When amateurish articulation beats punctilious prose
Aug 9th, 2007 by Accidental Thinker
Back in the day when I was a newbie college graduate, carefree and unemployed, poised to shortly begin graduate study in the field that would launch my career, I spent a summer immersed in an intensive Spanish language program at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
While there, I befriended another American in the program who was living with a host family. After I had spent some time in their company, the host mother made a perceptive observation about a crucial difference between the friend, whose name I no longer remember, and myself. She noted that the friend spoke Spanish frequently, but often imperfectly, while I was quite the opposite—not daring to practice my Spanish unless I was certain the words emitting from my mouth would be flawless in execution.
The wise host mother went on to advise that for all my friend’s inaccuracies, in the end she would end up the more fluent conversationalist because she was not afraid to make mistakes and be corrected, while I was hesitant to speak at all until I had worked out and perfected every detail of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation in my mind. With my friend’s way of trial and error, she opened up endless opportunities to learn from those around her. With my self-conscious reluctance to attempt anything less than perfection, I had little hope of expanding beyond what I already knew. In short, the host mother’s point was that I shouldn’t worry quite so much about getting it exactly right.
I often recall this advice whenever I find myself tongue-tied in any conversational situation, and not just when it comes to Spanish. It’s a problem I still struggle with, that fear of revealing what I don’t know. Along with its cousin, the fear of appearing inarticulate when the words and ideas in my head refuse to form themselves eloquently on my tongue. I’m a perfectionist, but remembering this particular story goes far in reminding me that sometimes it’s okay to take a chance on looking stupid, as long as I’m willing to learn from it.
Wise advice. It’s hard being a perfectionist which I know from experience. One of the things I hope to be able to teach my daughter is that it’s okay to make mistakes if you learn from them. Thanks for reminding me. 🙂
That is actually a great lesson.
Hey! I was beginning to worry about you. You haven’t posted in a while. Whew! Hey, listen. It’s okay to make a mistake. I made one once. It was the time I thought I was wrong, but it turned out I was right all along. You know, it bothers me to this day, this day, this day.
I’m glad you’re back. Thanks for stopping by again.
eye two em a perfek, prefec,perfekshunist, but it are hard to speek too unintellujunt bores. I git bye sumtyme tho.
Seriously, when you wrote about the usage of the em-dash versus the en-dash I had kind of a clue that might be a character trait, you being a published author and all.
I have often gone by the adage “Don’t say anything and have people think that you are stupid, or open your mouth and take away ALL DOUBT”. Of course… it is REALLY what then comes OUT of your mouth, that really takes away all doubt! ~ jb///