5. RESTRICT YOUR DOMAIN.
New speakers are naturally impatient to get to the full adult competence they enjoy in their own native language. But that can wait. If you start out by restricting your domain of competence to one thing at a time, you will have less frustration about the things you can’t yet do. Join a cooking class in the language and just learn to talk about cooking. Dig into your family history in the language and focus only on being able to talk about that history. Or even simpler, give yourself tasks to master like “ask for what I need at a hardware store” or “tell my co-worker about a good place for a weekend trip.” Before you know it, you’ll be more confident and ready to branch out.
