Always act really shy and feel scared to practice in the streets.

Don't start by trying your hand at easy stuff, like hello, thank you, or excuse me.

And by all means, don't even attempt conversation. That's just impossible.

 

Agonize over every possibly wrong conjugation.

Beat yourself up for mispronunciations and even minor mistakes. You know you sound stupid when you make few mistakes, and everyone must be laughing at you.

 

If you aren't sure how to pronounce something, or you're undecided on the proper word, it's better to just stay quiet. Speaking up means you could be wrong or misunderstood. Even worse, you could accidentally curse and totally embarrass yourself

If you don’t understand 100% of a conversation, stop listening. Don’t try to figure out unknown words by using context, and definitely don’t write down words to look up later in your dictionary, and obviously, don’t politely ask the speaker what they mean or about a particular word.

After language class, go back to speaking and thinking in your native language. Don’t ever practice outside of class.

Don’t set aside a bit of time every day to study vocabulary and practice. You only practice language within the confines of the classroom.

Don’t even go the easy way out by adding your learning language subtitles to gain familiarity with new words.

Keep it all in your native language, all the time.

Of course, don’t change the spoken language to your learning language.

Tell yourself that you suck at learning languages and it just isn’t for you. If you’re reading this, you already speak the most widespread, and by many accounts the most international, language already.

Soon, there’ll be a perfect translation app and all those hours spent language learning would be for nothing.

Get overwhelmed by the enormity of learning a completely new language. The last time you did this was decades ago and you were a baby!