A language teacher once remarked that students she’s had who were going to class on corporate dime were some of the least motivated she’s ever had. I told her I wasn’t surprised: I used to be one of those.
Why the bad attitude? While I can’t speak for every single corporate attendee to every language classroom, my unspoken reasoning (and, I assume, a couple of the people I went with as well) is simple. This class was a time off from work, not more work. Hence, I just wasn’t going to put in the effort.
I knew all too well what cruising through that class meant for me — I wasn’t going to learn as much about the language as I probably needed. This was an issue since, at the time, I needed some understanding of the language as it was the native tongue of one of our biggest clients whose projects I work on. Yet, that wasn’t enough to motivate me.
After the class, I did learn some bits and pieces of the language, which I was able to leverage to learn further on my own using some savvy internet skills and a cheap but decent language training program that I paid for on my own. Suffice to say, I ended up having to put more of my personal time into learning, making that decision to take the class lightly one of my dumber moments.
The lesson? Evaluate your motivations before signing up for a language class. Without doing so, you may end up wasting more of your own resources like I did.
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