thelanguagecenter |

thelanguagecenter : "Don't be discouraged by apparent lack of progress
You will find that at times you're making fairly rapid progress, while at other times you seem to standing still or even going backwards. This is normal when learning a language, so don't be discouraged. If you feel like you are making little or no progress, try going over earlier lessons/exercises to see if they're easier now than when you first tried them.
Don't worry about making mistakes
You probably make the occasional mistake when speaking your native language, so making mistakes in a foreign language is nothing to worry about. What matters is getting your message across, not whether you use all the right words, inflexions, tenses, cases, etc. If you cannot think of the exact words, try using other ones. For example, say you were talking about your office and didn't know the word for photocopier - you could try describing its function: 'a machine for making copies' instead. You could also try drawing pictures and/or miming if you can't think of the words.
Learn how to say things like 'How do you say X in your language', 'What's the word for Y?', 'What's that called?', 'What are they doing?', etc.
If you have a teacher or native speaker to help with your studies, ask him or her to point out your mistakes and to correct them. When you first start learning a new language, having every single mistake pointed out to you will be very demoralising so ask your for only the more serious errors to be highlighted. When you've acquired more confidence and a degree of fluency in the language, ask for all your errors to be commented on."