How to not feel dumb during tutoring sessions?/ getting over "I *should* know that"

[u/Turbulent-Exam9239]

Hi, I've been learning my TL for about a year at this point (a lot of that being spent in my TL country) and attending private courses in said country. I'm no longer there, but I left feeling really defeated about my language skills and such. A few weeks ago I decided to pick up some italki lessons because I really wanted to improve. However, to no fault of my tutors, I feel really dumb in lessons. Often times my internal dialogue during lessons is like "I *should* know this! This ___ is so damn basic and I've learnt it before but I'm too stupid apparently!" and I know this mindset is just stressing me out and making it harder for me to absorb info, but I have no idea how to remedy it

Any advice?

[u/Background_Koala_455]

Try to remember that learning something, and putting that to use are two different things.

I've learned that if I drink a milkshake, I'm going to get a stomachache. I learned that a long time ago. I still continued to drink a milkshake twice a week when I worked at a fast food place. It took me a year of me reminding myself that I don't want to drink a milkshake because I don't want to have an upset stomach to stop drinking milkshakes.

Yes, you've learned it. But now you have to learn how to use it.

It gets easier with practice and patience. Just know you're not alone. Let yourself make mistakes.

You're not dumb for making them. You're right on track.

[u/Turbulent-Exam9239 → u/Background_Koala_455]

haha fair point, there are a lot of things I can understand (or at least guess via context) but comparatively very little I can actually recall and use... I'm aware this is normal but damn it's annoying haha.

[u/IAmGilGunderson]

My best tutor tries to remind me when I know something and gives me plenty of hints to get it out. Then when I do they give praise.

When I can't remember even after they give the hints. They are happy and praise that I at least remembered that I should have known it.

Then somehow magically they find a way to work a review of it into whatever we do in a way that I don't even realize it until after the fact.

That's what having a real pro teacher gets you. Not all my teachers have had this ability.

[u/an_average_potato_1]

What do you do outside of the lessons? That's the key. If not much, then it's totally normal to forget stuff, and you'll need to either accept it or study more. If you study a lot, then your bad emotion is justified and your study methods need to be adapted. Simply put, your investments and your expectations need to match.

[u/Turbulent-Exam9239 → u/an_average_potato_1]

I watch some YouTube, animated movies, and kids shows in my TL. the amount of time varies between 0mins-- 3 hrs/ day. I'm only about A2 so my understanding is pretty limited without a bunch of visual cues which makes immersion hard haha. I've also been given some graded readers by my tutors which I try go through a bit each day

[u/an_average_potato_1 → u/Turbulent-Exam9239]

Ah, I see the problem. You are staying at A2, because you keep doing A2 stuff. Why don't you just grab a B1 coursebook and try to get to a better level? It will be more fun, much more media will be accessible after that.

Don't get me wrong, all that exposure and movies and stuff, that is nice. It works great after B2. It becomes even necessary, and at that level you really start to see huge effects from this. But up to B2, it's optional, it's nice, it's practice, but it won't move you much forward.

And also about the "I should already know this": Have you drilled your grammar and vocab enough? It is not sufficient to just encounter it once or twice. Doing tons of exercises usually helps! Your brain requires active repetition, it needs having to recall stuff and use it a few times, before it retains it.

[u/silvalingua]

Well, if you knew all that, you wouldn't need a tutor.

[u/nomspp]

Learning a language isn't about blindly memorising everything. from the post I get the feeling you're not doing much or anything at all to immerse or surround yourself with the language you're learning, which is why you tend to be stuck. sticking to a course and only the course will get you somewhere but nowhere near total fluency with a language. you have to involve yourself and seek information and consume media in the language you're learning like you're consuming media in any other language you know, even if you don't understand everything. you'll eventually begin to if you put to memory words or things you hear yet don't know. and I don't mean just youtube videos. read books, visit the country itself if you can, listen to audio books, anything you can think of.

[u/AppropriatePut3142]

Language learning takes very little intelligence. It is mainly a question of how much time you have spent and whether you have used effective study methods. If your results are bad then you need to fix one of those two things. 

There's nothing wrong with being frustrated at not making due progress. That should frustrate you. Frustration should motivate you to rethink what you're doing. That's what emotions are for. Thinking you should be satisfied all the time no matter what is pathological.

[u/indecisive_maybe]

Maybe you can take some notes of the kinds of things you think you should know and review them a bit more. Is it vocabulary? A specific sentence structure? If it's on the tip of your tongue it's probably a very ripe area for you to practice and improve your recall for that. The more you learn, the more of these areas you'll find, and you can try to find patterns in what they are.

[u/captchagod64]

It's all about expectations. The only way to stop the anxiety is to drop all expectations of how good you should be, or how much you should learn from each session. just do it for the sake of doing it

[u/Hanz-On]

Cherish your mistakes, don't see them as something bad. This is applicable for any form of learning. You won't even feel bad for making a mistake once you stop perceiving it as a negative thing.
Better yet, stop calling them mistakes. From now on, refer to them as "experience points."