We all have our own ‘autopilots’. When we drive a car, cycle, use our native language and in so many other situations we use it. Overall it is very good. Imagine how difficult the world would be if you would have to concentrate 100% on everything you were doing because your body/brain wouldn’t remember. That would make life almost impossible!
This autopilot also kicks in once you have started to learn a second (third/fourth) language. Actually on all levels there is some form of it. Try to think back to when you started learning a new language. At a certain moment there were 10 or 15 words or sentences you could use almost without thinking about it. You knew the meaning and the pronunciation and you felt confident using these words. There you had the start of your autopilot.
However..the autopilot can be tricky. Because mistakes/issues/bugs can be programmed within it. The student I had today is learning English and has got a real problem using the ‘s’ in sentences such as: She walks to the supermarket. Sometimes he uses it but more often than not he doesn’t. This means the ‘s’ of he/she/it has not been programmed in his autopilot. And most of the time when he talks English he can use the autopilot, he can speak clearly, get his ideas across, make himself understood and understand others. Programmed issues/bugs are difficult to change! It is much more difficult to solve a bug in your autopilot than it is to put new information in it. The most important thing to do when trying to get rid of the bug is that someone needs to correct you. It is so important! Otherwise these mistakes will become part of the programming and will never change. Granted…maybe you will need to be correct/made aware of the bug hundreds of times and this isn’t fun. But after a while of concentrating harder and focusing on this problem you will notice a time comes when suddenly (somehow) the correct code has been uploaded to the autopilot and now you can use the ‘s’ for he/she and it in the present tense without even giving it a second thought!
Do you want to retrain your autopilot and get bugs out of your Dutch/English system?
Contact me now and we will work on this together!