Fool around

Don't take yourself or your second language efforts too seriously. The reason being: the harder you try, the worse you perform. Think of the result when one strains to hit a golf ball!

Instead, relax more. I'd even recommend that you fool around! (I originally wrote this post a couple of years before deciding on 'Play-fool Tongue' for this blog's name.)

Several things come under that umbrella: 

• Be lighthearted
• Have fun 
• Enjoy yourself 
• Joke around 
• Experiment
• Get stuck in 
• Mix things up
• Be active

Now then . . . which Google image would do to illustrate this advice?

Play is the way

Look it up in a book, please to confirm what I'll say here.

Children play. Why? Because that's how they grow and learn. Naturally, no schooling needed. It's the best way, the most effective way, and the way that's most fun.

Many adults stop playing. They stop growing and learning. That's their own doing and their own choice.

You do what you choose to do, and become who you train yourself to be.

Playing allows you to experiment, try on different roles, make mistakes, try things again, in new slightly different ways, from different angles and to get used to the moves all in a safe environment (because, whether you win or lose it's just a game).

You need to be in that energized-but-relaxed state in order to perform well. It's a fine balance, and sometimes you get carried away by passion and excitement, in which case there may be tears . . . or hooliganism.

So be playful as you engage with language.

Laugh at yourself

If you are embarrassed by your language mistakes, you’ll need to de-fang that issue—for an issue it certainly is. If you have a problem about the reality, which is that you learn from your mistakes—and that in fact it is the only way that you can learn—then you need to get real.

Make a point of collecting embarrassing incidents.  The funnier, the better. Have them ready to tell to friends and at parties. Be the loudest to laugh. That way, you reduce the hold that the Terrible Mistake has over you.

Why deprive yourself and others of a rich source of humour? Tell jokes about your very best blunders, goofs, slip-ups and howlers.

People with status and respectability are the ones that will benefit the most with this bitterest of medicines. They need their pomposity deflated.

Have fun with random words

Introduce a bit of frivolity into your life! Use a collection of vocabulary items and access them at random. Play games with them, as for Scrabble. Combine the words. Connect them in some way. Create faux-sentences (and accurate ones if you like).  
That way, they lose their power over you. Your awe of them diminishes. They intimidate less.

Really, playing games is good for you—gets you into a state of flow. The outcome of games isn’t a matter of life and death. In a game, you can afford to get really into it without ultimate risk. Your skill improves by playing games. In games, you can do a lot of useful work without it feeling like work.

To sum up, turn language learning into a ‘mind game’.

Enjoy yourself

To me, it's a no-brainer to enjoy what you do when you learn a new language.  I mean, why not? What's the point of the exercise, if you don't?

If you enjoy the activities you've chosen, you'll spend more time on them, thereby getting more of the exposure to the language that you need in order to internalize it.

Also, being in a positive state of mind is conducive to learning.

Try it, you'll like it!

Converse with a chatbot

Why not engage in some lighthearted conversation with a chatbot? Bots are good to banter and hang out with. They are addictive. They are fun. They don't correct your mistakes; instead, they make their own!

I've only ever managed to have a typed conversation with chatbots, but by now there are probably voice-recognition applications out there.