What Every Welsh-Learner Should Know About Procrastination.
Procrastination is a common problem, especially when it comes to truly difficult tasks requiring sustained effort over long periods – like writing novels or learning languages.
According to Psychology Today, about 20% of people deliberately put-off difficult tasks and look for distractions. This can create guilt, and can even be bad for some people’s health, with insomnia and stress leading to other problems in the long-run.
Other people think they’re procrastinating when really they’re not. They’re just putting too many things on an already full ‘to-do’ list. They get things done, but not as many things as they’d like. It was a bit like that for me last month.
Last month I seemed to procrastinate a lot when it came to my Welsh-learning. Though I was in fairness busier than a saw-doctor during the Napoleonic wars, I didn’t even get around to making a blog post. (Sorry about that : / Good job I only have about three readers. Hi mum).
It got me thinking a lot about procrastination. Since my main goals in life at the moment are learning to speak Welsh and finishing writing a novel, I’m interested in the science of how procrastination works and in reviewing the causes of diminished motivation . . .
Learning Welsh and Procrastination.
Back at the start of the year I was on a really positive buzz about my Welsh-learning. I had a friend who’d shown an interest in the lingo, which led to the discovery of a few new learning sites and games linked to the BBC Wales Welsh-learner’s page. Additionally, I discovered Hwb on You Tube.
But probably the most thrilling and motivating factor of all was an actual conversation carried out in Welsh. Here in New Zealand there aren’t too many opportunities for that, but I met some visiting guy from North Wales in a pub, and successfully managed to maintain a reasonable exchange of albeit superficial information for at least ten minutes.
I felt a soaring feeling of victory. It’s true that difficult tasks can have much more rewarding pay-offs. When the guy spoke to me in Welsh, I understood most of the questions or at least the gist of what he was asking or talking about. And when it was my turn to speak, the correct patterns and vocabulary seemed to come instantly. I think I even got the mutations right.
Was this due to my having consumed the perfect quantity of alcohol for memory recall and the facilitation of rapid linguistic gear-shifting? Tidy theory, but probably not. Or wasn’t it just that I’d underestimated my own ability, along with the benefit that’s come from continued persistence, even in the face of some pretty long dry-spells and fairly regular procrastination?
Don’t Lose Heart – Even Linguists Procrastinate.
Dr. Elizabeth Bernhardt of Stanford University’s Language Centre has investigated the problem of second-language-learning procrastination in so far as it affects second-language research.
In a paper entitled Progress and Procrastination in Second-Language Reading Research, she identifies procrastination as a primary problem which might even be skewing language-learning research results.
On the one hand, Berhardt’s findings offered some comfort. It’s good to know that researchers researching procrastination in second-language research have been researching rather than procrastinating: “this field has come a long way really fast.”
On the other hand, it was discouraging to learn that the researches actually researching second-language learning per se were on the whole suffering from exactly the same problem as me. Psycholinguistically speaking, studies have shown that they often just can’t be arsed.
Language researchers whose first language is English put-off learning other languages. They feel more comfortable using English and it requires less effort – so they just stay in English. “Those who investigate second-languages are notoriously monolingual,” says Berhardt.
The problem with this is that consequently a lot of second-language research usually gets carried out in English. “If readers are assessed in comprehension tasks in their stronger language (. . .)
their comprehension seems to be much more significant than when it is measured along with their impoverished second-language skills.
When called on this point, researchers lament that since they don’t know the language of the subjects with whom they are working, they are forced to assess them in the researchers’ language. Researcher deficiencies shouldn’t be interfering with the ability to provide solid and trustworthy data.”
The Breakthrough vs. The Ongoing Battle.
Another factor that led to February being a poor month for my Welsh-learning had more to do with morale than procrastination. After my victory conversing fairly well with the North-Walian back at the start of the year, last month I met another fluent gog in a different pub. The experience was pretty negative in terms of Welsh-speaking confidence.
This guy had a quiet voice, a thick, clotted sort of accent, was multiple sheets to the wind, and he spoke faster than a depth-charge shot-glass plopping into a pint. Also, I was a little bit wasted too. I was back to the familiar feeling of falling down a sheer cliff face: like when I first began listening to Radio Cymru online . .
The conversation zipped past my face at a zillion miles an hour. Every time a word stood out – like a prominent stone or a tree root in the cliff-face analogy – my brain would try to seize it, but to no avail. A split-second later it was long-gone, and my mind was already scrabbling for the next thing.
Several days later, when I finally got around to looking up the Irish Polyglot guy on You Tube (who my interested-in-Welsh friend had so kindly recommended), I felt total despair rather than victory. The Irish Polyglot speaks about a dozen languages and he’s learned them all in about six months. I’ve been trying to learn Welsh for years, so what the hell’s the story?
It’s tempting to think I must either be fundamentally crap or else have about as much drive as a pot-addled sloth. The Irish Polyglot has achieved remarkable things – he’s also a really great guy who I’m not going to link to because you can look him up for yourself if you need some additional inspiration (just don’t blame me if you end up inspired to quit learning Welsh altogether on the grounds of your own contrastingly immense linguistic crapness).
Anyway, the point is . . .
Don’t Give Up Till It’s Over: Eight Ways to Slay Procrastination.
Dr. Joseph Ferrari, associate professor of psychology at De Paul University in Chicago, recommends:
1.) Make a list of what you have to do.
· e.g. List item #1: Learn to speak Welsh fluently.
List item #2: List Irish Polyglot on Mortal Enemies List.
2.) Write a statement of intention.
· e.g. “I will speak Welsh fluently,” and, “I may not speak a dozen languages, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills; I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”
3.) Set realistic goals.
· e.g. Listen to one podcast Welsh lesson every weekday = Realistic | Murder = Unrealistic | Removal from Christmas card list = Realistic.
4.) Break it down into specific tasks.
· A.) Create a Christmas card list. B.) List Irish Polyglot on Christmas card list. C.) Remove Irish Polyglot from Christmas card list.
5.) Make your task meaningful.
· e.g. “When I learn to speak Welsh Fluently, I’ll never confuse Ni waeth beth, peidiwch ag yfed hyn yma, and, Yfed hyn yma again.☺
6.) Promise yourself a reward.
· e.g. “When I learn Welsh fluently, I’ll write a novel in Welsh and win the Daniel Owen Memorial Prize.”
7.) Eliminate tasks you never plan to do; be honest!
· e.g. Write a novel in Welsh.
8.) Estimate time you think it will take to complete the task, then double it.
· At this rate it should only take me about another forty years to achieve fluency, so . . . is living to 109 a reasonable goal?
