The road to success in foreign language learning might be full of bumps and slopes and, as humans, we all stumble in it. Usually those people who start this road with high expectations and no equipment end up scrambling out of a slumpy countryside trail. And those who are more prepared, either mentally or physically end up heading to the Disneyland adventure, full of fun and exciting moments. One way to be prepared to take this road is to know some of the mistakes that most people make and, therefore, try to avoid them, so that you will stumble less. As the proverb goes: “forewarned is forearmed”. School «Native Russian» has done the research. And here are the top 5 main mistakes of those who study the Russian language:

• First of all, before starting any foreign language learning, you have to attune your mental focus. Riding on the road and listening to the very sad radio or radio with the noise on the background won’t make your trip pleasurable. You have to take care of what is going on in your mind, most of the times. Many people start learning Russian thinking it’s going to be very difficult majorly because they already had a negative experience with language learning in the past. Focusing on the negative will attune you to a negative attitude and you won’t progress. So all you have to do is to tune to another radio channel, diminish the picture of your negative past experiences to the size of the grain and focus on something positive, imagine and visualize how much you enjoy  Russian learning process and it will definitely help you be delighted with your journey.

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• The second mistake most people make in their learning process is the loose body. Is it comfortable to drive a car when your back is bent or when your legs are crossed in a Buddha-style all the way? It is even impossible, as you need your legs the same way as you need arms and shoulders and your head. Every part of your body matters when driving. The same goes with the learning process. Pay attention to your body position as it can change your emotions. As an experiment, sit on the chair, put your shoulders down, chin down, head down, frown. How does it make you feel? Energetic? Uplifted? In a great mood? Most probably your energy is going to be down, you will feel tired and bored and not motivated enough to continue your studies. Now, change this body position: put your chin up, eyes up, shoulders back, smile – can you feel the difference? Even the small changes in the way you control your body can make you feel so much better, therefore you will learn more.

• It’s also important to get rid of the negative beliefs before you start learning Russian or any other language. It is commonly believed that Russian language is one of the hardest languages in the world and this belief makes so many people give up on the idea of ever starting to learn it. In fact, in our daily life we are burdened with dozens of such beliefs that stop us from doing what we really want. It is not that Russian is difficult, it is that we believe it is difficult. And it will be, until the moment when we change this belief. If you constantly repeat to yourself: “I can’t learn Russian, I miss motivation, Russian is too difficult”, then it will really be a big challenge to start the learning process. Instead, tell yourself that “Russian is effortless and easy, I am capable of learning this wonderful language, I will be successful with my Russian learning process!” and you will see how it will change your emotions and put a smile on your face. You will start to believe in yourself, in your inner powers – and it’s exactly what you need to reach your goals.

• Mistake number 4 is all about grammar. Many people when they start learning foreign languages do the same mistake – they focus on the grammar. As a result, they know the theory well but they can’t implement it in their communications, they constantly make mistakes and get upset with themselves or get bored of the language, because learning the grammar is usually a very boring process. What they lack is deep learning which can be acquired only through repetition. Of course, you don’t want to repeat the same rule over and over again. It will be hard to keep motivated and at some point you will just give up on it. What you can do is – find an interesting content, maybe a book that you like or a short story, or better an audio – and listen to eat repeatedly. For example, Tiger Woods, the famous golf player. He used to practice golf since he was a kid. He have been practicing the same swing every day for several hours, he is still practicing it nowadays. Why does he do that? To constantly improve his performance and become the top golf player of all times.

• Finally, the last mistake is connected to your motivation and the role models. Many people are used to rely on themselves in the learning process. Thus, they do their best, overcome all the obstacles on the way and soon find themselves unmotivated and bored. Some research has been made to evaluate why some learn faster and some learn slowly. Turned out that those who use special patterns, including body position, mind set, focus on the positive beliefs, repetition of an interesting content, and also have the role models are inclined to learn faster and more successfully. Who are the role models and why are they so important? Those are the people who have the kind of success that you want. They can boost up your learning process as they already did what you want to do. For example, if you want to become a great golf player, pick the abovementioned Tiger Woods as your role model. In our case, if you want to become a successful Russian speaker, you can choose Steve Kaufmann, for example, as your role model. So far he can speak 12 languages and his main secret of success is that he never allowed himself to think that the language learning can be difficult. You can also find many people in the internet, in different Russian language learning forums for example, and speak to them, ask them what are their tips for learning Russian, how they reached the definite level of progress in Russian. This will inspire you to learn more, this will boost your motivation and make you believe that if somebody else did that, then you can do it to, because nothing is impossible in the road to your success…unless you let yourself believe so.