Rewards
You learned in Day 1’s lesson that a habit is: a behavior that’s triggered by a cue, which leads to a reward.
That’s why you’re working to establish the connection between your cue and your practice of learning Spanish.
But we left out one little thing: in the long run, what’s going to determine your success as a language learner is most likely the reward.
Let’s talk about the reward!
What should it be? Praise? Candy? Money? Ice cream?
No, sorry—those are extrinsic rewards. They have nothing to do with learning Spanish. A considerable amount of science has shown that rewards like those are often counterproductive. We habituate to them and may even lose our original motivation.
It’s best if your reward for learning Spanish is inherent in the learning itself. You learn because… It’s interesting and fun. It’s challenging—in a good way. You can feel your progress and appreciate your growing mastery.
If any of those are not true, then pause right here. This is a critical moment for you.
You’ve got to find the joy in the process. Otherwise, your odds of sticking with it are very low.
The good news is that there’s a lot you can do to make this a process you love. There’s no need to grit your teeth and power through a learning process you’re not enjoying.
The human brain is wired to enjoy this process. It’s wired for stories, wired for communication, and wired for getting good at things, in general. These are things we all love.
How to love learning languages
If you’re not loving learning language, you haven’t found the right way in. Let’s see what adjustments you can make:
- Stories: Most language teaching focuses on words and sentences out of context. But our brains crave stories! That’s why SuperCoco teaches through conversations—every conversation tells a story. But if those stories are not engaging enough for you, then find some that are.
- Communication: A lot of language teaching is book learning. There’s nothing wrong with that, but our brains crave communication! We want to use language! SuperCoco is designed to constantly give you practice using Spanish, and works best when you practice with a live partner. Bring live partners into your learning and you’ll have so much more fun with it.
- Mastery: The pleasure we get from gradually mastering a skill is basic to being human. But achieving that pleasure depends on a formula: the goldilocks rule. If it’s too easy, we’re bored; if it’s too hard, we’re frustrated; if it’s just right, we’re thrilled by our accomplishment. The key is to take an active role in keeping your learning “just right”. SuperCoco gives you many ways to manage the difficulty—there’s a whole tutorial on that (“The gas pedal and the brake.”). We’ll come back to this topic when we do our learning habit check-up.
People who love language learning aren’t born that way, they make it that way.