Let's be real for a minute.
Learning a new language is a daunting task. New words, new phrases, new ways of expressing thoughts both simple and complex. Then there is spelling and grammar to learn; verb conjugation and maybe even noun conjugation depending on your target language. Making a sentence negative, verb gender, possessives, proper pronunciation, past tense, future tense, what the heck is past pluperfect... There are so many little rule exceptions to memorize, and it is really easy to get caught up in the details and stress out or burn out.
So please, take my advice and don't stress!
While you will eventually need to learn all the aspects of your target language eventually, there is no reason to stress about them.
When I was first learning French, I really struggled with understanding how to make a sentence negative. For instance,
Where in English we would say;
"I am not a boy."
In French the same sentence is;
"Je ne suis pas un garçon."
I had trouble understanding why there were two parts to make the sentence negative. You have "ne" Which I get, but what is "pas", what does it mean?
I got stuck in trying to understand the exact why for the device. I would have saved a lot of time if I had just accepted that a French sentence needs "ne... pas" to be negative.
Then I got stuck when the words "rien" - nothing, and "jamais" - never, were introduced.
"Je ne sais pas" - I don't know.
"Je ne sais rien" - I don't know anything.
"Je ne sais jamais" - I never know.
I was stuck on the Duolingo lessons about the French Negative for about two months. At first, I was very stressed out and I remember thinking about quiting; but I decided that I would just stick with it and hope that eventually it would stick. I tried to read grammatical explanations about what the exact rules were but that only made me stress out about it more.
About this time I had a realization.
Mistakes are good.
Mistakes are an important part of learning. Unfortunately we in the U.S are raised in an educational atmosphere that pushes perfection and punishes imperfection. I realized that the reason I was so stressed about this was because I was afraid of making mistakes. I felt that making mistakes was a sign that I was failing.
In reality, mistakes while learning a new skill are an integral part of learning that skill, especially when it comes to learning language.
Think about children.
This morning we asked my two year old daughter who she would see at school today. She said: "Lauren, Ashlyn, and me friends." This is not the right way to say this. She made a mistake, and regularly makes the mistake of using "me" instead of "my" in her speech. Do we punish her for using improper grammar? No, because she is two and she is just learning. Over time we will begin to correct her, but even then it is not something she should stress about. She will learn the correct way to talk with practice, over time, and with good modeling from those around her.
Now think of you. You are learning a brand new language without the benifets of a child; you do not have parents to correct you and model proper speech, and you probably are not immersed in the language you are learning. So why stress out and worry over the things you are struggling to learn?!
Give yourself some credit!
Give yourself some time!
Keep practicing and understanding will come!
Saying that I had trouble with making french sentences negative sounds silly to me now because it has become part of my understanding, just like I do not need to think about whether a particular sentence needs "me" or "my". I just feel it now. I just know it...
So when you struggle with an aspect of your target language, keep practicing, don't get discouraged!
In fact, own your mistakes! Be proud of them because they are the mark of your effort and growing use of the language.
You are doing something incredible! Keep working at it no matter how you struggle.