Joy Young

Last fall, I started sharing what I was learning as a student. Then... I went quiet for seven months. Why I Stopped Blogging I wanted to let you know why I disappeared for a while. No, I didn't give up on this project. Quite the opposite. The deeper I stepped into the student seat, the more I found myself learning—not just about Spanish, but about teaching, learning, and what it truly feels like to struggle through the learning process again. Those experiences became too important to keep to...

Language learning is hard. I mean really hard. The kind of hard that makes adults who have accomplished major things in their lives want to give up. Staying focused in another language is exhausting. It’s mentally draining in a way that’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived it. It would be so easy to check out during a lesson. Instead, you’re trying to follow what’s being said, process it, figure out how to respond, and then say something back — all in the moment, all while trying to use the...

What the affective filter looks like before anyone notices I’ve described moments like this before: sitting in class, overwhelmed, trying to keep up while that dark wall of confusion slowly builds. This time, I want to slow the experience down and look more closely at what’s happening internally when learning starts to shut down. Not all at once, but gradually. After all, I don’t walk into every class wanting to throw a chair in the first few minutes. At first, I am a very positive learner. I...