Overcoming Invisible Injuries in Language Learning: Dealing with the Affective Filter

In this episode of the Speak English Fearlessly podcast, we'll discusses the concept of invisible injuries in language learning.

Specifically, we'll be talking about the secret power that failure and the embarrassment that often comes with it, can have over us and our ability to learn English.

-Learn how the embarrassment experienced after making a pronunciation or grammar mistake can be similar to a physical injury except they aren't immediately apparent.

-You'll learn about your 'Affective Filter', a psychological barrier to language acquisition coined by linguist Stephen Krashen. This filter can lead to a fall in motivation, increased anxiety, fear of judgment, and avoidance of opportunities to practice.

- You'll learn how to take practical steps to begin lowering your affective filter so that it stops STOPPING you from moving forward with your English.

00:00 Introduction and Welcome

01:48 Understanding Failure and Invisible Injuries

03:51 Personal Story of Invisible Injury

08:14 Identifying Invisible Injuries in Language Learning

11:41 Understanding the Affective Filter

13:24 Strategies to Lower the Affective Filter

22:44 Conclusion and Invitation to Subscribe

If you liked today's episode and want to learn more about your Affective Filter and what you can be doing to lower it if you feel like it has been blocking your progress, then please subscribe to my free weekly newsletter. A new edition comes out every Tuesday.

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Introduction and Welcome

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Well, hello there and welcome to the Speak English Fearlessly podcast. This is the podcast for motivated English learners who want to speak English fearlessly and learn practical tips and strategies to conquer the CELPIP exam. I also love to feature encouraging interviews with regular people. People just like you.

Who are working towards becoming fluent in English so we can learn from their experiences together. Who am I? My name is Aaron Nelson and I've been an English teacher for over 16 years, and I now help students prepare for the CELPIP exam through online classes. Why should you listen to today's episode?

01:46 Understanding Failure and Invisible Injuries

Well, first of all, we've all failed at something. I've failed at many things. I bet you have too. But here's the thing. When we encounter failure or embarrassment because we've made a mistake of some sort, something can happen to us that we can't always see. Like for example, when we cut ourselves with a knife or we trip and fall and maybe scrape our knee or our elbow.

Those kinds of injuries are visible. We can see what has happened and we know we need to do something about it, like maybe put on a bandaid or go to see a doctor, but when we fail at something, the injury we might get as a result, might not be visible on the outside. Instead, it might be damage that we can't see so easily, but.

If left unattended to it can hold us back in our lives by keeping us from taking those kinds of risks that got us secretly injured in the first place. When it comes to language learning, screwing up a vocabulary word, for example, and having people laugh at us or simply respond in rude or not very understanding ways can make us secretly decide to avoid those kinds of situations in the future and the result.

Is that we get stuck. If you are feeling stuck with your English, it might just be because of one of those invisible injuries. If you don't tend to it, that injury will always powerfully be working against you as you try to learn English and prepare for the CELPIP exam. In today's episode, we're gonna talk about what those invisible injuries look like, so you can tell if you're suffering from one.

Two, we'll talk about what you can do about it. So if that sounds interesting to you, please sit back, relax, and enjoy today's episode.

03:51 Personal Story: Invisible Injury in Math

And to begin, I want to share a story of invisible injury with you that happened to me. It happened way back in grade five for me. Well, I've had many invisible injuries in my life, but this one stands out to me in particular. Like I said before, it happened way back in grade five with my grade five math teacher. His name was Mr. Martin. One day I was trying to solve a multiplication problem.

I was using my fingers to help me count, and you gotta know that me and math never have been close friends. I've always struggled to connect with math and to understand. Even the most basic of things that caused me a lot of trouble, especially when I was a kid. And so when I was a kid especially, I often would count on my fingers when I was trying to solve a math problem.

And on this particular day, in grade five, I was counting on my fingers trying to solve a multiplication problem. What I didn't know was that Mr. Martin, my teacher, was walking around the room and had somehow silently ended up behind me as I was counting on my fingers. He suddenly and loudly pointed me out to the entire class of 30 kids and said, this guy is counting on his fingers.

He doesn't know his times. Tables by heart. Don't count on your fingers. Memorize the multiplication tables. Oh, I felt super ashamed, so much so that I still remember that moment vividly today, and I'm 48 years old, and it happened way back in the fifth grade. Most importantly, it helped deepen a math related injury that I already had. This injury was already telling me I suck at math simply because I found it hard Now.

Because of what happened in that class with Mr. Martin. I totally wanted to avoid doing math thanks to what he did, and I can't blame it all on him. I don't blame it all on him, but that is a key memory in my math career. I always remember it in the words and the messaging that comes to mind whenever I think about it is, I suck at math.

I can't do math. Let's avoid math. Something invisible. Like I said before, something invisible happened that day. Aside from the bright red color, my cheeks turned because I felt so embarrassed and ashamed that my teacher was pointing me out. In that moment, like I said before, I told myself that I sucked at math.

I felt like I sucked at math, and my experience in that moment was telling me, Aaron, you suck at math. And the result was avoidance. I wanted to avoid math at all possible costs, and that followed me. All that has followed me all my life. It followed me even into university. I purposefully tried to pick a career that had little or nothing to do with mathematics.

In my case, I picked social work, thinking to myself, okay, working with people, helping people. I'll probably not need to use math. I was mistaken. There's math and social work statistics. Who would've thought that they find a way to include math in something as. People oriented as social work. I have no idea, but they did it.

But anyway, I didn't end up finishing that career by the way. But I got into that career specifically with, aside from being interested in helping people and very, very much on, in top of my mind when I was picking it, I was thinking, what's the career that has the least to do with math possible so that I can choose it?

08:57 Identifying Invisible Injuries in English Learning

So what does this story about math story about invisible injuries, what does this all have to do with you and learning English and being stuck? Well, stay tuned. I'm gonna tell you if you are feeling stuck with your English skills or CELPIP prep. Like you know for sure that you're experiencing a learning flat line or plateau, like it's not going up anymore.

It's flat, or maybe even worse, it feels like it's going down. I want to encourage you to take a close look at what's going on inside of you in your thoughts and your feelings about yourself as you work on your English. You might be invisibly injured if one you feel. A strong lack of motivation. You are demotivated to practice and to try to use English.

That might be an indicator that you have one of these invisible injuries happening or that has happened to you and it's affecting you on the inside. Another one is that whenever you are faced with an opportunity to use English, your internal dialogue immediately becomes negative.

It says, I suck at this. You suck at this. You can't talk to that guy or girl because they won't understand you. Your English isn't good enough. Or maybe it says to you, you'll never get this right, or maybe you talk to yourself. I'll never get this right. I might as well give up. So if your internal dialogue, the things that you say to yourself about yourself is frequently negative, especially when you're thinking about using English or when you're faced with an opportunity to use English, then you might have one of these invisible injuries that I've been telling you about.

Another indicator that you have an invisible injury might be that your anxiety goes through the roof, like exaggerating a lot whenever you are a boat to use English or when you're about to have an opportunity to use English. And that anxiety is so loud and so strong that it holds you back. It keeps you, or tries to keep you, or it's very convincing in its power to keep you from trying from stepping out.

I. Another indicator is that you feel for sure that when you do try to speak English, the people around you that hear you are judging you. You know they've got their hands crossed, they're listening to you and thinking to themselves. That kid has no idea what they're talking about. They suck at English.

Yeah. If you feel like people are judging you because of the way you use English, then you might have one of those invisible injuries. And finally, finally, you might, this might be a strong sign that you are suffering from one of those injuries, and that is that you avoid every single opportunity possible to practice or an.

Worse. You simply remain silent. You don't even try.

11:41 Understanding the Affective Filter

And by the way, there is a real name for this invisible injury. It's called the Affective filter. And we're not gonna dive too much into the details of this, but the Affective filter is a real situation that you might be dealing with. And it's having real effects on your English development. The Affective filter is a hypothesis.

It's an idea that has been put forward by a leading language learning researcher who goes by the name of Steven Krashen, maybe you've heard of him. Basically, the theory goes something like this. Everyone has an affective filter not just language learners. The higher your filter, the lower your performance will be.

The lower your filter, the more open you are to learn and to develop your skills. A higheaffectiveve filter blocks you or holds you back from learning. And I found this article over at the Literacy Minnesota site, and I'm gonna be linking to it in the show notes, but it has a really good way of thinking about the affective filter.

This is what it says. The affective filter is like a wall around a learner's brain. The higher it is, the more difficult it is for them to learn. Your learning plateau or the flat line that you might be experiencing as you try to learn English might be because you've got an invisible wall around your mind.

That is slowing or even stopping you from making progress.

13:24 Strategies to Lower the Affective Filter

Let's talk a little bit about what you can do about it. So if you found yourself nodding your head with some of the symptoms that I mentioned above, I. The ones where you feel a strong lack of motivation to use English, and whenever you're faced with an opportunity to to use English, your internal dialogue immediately becomes super negative, or your anxiety shoots through the roof and kind of convinces you that you shouldn't take another step forward when it comes to using English or that you're feeling that people are like totally judging you because of the way you use English and.

Because of all of that, you decide to avoid every chance and every opportunity you can to use English, or you just stay silent even though there's English happening around you. You just decide to not say a word. If you found yourself identifying with some of those symptoms, you are likely dealing with a high affective filter.

And in order to start making progress again, you need to start taking actions that will lower that filter a little bit. Here are three things that you can start doing today that will begin to lower that affective filter and make it possible for you to start making progress again. The first one is find and follow fun.

Find and follow fun. Bring joy and curiosity and fun into what you're doing in English. A lot of people think that in order to be effectively practicing, in order to be learning, they have to be kind of enduring whatever it is they're trying to practice with. Maybe they're feeling like they have to endure a boring English coursebook or a boring English class.

You don't. effective learning can be fun. It can be filling you with ideas that are of interest to you. It doesn't have to be something that is painful to go through. So if you are finding what you are doing to prepare for the CELPIP exam or to develop your English skills, if you're finding it to be boring and like a drag to go to that you're not looking forward to, and in fact the opposite, that you're kind of dreading it.

Not, not so much because yes, it is a challenge to practice and it is a challenge to try to use the language that you have. But if you're dreading it more because it just feels boring to you, then this is something that you should be focusing on. What can you do that is more in tune with your interests, with your hobbies, with your passions that you can do in English?

I guarantee you that if you start connecting what you do that is fun with working on your English skills, something will change. You'll begin to be more engaged with what you're doing it. You'll begin to be more engaged with your English practice, and that is a sign that that affective filter is going down and your performance is gonna start going up again.

The second thing that you can do whenever you make a mistake because you will, you will fail. There will be times when you do something embarrassing in English. That's just part of learning. There's no way around it. I've said it so many times in this podcast and on my blog that the only, like when you are not making those mistakes, when you're not feeling embarrassed, when you're not.

Thinking to yourself, whoops, I didn't do that properly. When you don't have that happening, it's because you're not taking enough risks. So you have to take them. You have to put yourself out there in order for your skills to begin growing. But here's the thing, when you do make a mistake, it's so important not to beat yourself up.

It's so important to not be that Mr. Martin person in my life who pointed their finger at me when I was struggling instead of helping me, he pointed me out and embarrassed me in front of the whole class. Don't do that to yourself. Don't be pointing the finger at yourself when you make a mistake, try to shift the way you think about it instead of, oh no, I'm so stupid.

I'm never gonna get this right. Shift that. And remind yourself of the truth that when you are making mistakes is because you are taking risks. And when you're not taking risks, you're probably not making those mistakes. So, in a way, having those mistakes happen in our life, having those moments where we feel embarrassed and by, by, you know, using a word incorrectly or, you know, trying to say something and, and a native English speaker kinda looks at you funny, like what?

When those things are happening, it's not a sign of weakness. It's not a sign of being a failure. It's a sign of you doing the right things to make your English grow. It's you doing the right things to make that learning plateau stop being a plateau and being, uh, an upward pointing arrow. So mistakes and being embarrassed and having difficulties with.

That moment are actually a good thing. It's part of the learning process, and you need to switch that conversation in your mind. Don't let yourself beat yourself up. Change what you say about yourself. This will also help reduce that a, that affective filter and help increase your, your ability to produce the language.

And finally number three, make sure you celebrate when you do something well, when something goes right, even as something as simple as going through the grocery store line and you are able to talk to the cashier in English when maybe before you weren't able to do it, count that as a success, not just as a regular mundane thing.

Think about it as progress. W when you do something, well, when you know you accomplished something that maybe before you struggled with, make sure you take a moment to tell yourself, Hey, you did a good job on that. Well done. Or if you're with a group of people who are also working on their English skills, let them know, Hey, I did this well, or this happened for me the other day, and I, and, and it worked.

You know, I tried a new word and the other person understood me. Let them know what's going on so that they can lift you up and encourage you as well. You need to celebrate even the little things, even the things that might seem ex insignificant or silly, like what I said, the the grocery store example.

Those seem like insignificant things, but in reality they're a sign of great progress. I remember the first time I was able to engage with a, with a, a cashier. When I was living in Mexico the first few times I was so terrified because I didn't understand what they were trying to tell me. When I learned what it was they were asking me, which was usually, hi, did you find everything that you were looking for?

But in Spanish. At first, I was so scared that I, I just kind of put my head down and didn't respond, and I know I made the poor cashier feel really uncomfortable and weird because I was feeling uncomfortable and weird, and I didn't know how to respond. But when I started to learn how to properly respond.

Those moments became something. Those moments with the cashier began to be a moment I looked forward to because it was an opportunity for me to practice. It was still scary. I still made mistakes. There were still times when they would say even more than what I had bargained for, and I'd be stuck like a deer caught in the headlights, you know?

But when you do something, well notice it. Let yourself know, Hey, you did a great job at that. And if you don't like, that would be the case. If you don't have anybody around you who can give you props, you know, and say, Hey, well done. You did a great job. But if you do have people around you, if you're working with a teacher or if you're working with friends towards building your English skills, let them know what's going on and what you did that has worked and receive that encouragement.

You need to be encouraged. To grow. So do those three things, find and follow fun. Number two, don't beat yourself up. And number three, celebrate your successes. Even if they're small ones, affective filters can be secretly working against you. If you don't deal with them, they will cause you to slow down. Or even stop making progress with your English.

22:27 Conclusion and Invitation to Subscribe

If you want to learn more about this topic and get even more advice around what you can be doing to deal with a high affective filter, I. You know that high wall that maybe is surrounding your, your mind and making it hard for you to develop your English skills?

Then I want to invite you to subscribe to my new to my newsletter. It's totally free. Just go to www.celpipsuccess.com/subscribe. And when you subscribe, I'll send you a free checklist that you can use to help you figure out if you are dealing with a high affective filter. It will include some suggestions to help you to begin to lower it.

Again, just go to celpipsuccess.com/subscribe and I'll talk to you again next Tuesday. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great week.