Up until about three years ago, I was convinced that I couldn’t draw. I would say jokingly ‘even a straight line is out of the question’. Then, one day, while spending some quality time with my favourite eight-year-old, I started drawing a flower from a gardening book. Being a keen gardener myself, I’ve spent countless hours pottering in my garden, but also observing my plants and flowers, which obviously helped when drawing one.
The flower I had drawn on the page was recognisable as such. Still, I waved the drawing in front of lovely Anna, amazed at the result, saying ‘It actually looks like a flower!’. Understandably, the child looked confused: 'Of course it looked like a flower, auntie Caroline!' she replied.
This made me wonder why the deep-seated conviction that drawing was a skill beyond my reach was so firmly embedded in my head. I’m lucky to have had supportive parents who value art and any form of creative endeavour and praised every object I made, especially the ugliest (a box of matches with golden dried haricot beans on top springs to mind).
Then I remembered art classes at school. At the time they were called ‘Travaux manuels’ (crafts) and were as appealing and inspiring as their name, i.e. not in the slightest. And that’s where the joy I had as a child to draw everything and anything, regardless of the result, was well and truly killed and where I started believing that I couldn’t draw.
Does that feel familiar?
Sadly, most of my students have had the same experience, except with languages. They come to me, keen to speak French/English/Italian, yet convinced that they are – or will be – rubbish at it. To which I always respond that they didn’t learn a language at school, they mostly did grammar exercises in a book.
And just like, for about a year, I kept doubting myself that I could actually draw, despite actual proofs, such as the one below, so do my students who doubt their own ability to speak the language they’re learning, even when the proof is there, i.e. even when they’re speaking fluently!
I spend more time convincing them that they can speak – and are speaking – than I do actually teaching them the language! And I have yet to come across a student, even at an advanced level, who doesn’t underestimate their level.
My confidence in my ability to draw hasn’t sky-rocketed, I am not Leonardo Da Vinci and do not aim to be. However, each time I take pen to paper, I enjoy the fact that I am able to draw and thus shut down a belief I’ve had my entire life, and which had no reason to be.
So do my students with every new sentence they put together, every new story they read or podcast they listen to and, especially when they start a sentence and correct it themselves before I have the chance to do so. They realise they do know what they’re doing even if they’re still learning!
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