John’s EFL Cafe

Dear friends, in my last blog entry I wrote about developing the skill of ‘hearing’ or ‘reading’ phrases at a time rather than concentrating on each-individual-word [one-at-a-time] as it enters either your ears or your eyes. I also ended that post by mentioning a principle which has to do with how our brain/mind naturally works. You see, our brains are very efficient and they are designed to SERVE US. They do this[serve us], in part, by recognizing when something is important, useful or interesting to ‘us’ and converting it from a ‘conscious’ effort [something that requires our undivided attention] into a subconscious habit.

Let me give you an example of how this process really works so that you will better understand what i mean. I believe that all of you reading this blog can tie your own shoe laces. [if not, please come and see me for help !]

When you were a ‘xiao peng you’ and tried to tie your shoes for the first time, it represented a HUGE challenge. In fact,it was nearly impossible. The reason it was nearly impossible was because it required a complex process of learning and combining [putting together at the same time] several skills. [please note that this is equally true of learning language skills as well].

So, in order to tie your own shoelaces, your little fingers had to learn to do the following: hold the laces; cross one over the other; pull them tight; loop each lace [form a circle shape with it] ; wrap one loop over the other; tuck it under; pull it tight…. my goodness!!! how did you ever learn to do it!

I’ll tell you how. You were MOTIVATED - you had a reason or a desire to do it successfully. You realized your mother/father/grandmother/etc. could not be there to do this task everytime you needed it done. That understanding motivated you to keep trying and trying; over and over again as your little finger muscles learned how to create a successful result. You persisted [kept trying] as you slowly got better and better and one day, you succeeded !!!

Now, here is the best part!!!!. After you consciously [with great intention] repeated this process of tieing your shoe laces over and over enough times, your brain [your subconscious mind, to be exact] made a decision that, because of your continued effort and intention given to accomplishing the ‘task’[which in this example is tieing your shoe laces] it must be important to you; your brains owner. Once your subconscious mind made this decision, the task[tieing your shoe laces] was ‘magically’ converted from a ‘conscious effort’ in to a ’subconscious habit’ that no longer required your ‘conscious’ attention. ‘You’ could ‘consciously‘ do something else like talk to a family member or think about your friends while ‘your shoe laces were being tied’.

But, ‘who’ tied them? The ‘you’ who you think of AS you was busy thinking or talking. Yet, the shoe laces got tied!!!! AND they were tied well!

Was it Magic? The answer is .. Yes and no.

NO because it is just how our brain/mind is naturally designed to work, but YES because this amazing process goes on over and over in our lives as our subconscious mind repeatedly converts ‘conscious’ activity into ’sub-conscious habit’ - every time we learn something that is either important, useful or interesting to us.

The exact same process happened when you learned to use a computer keyboard and it works when you learn to drive a car.

So, what does THIS have to do with improving your English?

EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I see it, a good part of my helpfulness to you is in my ability to draw your attention to things that will help you put your brain/mind to work in the it’s most efficient way when it comes to language learning. The root cause of a lot of your ‘weaknesses’ or ‘difficulties’ rests in the fact that you never learned HOW TO LEARN language properly in the first place. What is very sad about that is that it is much harder to ‘unlearn’ a poor habit’ and replace it by a ‘positive habit’ than it is to learn the proper way in the first place.

So, if you will trust me as a person who has devoted more than 9 years to successfully helping hundreds of Chinese people learn to improve their English, I believe I can continue to introduce ideas and concepts that will have you making progress toward better and better English. At the same time YOU must realize that no one else can put in the time or devote the attention to the task of improving for you. If you want YOUR BRAIN to understand and produce better English, then YOU must pay the price.

The price; as I hope you have learned from reading this blog entry, is for you to devote a relatively short period of time and attention to ‘consciously’ eliminating the negative habits you have now and replacing them with positive new skills in order to improve your English.

Only YOU have the authority to give YOUR subconscious mind the message that something is important, useful or interesting enought for it to convert it from a ‘conscious effort’ into a ’subconscious habit’ . There are NO shortcuts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Will you trust me to help you?

This is John, doing my best to help make sense of English for you !

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 5:55 pm and is filed under My Links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.