Lost Your Motivation to Learn English? Here's What Helps

Remember how you felt when you first started learning English? You looked at maps of exotic places you would finally visit and imagined all the stories you would hear from people you'd meet. Every new word felt like a small victory. Learning English was an exciting challenge and a promise that speaking it freely would change your life.

Then, somewhere along the way, the passion faded. Lesson followed lesson, and your progress became harder to see. You started to wonder what you were doing wrong. Doubt arrived, and with it a lack of motivation. It's a difficult stage for every language learner, and it's usually the moment people start looking for someone to motivate them and bring back the drive to work on their fluency and accuracy.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. Many learners assume that working with a language coach will bring their motivation back, that they'll find someone to hand the responsibility for success to. That doesn't succeed, because the foundation of success in learning a language is a strong inner conviction that it will give you something you really care about. Motivation can only come from you. A good coach will help you reach the goal you've chosen, but you are the one who does the rest, under a watchful eye.

What motivates people to learn a language?

Find your reason for learning English and make it stronger. Let it become your personal language motto. There are plenty of reasons: career growth and promotion, talking to people from all over the world, discovering other cultures, travelling with ease, feeling more confident, seeing things from a new perspective, keeping your mind sharp or simply finding your way around the internet.

Add your own goals to the list. You know yourself best, but you do need to be honest with yourself. Now that you know your main reason for learning English, let's look at the traps waiting for you, so you can avoid them before they drain your motivation.

Three common enemies of motivation

Don't want to lose your motivation to learn English? Learn to spot the things that block your progress, and then avoid them.

Enemy 1: "I feel embarrassed"

If you are a more reserved person, start by letting go of the belief that making a mistake is a bad thing. Failure isn't the opposite of success. It's the road that leads there, and there's no better way to learn than trying and getting things wrong. As a language coach, I'll help you get moving and naturally shed the lack of confidence and the fears that get in the way of learning.

Enemy 2: "I don't speak English because I make mistakes"

Do you avoid speaking English because you're afraid it won't be correct? This is the most common motivation killer in language learning. You may have picked up the false belief that you have to speak flawlessly to be understood. We all make mistakes, even in our first language. As a well-prepared and empathetic teacher, I'll help you focus on building your skills instead of spending all our time pointing out errors.

Enemy 3: "I don't have time"

The well-known American educator John Caldwell Holt started learning the cello as an adult, disproving the myth that some things can only be learned in early childhood. As he concluded, if he could learn to play the cello well, then all of us have greater powers than we think. If you want to achieve something and you take it seriously, make room for it in your life by giving up something else.

Set your goal

We are not machines, so it's natural for motivation to dip as we work towards a plan. Many people learn English because they want to change jobs, earn more, gain prestige or feel the wind in their sails. What will fluent English give you? What drives you? To avoid the fatigue that comes with long-term learning, set clear goals and work towards them consistently in small steps. I write more about this in my article on the SMART method.

How to get your motivation back

Fortunately, there are simple ways both to avoid losing motivation and to win it back.

• •Start with a smaller goal. If your goals were too ambitious, scale them down. Even a few planned minutes of practice a day add up to a lot over a month.
• •Use every chance to speak English. Talk to native speakers whenever you can. It builds confidence and improves your fluency, pronunciation and conversation skills.
• •Sign up for lessons. Learning with someone else, whether a teacher or a language coach, boosts motivation and makes you plan your study time.
• •Track your progress. Check your stats in a vocabulary app, or rewatch an episode of a series you couldn't follow a few months ago and notice how much more you understand now.
• •Try something new. Often a new method or new tools are enough to spark your interest again. Listen to vocabulary on your way to work instead of on the sofa, or practise grammar in the park with headphones on.

A lack of motivation is a common problem for language learners, especially those who have reached a certain level (usually around B2) and no longer see the dramatic progress they saw before. Fortunately, there are plenty of tactics and resources you can use to lift your motivation and speed up your learning.

If you've found your way here, you've already done most of the work of finding the right teacher. I'll help you stay engaged and show you how to keep yourself motivated. We'll work on your accuracy, pronunciation and fluency. Let me know when you're ready to start succeeding.

Bibliography

• •Krashen, S. (1992). Principles and Practice.
• •Quan, Z. (2014). Motivation for a Second or Foreign Language Learning.
• •Anderson, R. (2018). Second Language Learning Motivation. St. Cloud State University.
• •Holt, J. (1991). Never Too Late. Perseus, Cambridge, MA. Norris-Holt, J. (2020). Motivation as a Contributing Factor in Second Language Acquisition. Aichi Shukutoku High School, Nagoya, Japan.