Why Everyone Needs a Language Coach
by Ani Gabriel
So, you say you want to improve your English, but you never actually do it. Why is this? Work, kids, pets, shopping, cleaning, sleeping, eating, exercising, blah, blah, blah, rinse and repeat. No time. You never have time. No energy. You are exhausted from all the things you have to do in your day. No mental space. You are exhausted from making decisions all day, from thoughts taking up space in your head. These are all perfectly legitimate excuses, and you are perfectly in your right to explain to yourself and to others why you have not yet begun. But either way, you have not yet begun. You have not yet begun.
“A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with the First Step”
– Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
This is where the language coach steps in. This is how you begin. Call the language coach. Just do it. JDI. This is the hardest step, the step that demands the most energy from you. The step that may take up considerable head space and energy, but once it’s done, it’s done. It’s done. It’s not unlike joining a gym, but even though it’s said that once you pay the gym membership you will feel like you must go, so you go, it’s actually not about the money. It’s about the commitment. It’s about the thought swimming inside your head becoming something that you manifest into reality by making the first move. It’s about improving yourself and achieving your goals. It’s also about accountability to yourself and to your coach who is committed to helping you improve not just your English as a Second Language, but you.
What exactly does a language coach do for you, you ask, that you cannot do for yourself? It is a commitment to time, to money, and to another human. And how can you carve out time when you barely have it? Or so it seems.
“Time, time, time, what’s become of me while I looked around for my possibilities”
– Hazy Shade of Winter, The Bangles
Space and time are related. You make space, you will have time. Try to book the same time every week and stick to it. Just once class a week for an hour should be fine. Just stick to it. No matter where you are. Vacation. Traveling for work. Down with a cold. Super stressed. In a foul mood. You haven’t done your homework. It doesn’t matter. Just always show up. Always show up. Week after week. Month after month. You will see. Maybe not immediately, but you will eventually see. The best part is that is that it will not feel like you have put in that much effort because you have made it part of the running list of activities you do in a week: once you actually get going, it will not feel like much work.
You go to reply to a phone message, and an hour later you realize you’ve been sucked down a rabbit hole, distracted by a news notification, an email from your boss asking you to rewrite the proposal you just turned in, a text from your son asking you to sign a permission slip for school before lunch, a reminder that there are only 2 hours left on the hiking gear sale. And before you know it, and hour has gone by. An hour that could have easily been better spent improving your language skills. And so truly I say to you that yes, you do have time.
Everyone Needs a Coach
– Me
I am sure someone besides me has said this before, but I do believe that everyone needs a coach. Even coaches need coaches. While you are worrying about everyone and everything else, a language coach is solely focused on you and improving your language skills. Not everyone else in the ESL class. Not what the Improving Your ESL for Dummies book is saying says or what the latest You Tube improve your English videos are churning out. Just. YOU. And your language needs based on your targeted, specific goals.
Written English can be quite different from spoken English, email writing can have great variances depending on the audience, and presentation skills require the art of bullet pointing while still sounding like a fluent English speaker. A language coach can help you identify and drill down on the areas where you need the most help. This kind of focused attention will get you the most efficient results because you are targeting weak areas where you can make the most gains.
Stop telling yourself that you will improve your English skills soon. If you haven’t started on your own already, the reality is that you probably won’t be starting anytime soon. Why? Because you’ve been getting by with the level of English that you already have. Because that level gets you by, and you are comfortable, and people don’t really change until they are uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. By adding on just an hour a week of ESL coaching, you can already begin to feel a difference before you even begin to sign up for that class that begins in August. Wait, August? That’s when performance reviews are due at work and school starts and … and … and ….
This article was brought to you by Language Solutions for All. If you would like to learn the ways in which language coaching can work for you, please contact me HERE for a FREE consultation.
Reasons Why You Need a Language Coach
1. You don’t have time – accountability removes the decision-making barrier and makes it automatic.
2. You will learn more efficiently – the coach picks up on your patterns and focuses on addressing your patterns to help you break habits.
3. If you haven’t made the change by now, it’s not likely that you will do so in the near future.
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