Why Artists Need Active Learning

The biggest obstacle to helping artists and creatives with English for Art Purposes is getting them to commit.

It’s not a simple case of procrastination.

Creatives don’t shirk tasks like language learning because they are unpleasant, but because we are obsessed with other projects.

Working hard isn’t the problem. Wandering attention isn’t the problem. Our hyper-focus is.

Our attention is already tied up elsewhere.

Language acquisition, however important, doesn’t grab us or fulfil us, so we are reluctant to give it the best of our brain.

“Anyone supporting artists and creatives in language (or in business skills) needs to know that apparent procrastination stems from being already obsessed with other stuff that is way more interesting.”

Ruth Pringle, 2025

 

artists aren't procrastinating graphic

Ramping Up the Pressure

Academic systems usually manufacture fake urgency to get results: exams or assessments designed to make English temporarily as urgent as anything else in their students’  lives.

However, forcing the creative student away from their primary interest and into language learning through penalty or fear is counterproductive in the long run.

Language acquisition is all about the long run.

Good language development systems remove Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA), not compound it.

Art Schools, it’s time to admit that it really doesn’t matter if the student can pass a language test in 3rd year.

What matters is if they are showing up in English, internationally, growing the confidence to do so long after the end of their degree.

It matters that they are intentionally developing their language skills.

Rewards need to be clear and immediate – and that’s not gamification like Duolingo.

It’s REAL rewards.

Results and consequences that are immediate, visual and empowering.

Why Traditional Language Classes Waste Time

Even if we are submitting to a language class, our brain is processing the problems we were interested in before class. 

Through years of being creative thinkers within STEM prioritising traditional education systems, we’ve grown skilled at masking it.

High school trained us to blag it. 

The result is that you may have a row of students in a language class, but being physically present does not mean engaged or actively learning.

Practice-led Learning for English for Art Purposes

Part of the solution is practice-led language acquisition, but it must stretch and push the creative to the limits of their comfort zone to:

  1. Keep their interest engaged
  2. Learn more and more language.

Creative practices develop over a lifetime – even if some core essence links the different outputs.

Only active learning moves attention off the art student/artist’s immediate/urgent work and onto the subject in hand (language acquisition) by involving them, and letting conversations run in the directions they need to go.

And you use visuals.

Compelling visuals.

Active Learning for English for Art Purposes

Active learning shakes their mind from where they want it to be, and onto English acquisition.

That the creative needs to time block English practice regularly into their schedule is the point.

Not the class itself.

20 minutes of active language learning is worth more than 2 hours of being in a passive language environment where strong memory pathways are not formed, and frustration and resentment build.”

Ruth Pringle, 2025

 

How to Ensure Art Students Do 20 Minutes of Active Learning?

Start by asking them where they can fit English in, not forcing them.

For a creative, the problem lies in having the self-discipline to stop doing the things that interest us more and get boring, but necessary stuff done.

Task Management tools can help. They save the subconscious that labour,  enable you to commit clear-minded. 

The pursuit of skills/making art feels urgent and compelling at all times.

The system we move within has trained us this way:

 

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Obsession/drive is what gets us into art school.

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It’s what keeps us developing as artists.

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It’s what makes us tick.

Institutions expecting art students to forget this behaviour and become normal language students 2 hours per week get their language tuition completely wrong. 

Creatives Learn Differently

We can be inspired by people who made language fluency their mission and achieved it with hard work and devotion, but it is not a template to impose on an art school English class.

It won’t rub off.

Quite simply, our people are driven by other goals.

While lack of language fluency is an obstacle, that knowledge does not automatically make language fluency a goal.

Few young students have the self-awareness to make the equation.

Instead, they will skillfully mask that their brain is busy processing other work.

They will resent the time taken from their schedule for English.

In later life, they will plot to avoid situations where they ever have to confront the obstacle that English has now become.

They will compromise their career in insidious ways to avoid committing to English learning.