Q. Are you going to make mistakes as
you learn a second language?
A. Is the Pope Catholic?
I hope language teachers everywhere noticed this story: Pope Francis accidentally slipped and said a rather vulgar word while speaking at the Vatican.
My favorite part of the video is that he handled it like a
pro. He literally did not even blink. He corrected the error, and kept
speaking. Speaking of errors in high places, remember George W. Bush having issues with his native language? And let’s not forget that Barack Obama choked during the oath of office. Speaking a foreign language might make you hyper sensitive to your mistakes, but you probably haven't paid much attention to how often you slip up in your native language. It happens! And people probably aren't judging you for it like you are judging yourself.
The fear of these mistakes can wake up in new ways as you
grow in a language, and as your opportunities to use it increase. If you let
it, that fear will undo all the progress you make studying. Fear will send you
back to where you started out. The only way forward is to accept mistakes as
part of the process. Have a strategy (or strategery) in mind. You have lots of
options: Correct yourself. Apologize if necessary. Do nothing and keep going.
Laugh. But remember, it’s not a big deal if you don’t make it a big deal.
Embarrassing mistakes happen to
the best of us. Many leaders have made hilarious, humiliating errors on
the world stage that will be memorialized forever on YouTube. They kept going
because they have bigger things on their minds, like wars, economies, and policies. These errors are small things. As for
the Pope, I’d love to know if he had a good laugh about this later. I have a
feeling he might have.
