What is accountability? You can find a range of definitions; I'll leave it to you to explore. I'll tell you what it means in my practice.
Accountability is - believe it or not - one of the main underlying reasons why people turn to me for help, both as a language coach and a language teacher. Let’s compare these two situations.
Situation 1:
Philip decided to study French. Great decision! Literally a life-changing move! Just imagine how Philip’s life is going to be different once he is able to do things in French. Breathtaking!
A month passed, nothing happened.
Two months passed, nothing happened.
For all good reasons, of course! Philip is a hard-working person, a worthy family man, and a loyal friend. You see - no time for French; he can show you his calendar to prove that there is literally no slot for anything. But after this long family holiday, he'll surely spare some time to fulfill his plan - start learning French. He’s a man of word, you know.
It’s a piece of cake to guess what happens after. After the holiday, his mother gets ill, then his dog gives birth, then he has to change jobs, etc., etc., etc. In other words, life. It doesn’t make sense to put “study French” into your calendar (even if you can find a slot), you’ll delete it, move it or waste the allocated time looking at various options how to learn French.
Situation 2:
Gloria decides to study Italian. She sets up language classes for herself as she knows from experience that she needs other people involved in this to keep it in her calendar, for her to stay motivated long-term to do tasks, to find efficient ways to learn words, to fail and then resurrect again and again - that is, to learn a foreign language. She simply understands that her decision is not enough to launch the project, to make things happen.
Situation 3:
Josh decides to study Polish. He's more or less fluent in Czech, so he doesn’t see it fit to start from the alphabet, though he’s not sure how to go about it. He opts for a language coach to clarify aims, needs, preferences, and build an action plan. He also knows that biweekly meetings with the coach will help him keep doing stuff, moving from one milestone to the next.
The factor that helped Gloria and Josh - or so they hope, at least - is accountability. Accountability is a kind of responsibility that appears when you start owning the project for real and other people join you in this, and now you, together with someone else, are responsible for the process and the result. Gloria has weekly group sessions before which she needs to make sure she’s on par with all the other participants. Josh knows what he committed to in the last session and he has a clear deadline - it helps a lot to focus and stop being distracted by millions of options.
What’s your idea of accountability?
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