What Twenty Years of Teaching Has Taught Me About Adult Learning Press enter or click to view image in full size Photo by Victoria Heath on Unsplash Actually I don’t teach languages. I teach the careful management of ego. After twenty years working with adults in classrooms, with all types of students from CEOs to doctors, lawyers to accomplished professionals in every imaginable field - I’ve come to a clear conclusion: The barrier to fluency isn’t what sits between your ears. It’s what’s sitting in front of your face, disguised as self-protection. I’ve watched a CEO reduced to stammering over a simple verb conjugation. And a surgeon, someone trained to make life-or-death decisions with absolute unshakeable confidence, physically recoil from a grammar worksheet as though it might bite. These aren’t failures of intellect. They’re failures of * nerve* . When you learn a language as an adult, it isn’t academic. It’s a radical act of vulnerability.…