticing is essential to learn a language, how does one turn the noticing on? I propose it is natural, if you aren't under duress.

I actually consider attention a marker of well-being. Am I able to pay attention to things outside of myself? Be interested? Not in a vigilant way, of course, where all things are noticed as threats. Sometimes the honest answer is no. I'm too stressed, too anxious, too overwhelmed, too preoccupied with the latest worry. That said, I can often walk myself back into a state of "soft fascination", to use that term from psychology.

The rhythm of walking, the fresh air, the movement through time and space... I begin to see the floppy poppies, the dark-eyed pink rock roses, the blackberry blossoms to return to later. I notice the wind in the familiar, beloved eucalyptus. The season announces itself as chestnuts form from flowers. Walking helps restore my view of the world as a safe and interesting place (thank you, Artist's Way).

Those two poles – safe and interesting – do different things to and for my nervous system. The first offering, "What if there is nothing wrong?" Saying, "You can breathe, you can move, you can look around." The second saying, "Not only that, but there is stuff worth breathing for, walking for, looking around for. Behold the colours and textures."

I think the same world view is useful for learning a language. To be neither drowning nor bored. Try it out. Say: "Learning [French/Spanish/Etc.] is safe and interesting." From this position, you can stand comfortably, as if in front of an abundant garden, and begin to notice. What draws your eye first? What is familiar? What are you most interested in today? You don't need to learn and catalogue everything today, or ever. No one has.