Language Learning Weakness is Strength

We always seem to separate weaknesses and strengths, as if they are different things altogether. Viewing them this way and creating that dichotomy polarizes us — setting us up to view certain aspects of our language learning journey as either a weakness or a strength. And given that our goal as a learner is to maximize our strengths and minimize our weaknesses, then it only make sense that weaknesses get labeled as bad, and strengths as good.

But we don’t need to see it this way. There is no separation of these two things. They are connected. They are on the same spectrum and therefore are one in the same. Weaknesses are strengths in the making. And strengths are thoroughly developed weaknesses. Let us stop drawing boxes around them and locking ourselves inside. Learning is an organic process and as such it must grow naturally. As the curators of our process we need only set the necessary conditions — the environment — for that organic growth to take place. We do our work, then step back. Let the natural order have its effect on your learning garden.

Look to the sky for guidance and to the trees for wisdom. For with a quiet mind and a soul at peace, one cannot help but absorb the lessons nature has to offer us.