Consistency

con·sis·ten·cy (kən-sĭs′tən-sē)
noun.

con·sis·tên·ci·a

consistency is not constant

Lê este artigo em Português aqui.

Learning a language takes consistency. But it is unrealistic to think that consistency is linear, immutable… always the same. It is not. If it was, that would be constancy instead.

Consistency is different from constancy. And that was an essential insight from the challenge Convida o Inglês para Entrar in August.  So much so that it led us to turn it into a 30-day program, to allow more people to experience it and create a more real consistency, at their own pace.

What if consistency is about firmness rather than stability?

In recent years I have been fighting to become more consistent. And “fighting” is literal here because it’s really been a fight against myself – and in the end, I always feel that I lost. Writing has been a beautiful example of this — these whispers themselves. I always want to write more, but get frustrated because I don’t. To give you an idea, consistency is the word I chose to guide me this year, and every now and then I find myself thinking “I’m failing to comply”.

And looking at our affairs – TEA students learning English or Portuguese – I find exactly the same pattern. Maybe you’ll recognize it too: you want to be fluent and you know that consistency is necessary. So you want to be consistent. But you live in frustration because you are not. And the greater the frustration, the less consistent you are.

What I have found, though, is that the cause of this frustration is not the lack of consistency, but rather its inconstancy. We imagine consistency as something that should be daily, always growing in a straight upward curve. But we forget that life is not like that, nothing is constant… not even consistency.

Some days you will do more, other days less. Sometimes you will speak better, sometimes not so much. Yet, in the midst of this mad race for results, it’s easy to forget the aggregate power of small actions, repeated day after day. Besides reminding you of this power, Convida o Inglês para Entrar is here to help you use it to your advantage.

You may get the 30-day program Convida o Inglês para Entrar here.