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Language Learning and Brene Brown

Buongiorno. Welcome to The 5-Week Linguist Show. Today I wanted to talk about languages and the work of Brené Brown. I must admit I’m a little late getting to the work of Brené Brown. You hear the name everywhere. So I finally just had to check it out, and I’m so glad that I did.

I have read The Gifts of Imperfection, and I recently did her course on vulnerability, and she’s amazing. I don’t even know where to start. So essentially, she was a social worker, I believe, and studied through to a doctoral degree where she researched vulnerability and shame. So really negative emotions. And things that we don’t really talk about, or we certainly didn’t when I was growing up. I feel like Oprah changed all of that, that it became okay to talk about things that were not positive in the wider world.

And obviously, it’s absolutely crucial to do that because you got to deal with the problems to get to the good stuff at the end of the day. You can’t just gloss things over. And vulnerability and shame, you got to deal with those to be able to get to the good stuff. And that’s a big thing that I’ve taken away from Brené Brown’s work.

But I wanted to talk about what this looked like in language learning, because I think that her work has helped so many people. She’s funny, she’s engaging. She’s so human. And she’s gone and taken this quiet work of listening to so many people. She’s interviewed, I don’t even know, thousands of people, looking for common threads in ways that we can find what she defines as shame, embarrassment, vulnerability, and work through those emotions. Work through those feelings. And let other people know that they’re not alone.

So last year, when I read The Gifts of Imperfection, she talks a lot about courage, compassion, and connection. And I can’t tell you how important I think these are critical for language learning. You got to have courage. You’ve got to be willing to put yourself out there. Because it’s something that you’re going to make so many mistakes before you’re any good at it. And there comes the compassion part. You have to be compassionate with yourself.

Languages are interesting because if you’ve ever worked with young people, a lot of times by the time they hit their teenage years, they’re really self conscious, and they’re really worried about their appearance, they’re really vulnerable. So for them to really get into foreign languages is really difficult because they got to go through this whole ugly stage of making mistakes. And also, I’ve seen lots of people where foreign language is the first thing that really challenged them.

And then, of course, you got to seek connection. And all of those things, going through those uncomfortable stages that require a lot of courage and a lot of compassion are going to ultimately offer you a connection. And that’s really what our goal is when we’re teaching languages. We want to help people connect with more people, enjoy more things, connect with more content, connect with more ideas. Connect with more knowledge.

For years, I’ve been a proponent of learning other things through languages, and I’ve been director of a language immersion school, and I’m certified to teach English language immersion,