The topic of the day is changing your mindset. When you learn something new, if you have a mindset that's says, "This is really exciting, I'm going to learn it," then you learn it easily! As simple as a new recipe!
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It could be crocheting, knitting, I don't care. There's likely a million things that you want to learn. From hatching chicks, to raising honeybees. There are all kinds of things that are happening in the homeschool world right now that people are very excited to learn. And then there are things that you're likely scared to death of. So that's the TRICK! You have to be EXCITED!
What you need to do with changing your mindsets to learn a foreign language? What do you actually have to think? You have to think,
#1 "This is easy."
If you can't think, "This is easy," maybe you can think, "This is not that hard."
Let me give you a word that will be easy. El libro. El libro - the book.
Here's the book. Pick up a book. There's probably a book next to you. You're a homeschooler. Grab a book. Touch it now say it. El libro. (ehl LEE-broh) One word. You wanna say my book? Mi libro. MEEEE LEEE-BROH.
There you go. So now you know that it actually can be easy. That's one word. What is it?
El libro. That's the basics of learning a language. Just do that thing again and again, and again, and again and again. Yes, you have to learn how the words go together, how they sound, and syntax.... But truly that's still just one word at a time. Let's try a sentence starter too.
Necesito. I need, (neh-seh-SEE-toh)
I need the book Necesito el libro. (neh-seh-see-toh ehl- lee broh)
So now you have two words.
So..... how do you change your mindset? What did we do there?
You proved it to yourself. You proved that this is easy. So that's one thing you have to change. You have to change from fear or thought, "This is hard."
Any idea of I can't has to leave, and you must actually prove it to yourself because you're not gonna believe just the sentence or thought.
Your Pollyanna voice, or whatever it is, you're not going to simply believe it. Because you're a realist, you're a logical, and you know that it's not actually easy. You've been proving that it's not easy since high school, middle school, you've proven even it's hard with other curricula. You've proven it again and again. And so you know that to be true, that this actually, is not easy.
So we have to work against this. PROVE IT.
So grab a flashcard. Draw a flashcard, choose one word, say it again and again. The next day, look at it. Can you say it without seeing the photo side?
So did you do it? I don't know, but you know, did you practice the word, el libro?
Practice that one word so you have it so you can say it without looking at the back and then go on to another word, another sentence start or anything like that.
If you like that method, then guess what? We have a whole thing. Look, check it out. See it and Say it Flip Flop Spanish. This is exactly what we do. We do six words at a time instead of one word at a time, but you can still break it down and just put them in the little stack and do one word at a time after you listen to the audio.
So to change your mindset, NUMBER ONE, you need to get rid of the fear and believe that it's easy.
The second thing that you need to believe is that
#2 It's fun!
You must look forward to it somehow. Sometimes you don't look forward to learning something new because you simply have a bad attitude towards it, so what do you need to do? It feels like work, and possibly slightly impossible. How do we fight an ATTITUDE?
So what do we need to do? We need to make it fun. So how do we make it fun? We prove it to ourselves. You make it fun so you can act it out. Play charades, doodle, drawing games, guess the word, hide the book somewhere. Don't think too hard. Make it fun! And if none of those things sound fun to you, go ahead and add some food to the lesson. Food, after all, adds instant fun!
You can add simple snacks like tortilla chips, salsa. Something EASY that. Add food to your lesson and then everybody looks forward to it.
In conclusion: JUST TWO STEPS! I'm not going to give you three. Can you do two actions to change your mindset today? Number one, prove to yourself that it's easy. Number two, make it fun.
So - learning a language is easy and fun.
You have to have the right tools or the right messenger (wink, wink - I might know somebody) to help you. Succeed in your goals, and that's what I'm here for. So email me, comment below, Facebook, whatever you need to do. I'm here to help YOU change your mindset and for learning Spanish to be FUN and EASY!