How To Productively Plan Your Day for Language Learning
Get out of the give-up loop
Language learning can be fun. But we all struggle to keep the motivation going for long enough. This can mainly be because of several reasons like,
- Oh, I got busy with some office work and some other personal stuff this week.
- I don’t think I can learn this language. It is too difficult. I keep forgetting stuff even if I study hard.
- mmh… I think this language is not for me.
True, this happens to me too.
But, question yourself if you are coming up with excuses like these and are trapped inside a give-up loop. What am I doing wrong? Why did I start in the first place?
You know what? The biggest reason for getting into a give-up loop is the lack of a proper and productive plan for your language learning journey.
We usually tend to pick things up here and there, learn a few words and phrases of the language, and forget everything at the end of the day.
But having a proper plan can help you reach your goals faster and much, much easier.
I’m going to show you a reference plan that you can adopt and twist and tweak as you wish. This will help you spend a more productive day on language learning.
Before Starting
1. Be specific on what you will learn
You know when you take a specific language, there are many things we can learn about. For example, a language has its own numbering system, which becomes a must for you to learn at some point. So you can dedicate 1 day or 2 days, depending on your preference, to completely learn and finish off the numbering system of your language. You can checkout my article to learn a list of 25 such topics.
Takeaway → Pick a specific topic to learn during the day. Be specific.
2. Decide the time you would dedicate to language learning
Obviously, you cannot be doing language learning the whole day. You have to attend too much other stuff such as your profession and personal duties. Therefore, it is important that you block a slot in the day for language learning. It can be a half an hour block, a one-hour block, or even two hours based on your necessity.
Takeaway → Know how long it would take.
All good? Let’s get started. 🙂
The strategy is,
Break your study block into productivity chunks
Assume you allocated a half an hour block for language learning today.
This is your precious study block. 🥰
Based on what you planned to learn today, you can break it into productivity chunks.
Example: I planned to learn the alphabet of the Spanish Language today. So how can I break my study block into productivity chunks?
- 1st 15 min → Listen, write, pronounce and understand
- next 5 min → Search and learn a mnemonic that can help me keep it in mind
- next 5 min → Create my alphabet chart
- last 5 min → Revise what I just learnt
You can use a pomodoro timer to help you with the productivity chunks.
See, it’s simple. 😃
Remember to necessarily add a productivity chunk of at least 5 minutes to your study block to REVISE — REVISE — REVISE what you learnt just now.
That is the key to keeping what you learnt, inside your memory, never letting it go. And this is the only way to prove that the time you spent per day studying stuff will not go to waste.
You can check my article to understand which areas you would need to focus on when building real fluency in a language.
Happy productive language learning! See you soon. 🙂
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