Learning a language, while a lot of fun, isn't easy. There are so many apps, tools, and services vying for your attention, and I'm not even talking about language learning stuff. We are constantly bombarded by ads, and suggestions, and the "best," the "biggest," the "cool new hotness.
" And it's really hard to focus, let alone long enough to figure out how to learn a language. One of the most common questions and concerns I see from newer learners is something like this. "It feels impossible to learn a language.
" "I downloaded one app, but it doesn't feel like it's doing anything, and I have no idea where to go from here. " Or another common one, "I've spent the last few weeks trying to learn how to learn a language and I've gotten about a thousand different pieces of advice. What am I supposed to do?
" If you're nodding your head and thinking, "yeah, I know what you're talking about," then you're not alone. Those sorts of questions are why we're here. And in this video, I want to give you the tools to answer those types of questions for yourself.
Because that's the main thing. I actually can't answer it for you. There is no "objective" best way to learn a language.
There are best practices and approaches that work for most people, but every single person needs to find their system that works for them. So let's look at how to make your language learning routine. Because that's the first step.
Language learning is a gradual process, which means that you need consistency in order to make progress. And if you just do a bit here and there, a few evenings per week, you aren't going to make much progress at all. So that's where we start.
Figure out what you can do consistently. Not what you think the ideals should be or what you should do every day, but what's reasonable for you. Yes, you.
It's all too easy to look at someone on YouTube who does four hours per day of their language and think that that's what you need to do too. But that's not sustainable or reasonable for 95% of the population, and that's fine. Plenty of people have made awesome progress and achieved incredible results with just 45 minutes to an hour per day.
But there is a minimum we recommend if you want to make "satisfying" progress, which is when you can actually notice your abilities getting better. You'll still get better otherwise, but you may not notice it, which can cause some people to burnout. That threshold is somewhere around 45 minutes to an hour and a half per day, depending on how different the language is from what you already speak.
Now, I want you to pause this video and think for a moment about how much time you can realistically spend on this hobby of language learning. We'll make it fun, but it will still be a form of study. So you want to be somewhere and do it at a time when you can focus and learn for ideally 45 minutes per day or more.
Just a rough estimate for now is fine, because the second part of the process is understanding that figuring things out and improving your process is part of that process. If you stick with your first attempt at a learning plan, I promise you that you'll be missing out on improvements. No one gets it perfectly right the first time.
There are just too many factors. You might overestimate your free time, or ability to focus, or what activities you enjoy. There's just so much going on for a guess to be more than a guess.
So now we know that, that gives us the peace of mind to try things out. You'll be trying out various tools, schedules, daily targets, activities, etc. Some will stick for the long term and some won't.
You'll get rid of them. And that's to be expected. All right.
So we have a time goal. That's what you're aiming for each day. We're also going to make a minimum goal.
That should be around 1/20 of the total time. So let's say you're aiming for an hour per day. Your daily minimum should be around three minutes.
The daily minimum is what you can do literally every day unless there's some kind of natural disaster. It should be so low and easy to do that it'd be embarrassing to admit that you couldn't do it. If you came to me and said, "ah I was so busy on Tuesday I couldn't do three minutes of Korean," I wouldn't believe you and tell you that you chose not to do it.
That's how easy a daily minimum should be. And we use them because it's way easier to go from a daily minimum to a bunch more time, than to go from nothing to a daily minimum. "This" is a bigger step than "all of this.
" If you want to learn more about them, here's a video I did on habit tracking. Now that we have a time goal and a minimum goal, there are two more questions we have to answer. What are you going to do during that time and where are you going to do it?
The first question isn't too hard. Pick three to five activities that you have done with the language, or already do, or want to try out. Ideally, they're fairly different to give yourself the proper variety in your learning diet.
For example, if you like Duolingo, don't add in Memrise and Clozemaster since they're serving similar roles. But something like Clozemaster, Blink, and Sentence Mining from Netflix would be a great variety of activities. These can be really anything for now because you're going to update what you're doing.
If you need ideas for activities, I recommend you check out the other videos I've done on the channel for ideas, or you can join the Refold Discord server to see what other people like. But I generally recommend that you have your three bases covered. Some kind of vocab tool, some kind of reading tool, and some kind of audiovisual subtitle tool.
I do Anki for vocab, reading with an audiobook to practice quicker understanding, reading with LUTE to really dive into the language and understand everything, and I watch and mine from a TV show to get more natural language exposure. And I like shows too. If you want to hear more about my plan for Czech learning, I made a whole video that you can watch up here.
And the final, yet very important, step is to choose where you're going to learn. I think that too many people don't think about this and then struggle to start their learning since they don't have anything set in stone. Most people know where they're going to watch TV or read before bed or cook a meal or fall asleep, since those activities have set locations.
But language learning isn't as set. It shouldn't be too hard to choose where you're going to learn, but it will help a lot. If you have a laptop and a dining room table, maybe that's the best spot for you.
Or if you live with roommates, your own room might be best. So make sure that your desk has enough space for you to be comfortable and to focus. Or, if you have kids, they will interrupt you, so choosing somewhere they're less likely to do so, or making some other plan with that in mind, will be very helpful for you.
My main point in this section is not to assume that you'll just do it, or that when you start, you'll know what to do. Set yourself up for success by taking 5 minutes to plan your learning time. The final thing about creating your learning plan is to revisit it often.
I recommend coming back to your plan, or even this video, at least once a week or month, depending on how early you are in the process. Revisit the time you're spending, the activities you're doing, and make sure they're still serving you and making you enjoy the process still. In fact, write a comment below this video for your plan over the next week.
Then set a calendar event for a week from now to come back to your comment and reply to yourself about what you want to change, what went really well, etc, etc. I'll be monitoring to see what your plans are. I'm curious to see.
Anyway, I think that's enough for today. Make your plan, enact your plan, and then revise your plan, and you'll start having so much fun learning that you'll become fluent without even realizing. Happy immersing!
