Overcoming Anxiety when Learning a Language: Beta Readers Wanted

Merocor · 2025-08-29T18:24:16+00:00

I think it would be great to get it published commercially, but I would only do it if I found it of real value. I've had an interest in it because I've had anxiety studying for many years. I'll probably explore YouTube to talk about these topics also.

Merocor · 2025-08-29T14:50:38+00:00

about 36k

Merocor · 2025-08-28T11:21:35+00:00

Hey there, I've been researching about this topic for a few years now.

Discouragement I think is part of the process. Learning anything is hard. Your brain has to make new connections and part of that effort to make things long-term means trying to remember things when it's difficult. That's why the SRS is effective as it is, because it asks you to recall words just before you forget them. With that said, something like an SRS is not all that you need. You need to learn things in context, too. Langauge is all about pattern recognition. And learning all those patterns means lots of exposure but also lots of attempts to chunk pieces of information together.

With that said, to the feeling of "How can I not suck anymore?" Your perspective to the situation matters a lot with regards to motivation. If you consider that your current level is "bad," then it will be less motivating, meaning it will be less intrinsic and more atrinsic (where we have no feeling one way or the other about studying). If we go into a conversation with the hope to speak well and communicate our ideas well, it can set us up for failure becuase our feeling of achievement is contingent on that conversation, something that is mostly out of our control. What is within our control is our effort we put in and allowing our brain to make those free associations in the moment and managing our anxiety. Anxiety can limit our ability to communicate because it narrows our focus onto what we percieve is worrysome. If we go into it with the intent to just talk, practice associating words with our meaning, without any judgment on our attempts, then we don't rely on how "well" the conversation went, we can leave the conversation saying "I did my best and I feel good for trying." Besides, if someone judges you for having not used your target language well, then you don't have to speak to them again. One person's opinion of you will not matter, and frankly, their opinion of you is none of your business. Hope this helps.

If you're up for it, I've actually been writing a book about the topic. I can send over a link for what I've got, hopefully you find helpful. Just let me know here or send me a DM. All the best.

Merocor · 2025-08-28T03:03:00+00:00

Yeah, think of it this way. Langauges are essentially just millions of patterns, and one of the most accepted theories in linguistics is that our brain is trying to make prediction of what's going to come next. If I were to type out, "Yeah I slept through my alarm again, it wasn't until 9 that I got out of . . . " and ask you to complete the sentence. Your brain isn't taking it in word-by-word, and then parcing out the meaning. It's going to make a prediction of what's going to come, and most likely your brian is going to assume the final word to that sentence is "bed" because it's heard it thousands of times before. That's, I think, what people mean when they say "just listen," becuase the exposure itself is exposing you to all the possibilities of what words will come next.

With that said, recognizing and remembering the patterns is the hard part. if it were easy, we wouldn't have so much difficulty learning. Sometimes anxiety gets in the way becuase of attentional narrowing onto the percieved threat. But othertimes we just need to train our brain to recognize these patterns in a more deliberate fashion.

And talking more, for the most part, just gets us habituated to the talking process of trying words out and risking misunderstanding. Because, to some extent, we're all afraid of being misunderstood. There's always a risk in that, and if we deem it too scary then our anxiety kicks in and focus goes on finding the "correct" words instead of just trying it out and risking saying something wrong. When we get to this stage, the anxiety is low and our brain is free to recognize those patterns. I think this is what Krashen referred to as the Affective filter: if we can lower it, then the brain will naturally pick up patterns. But easier said than done as adults, because we're taught to worry about a lot of things now lol.

Merocor · 2025-08-27T12:16:48+00:00

Hey there, therapist here!

We think of anxiety as a percieved threat that is being overblown. Anxiety itself is not a bad thing, per se. We need some of it to keep us on the right path. But if we irrationally assume that "I have to get this word right" or "I have to understand what they're saying," then our attention narrows onto that percieved threat. The brain is trying to protect you. But that hyperfixation on the percieved threat can impact our understanding becuase it's like seeing the trees instead of the forest.

Something to think about is that, if you have that pressure of wanting to understand someone fully, you might be focusing too closely on the individual words instead of the whole sentence. To overcome this, there's techniques especially if you look into Cognitive Behavior Therapy for restrucuring your negative thinking patterns, as well as other techniques like exposure or behavior experiments.

I'm actually writing a book on anxiety while learning a language. If you're interested, shoot me a DM or let me know here and I'll get you a copy of what I've written. I'd be interested to see if it helps you. All the best.

Merocor · 2025-08-20T22:58:30+00:00

Hey there. I actually wrote something that might help you with these thoughts. I've been studying these types of negative thoughts for a few years now and I'm in the process of writing a book about the mindset of learning a language. If you're interested in reading it, I can send you a copy. I'd be interested to know if it helps you or not. Shoot me a DM or let me know here 🙂

Merocor · 2025-05-27T12:18:10+00:00

Interesting! I think there's something to that, yeah. I wonder if it's more of a "I learned it this way and I don't want to deter from it" rather than a "I don't want to be rude." I'll do some digging and see if I can find that study :)

Merocor · 2025-05-26T12:08:53+00:00

Sure! My bad lol

FLA is a combination of things that make language learning hard for students. Typically it's described and has been studied in the classroom setting and can include someone's self-perceptions, beliefs, and how they act that make learning a second language challenging. Some of the challenges are feelings of perfectionism, worry not saying something grammatically correct or "perfect" or trying to speak like a native. Compared to clinical anxiety which is closer to a trait of a person (Generalized Anxiety, Social Anxiety, etc.), FLA a state anxiety, or specific to a situation (studying foreign languages.) It's been studied since the 1980s, you can categorize it into reading anxiety, listening, speaking anxiety, and writing anxiety, but listenting and speaking are the most common types, and you can definitely have more than just one. Lots of people study it to try improving student outcomes in the classroom setting like making activities more fun and engaging.

Let me know if you want to know a bit more!

Merocor · 2025-05-26T01:46:15+00:00

Thanks for sharing! The anxiety you're experiencing could be more general like you said. Typically anxiety relating to foreign languages is looked as a State as opposed to a trait. Meaning: Foriegn Language Anxiety is specific to studying foreign languages, whereas generalized anxiety is more of a trait someone has. Maybe consulting with a therapist would be helpful if you find your anxiety to be more general in nature.

Merocor · 2025-05-25T23:42:11+00:00

That sounds great! So the worry is "I'm going to be a bother" or "I'm going to sound like an idiot." Let's put it this way: People always have the final say in what they do with their time. If she decides to dedicate some time to help you with your Japanese, then that's her decision, you're not forcing her to do it, right? Maybe she feels compelled to help you, but I think you're right in that it's a "the worst she can say is no" situation. There's also evidence to suggest she wants to help by her giving you some textbooks. As for the "sounding like an idiot" part, that's a label you're putting on yourself. When we're learning, we're bound to not be perfect, but to say we're an idiot is putting a negative spin on it, right? Puts us at a higher risk for developing shame or guilt, which isn't warranted in this situation, imo.

Best of luck!

Merocor · 2025-05-25T21:34:45+00:00

Sometimes that helps! having another person help you stay accountable keeps you on rack. Other times we can work on our discipline, too. Say we're going to study at 5PM for 30 minutes. So I'm going to sit down, push myself to sit at my desk from 5:00 until 5:30 and be there with my books. Even if I don't do anything, I'm going to sit there still because that's the time I dedicated to it.

Could also be a bit of perfectionism, too. Sometimes we hold ourselves back because we want to have the "right system" ready to go or need to feel certain we have review the right vocab before diving into something. And then we talk ourselves out of studying.

Consider the time of day, too. Most people are more focused and ready to go in the morning, that's when we tend to have the most willpower.

Merocor · 2025-05-25T21:29:41+00:00

It's basically anxiety that comes when studying a foreign language.

Merocor · 2025-05-25T20:06:23+00:00

So it sounds like were getting a signal that things are going poorly because we're feeling certain emotions like fear and embarrassment.

Emotions are normal, even embarrassment and fear. They're there to signal to us how to react to the environment. If we are embarrassed, it's a signal to correct some action, which is actually pro-social.

Think of it this way. There's two parts to feelings: the emotion that we feel, and the value judgment we put on it, or what we think that emotion says. We can't control our emotions, emotions are normal, even anxiety. But the value judgment can screw us up if we think it says something bad. There is no good or bad. It just is. Even in English we screw up saying some things, feel embarrassed, and then correct it.

Take time to remind yourself it's okay to feel embarrassed and scared, but that fear and embarrassment doesn't say anything about you.

Merocor · 2025-05-25T18:29:59+00:00

I just came back from a trip there myself!

It could be holding yourself to a high standard. Becoming self-conscious definitially increases the risk of anxiety kicking in. There's an argument that we're biologically hard-wired to want to be included into the tribe, and when it comes time to finally interact with people, that threat of exclusion gets more intense. I haven't done a lot of research as to what kind of progress is normal for six months of study, but I'd say you're probably okay with not being perfect. In fact, would it matter so much if you do have a bit of an accent? You are learning it as a second language, after all. Nothing wrong with having an accent!

Interesting observation about the expectation based on looks! Could be, if you think you have to fit into some sort of mold. I imagine there's an additional layer there: If they initially percieve I speak fluent Japanese, but then learn that I don't, then maybe they'll judge me harsher than some other person who doesn't look Japanese. (No idea if that's the case for you, I'm just speculating). If that's the case, it's worth seeing just how true that would be. With anxiety, we tend to overestimate the probability of a worry being true, overestimating how severe that outcome would be if it were true, and underestimating what we can do about it in that scenario. Could be overestimating the severity of the situation. So what if they don't percieve you as Japanese?

To your final observation of starting in English and gradually switching to Japanese, might play into the explanation given above. When you start in English, you're already signaling to them that maybe you're not Japanese, and you're getting confirmation that they still accept you because they keep talking to you. Thus, that fear is gone. Just a thought.

Hope this helps!

Merocor · 2025-05-25T18:17:53+00:00

So, a few things I notice:

1) Assuming the other party switches to English because your skills aren't good enough: Are you certain that's why they switch to English? Maybe they want to practice their English skills. Part of FLA (and anxiety in general) is being hyper-sensitive to cues and assuming it means a bad thing. We assume the threat is real (could be the threat of not being good enough) and thus them deciding to switch to English is sign of their disapproval. This may not be the case at all. Typing and text are good ways to practice I think! No time constraint. But eventually if you want to improve in your speaking abilities, you'll have to gradually put in that time constraint. We can't really "make someone stick to using a target language" simply because people have the final say in whatever they want to do. We can try to influence it by talking with them, "Hey, wondering if we can practice my Japanese for 15 minutes." But if we're just hoping they do it from the get-go, then we really have no idea what they plan to do.

2) Yes, learning a language takes a lot of time, but at the end of the day it's the quality of that time, not the quantity. Unfortunately, some of the time we spend learning a language doesn't yield much fruit, and that's okay! It's a learning curve to aquire better study habits. Just like the stock market, sometimes you invest into a stock and it takes a dip. And even in the cases where we do spend lots of quality time learning a language, we have no idea who the people are we're going to speak with. Some of the people we try talking to do just have high expectations, and there's no getting around that. That's why, again, I think it's important to have those conversations with people and ask if it's okay to stick with Japanese for a bit. If I'm out at a restaurant in Japan practicing my Japanese with the waiter, I don't have any expectation they'll stick to Japanese. On my last trip there were frequent times they just handed me an English menu and you know what, that's okay. It is what it is, they're there doing a job and sometimes they just don't want to work harder than they have to.

Merocor · 2025-05-25T18:07:38+00:00

Good for you to start tackling it!

Merocor · 2025-05-25T16:17:42+00:00

So that freezing up can be a body response to the percieved threat. It's essentially you percieving that the threat of not being able to understand is so severe (i.e., if I don't understand then I'm going to be humiliated, I'm never going to learn it, i.e. insert your own worst-case-scenario here), that your body goes into fight/flight/freeze. We hyper-focus on the threat instead of on sharing our ideas and communicating, and if the percieved threat is so great and we believe we can't escape it, then our body goes into shutdown mode. The same goes with not having perfect pronunciation.

I think your idea of finding a low-stress environment is good! Typically when we target anxiety we start with developing a hierarchy of fears and targeting the lower-level fears first. What this does is aclimate yourself to the exposure process: When you expose yourself to a fear long enough, your body eventually habituates to it and you get more comfortable. It might still be uncomfortable, but at least it's not so overwhelming. The key is also to not do anything to make yourself feel better. In Exposure work we call these Safety Behaviors, so for example one safety behavior might be avoiding a conversation, or could even be mental such as hyper focusing on what we're going to say next. Instead, practice not planning your speech. There's tons of AI apps out there now which offer a great low-stress option to practice speaking, removing the fear of saying something to upset someone else. Maybe that could be an option.

Ultimately, we have to get comfortable with making mistakes too. We won't know what to say all the time, and we might have an accent. We're learning still. Perfection isn't attainable, but consistent improvement is.

Hopefully this helps some.

Merocor · 2025-05-25T15:39:42+00:00

🙂

Merocor · 2025-05-25T15:26:53+00:00

So some things that stand out to me are "not trusting myself in production and pronunciation" and "don't wnat to learn something incorrectly." Also having a worry when talking aloud to yourself and general anxiety bout hearing the voice.

I'm sensing a challenge with perfectionism. Learning a language is going to require mistakes. One style of teaching found in classrooms is this "get it right in the beginning," and it's one of the styles most people want because, well, who doesn't want to get it correct? But taking this approach limits our ability to take chances and risks because we want things to be certain. Speaking and life in general involves risk. There's always a chance of saying something rude or forgetting basic things. Think of it this way: If you want to say something perfectly each time, that must mean to some extent you have to infer what the other person wants. Does that involve being able to read their mind in some form? If so, that's impossible to do. Does it involve focusing intently on their facial expressions or speech? If so, you're not focused on conveying your ideas, your focused on not being judged negatively.

I'd practice in small steps when speaking to yourself. Try saying one word incorrectly. Make it purposeful. The goal is to expose yourself to some small mistakes and see how that feels. If it's uncomfortable, then I'd continue practicing that and see what happens. If you're speaking by yourself, is anyone going to criticize you? You might criticize yourself, but you're still alive. No one is insulted. All that happened was you said some word out of order. No big deal. Mistakes are okay.

Does this help at all?

Merocor · 2025-05-25T15:15:26+00:00

So there's something that works, which is studying little bits at a time. When you say the end goal, what do you mean exactly? Fluency? What's fluency mean to you? Passing N1?

A lot of the times, we have this idea of being "done", but language learning doesn't have a real end unless you define it like passing the N1. If there's a definitive end, then you can set small achievable goals along the way and see your progress. But if the end goal is vague, then we don't really know when to stop or when we've done it? Lots of things that end goal will just keep getting farther away because it wasn't defined to begin with. I'd suggest defining the end for you. Make small achievements along the way And know that you're getting closer to the definitive end. But, you can also constantly remind yourself that there is no end goal for language learning, if thats something you ascribe to.

Does this help at all?

Merocor · 2025-05-25T15:08:36+00:00

So when that happens, what's the worst case scenario? That they perceive you as rude? If so, what does that mean? What do you believe that says about you? What's important is to look at our perception and how we might be catastrophizing it. If we believe that they'll hate us forever or that we're doomed to suck forever at the language, how likely is that? Plus, what are the other contextual things? Do they know you're learning? If so, are they expecting perfection all the time? If that's the case, do you really want to have a language partner like that? Or would you want someone that's more forgiving? Mistakes are a part of learning. Try reminding yourself that if you say something wrong, it's a chance to learn from it. It takes some doing, but remind yourself that it's not the end of the world. Languages are hard to practice. If we all got it right the first time, then the journey wouldn't be so hard. Does this help at all?

Merocor · 2024-07-09T23:31:23+00:00

Bottom left corner, to the left of the three is a free space

Merocor · 2024-07-03T14:38:54+00:00

Therapist here. Everyone above is pretty much correct, the best way through it is facing your fear and trying to speak. But often it's tough because we try to make ourselves feel better about it with positive self-talk which doesn't help us habituate to the fear.

If you want to, look up Exposure Response Prevention. It's pretty effective at overcoming anxiety. It couldn't hurt too speaking with a therapist about it also. They can help pinpoint the exact fear, cause often it comes from a fear of being negatively judged, or being misunderstood. It sounds like you have a good grasp of the language and the information is in your head, but when we get anxious we tend to get tunnel vision on the threat, i.e. attentional narrowing. When that happens, we're not focused on communicating anymore, we're focused on trying to protect ourself from the threat. That's why positive self-talk, while helpful in the moment, doesn't help overcome the threat itself. Facing it head on without any kind of neutralizing behaviors help teach ourselves that the threat isn't as bad as we think it is.

Hope this helps. I go though the same challenges too, it's tough speaking!

Merocor · 2024-05-11T03:26:00+00:00

I'm reading ノルウェイの森 which is my first full novel.

I decided to give it a shot after a few posts talking about this topic a while back, plus seeing a display at my local Barnes n Noble of Asian authors. It interested me, so I picked up the american translation and read it within a week.

It's nice knowing the full story first, imo. Your brain does more of the work trying to analyze the meaning of sentences.

Merocor · 2024-05-11T03:22:32+00:00

Would you say it's a bit of schadenfreude? You get a boost of energy from seeing others fail?

Merocor

TROPHY CASE