You could easily say that many victories or breakthroughs would not have been possible without the use of coaching.
Yet, if you look at language learning, it's clear that this field is lagging behind by not making use of such a valuable resource.
In addition to achieving better results faster and thereby saving you time, the coaching method can also save you a great many frustrations.
In order to fully understand the powerful effect that coaching can have on learning a new language, let’s compare it to the more traditional approach of language learning.
When they want to learn a new language, most people attend a language course or find a private tutor.
In class you read things from a book and if you pronounce something wrong your teacher will correct you. If you just follow the instructions in your book and from your teacher, the one day you'll be able to speak a new language. But only if you do a lot of homework first!
This is a very superficial approach to learning. So what are your options if you want to achieve better results?
If you stick to the traditional model of language learning, there is only one answer: hard work, lots of lessons and more homework!
Fortunately there is another way. Real progress takes place in the mind. So if you can change your mindset then all of a sudden - almost by magic - great progress becomes possible, even in the short term.
You can also put it like this: whenever you failed to achieve a certain goal it is because you somehow did not overcome a certain obstacle. To achieve your goal you need to become bigger than your problem.
Ask yourself, "What are the things that slow down my progress? What are my goals? What do I believe about myself and what do I believe about Dutch?"
If you set your goals low, if you believe that you don't have any talent for languages or that you think Dutch is horrendous, ugly, illogical or inconsistent then imagine how long will it take you to speak this new language... it will take forever! Because you are creating motivational obstacles even before you start learning.
All of your (unconscious) thoughts and beliefs can slow down your results, even if you are committed and even if you diligently do your homework every day.
Therefore, if you want to move ahead fast, it is important to focus on your mind first. Coaching provides many techniques to help you build a focused mind and a strong sense of motivation.
The first thing that coaching can help you with is choosing goals that really excite and motivate you so that you feel a compelling energy.
The next step is to encourage seeing yourself as a talented learner. It is therefore important for the student to rapidly expand their capacity for learning. What happens then is a whole new personal adventure, where you learn a lot about yourself.
You’ll not only discover your strengths and weaknesses, you will learn how to act with far more mental flexibility. Often it feels that your mind opens up and that you start to find new talents within yourself.
This fact alone makes it a very rich experience. What you discover about yourself is not only useful for speaking Dutch, but also for many other areas in your life!
Another important skill that must be learned is that you shouldn’t care about making mistakes. If you learn how to actually enjoy it, it's even better.
Rather than feeling embarrassed by all the mistakes you make, you could also see them as useful learning moments that take you to a whole new level fast!
The coaching-driven approach does not work well with traditional language books, because most of them will immediately limit you. They do not allow you to set your own goals, and they often force you to speak about one specific subject at a time.
All the books tell you is to repeat the information like a parrot, even if you don’t understand it. This is quite an inefficient method, as you can never learn things that you don’t understand.
Your success in everyday life does not necessarily depend on everything that you memorised by heart some time ago.
What really matters are many other important skills such as improvising, drawing your own conclusions from new information and how to remain confident in any situation (which is a skill that you can learn).
However, most people never reflect on the learning process, so even if they would like to have better results, they genuinely do not know how to achieve them.
A language coach will help you to step-by-step accept the idea that Dutch is a logical and consistent language. For example, the Dutch word uitzending. If your mind does not recognise it, then probably it will reject it.
But, if you can see that uitzending is close to "outsending" in English, or something that you send out. Would it be difficult to understand that you can send out a programme on television? Could you accept then that uitzending is "a broadcast"? On top of that, what if an organisation could send people out?
If you follow this train of thought, then uitzendbureau will make perfect sense to you as the Dutch word for "temp agency". Once again, if you accept that there is a logical idea behind many Dutch words, then you’ll learn a lot faster!
Fast progress does not come from intensely studying things you don't understand. The most effective strategy is to think, feel and act in positive and joyful ways.
Instead of studying hard, focus on staying motivated, working towards your goal and not letting mistakes discourage you.
Once you open your mind, speaking and learning Dutch is easy! That is a great thought, don't you think? So if you like it, then why not go with it!
Albert Both is a specialist in learning Dutch fast while having fun. Sign up for his free workshop "Finding Dutch Flow: Opening The Floodgate to Dutch Fluency" on Sunday, July 31, in Amsterdam.