If you’re anything like me, you’ve been saying that you want to learn a language for the past gazillion years.
Learning a language, or at least starting to, might have been one of your resolutions for the year. But lo and behold, 2018 is almost over, and you haven’t actually started learning the language you said you would. Your friends have grown tired of you saying you’re going to learn French and your siblings have resorted to lifting the apples of their cheeks into pitiful smiles every time you bring up your plans to learn Mandarin.
Let’s face it… you’re tired of you, too.
So, what do you do? How do you stop procrastinating on your language goals?
The key, according to Zdravko Cvijetic (writer at Medium) is to just start without thinking too far ahead. Take things one step at a time.
I have summarised the main steps Cvijetic provides for pursuing neglected goals below:
- Extract the lessons. Pinpoint the main reasons you procrastinated on your goal at a previous point in time. Maybe you found yourself daunted by the task of language learning and found it easier to delay the process. Maybe you struggled to find time for it.
- Don’t beat yourself up for not acting on your goal. Make sure you’re not wallowing in self-pity for any previous failed attempts at language learning. There’s still hope!
- Re-evaluate your direction. Consider whether you still want to pursue your language learning goal. Ask yourself what you are trying to achieve and if it still makes sense for you in the present moment.
We have the ability to achieve most of the goals we ser. However, we often lack a necessary ingredient: commitment.
Make sure you’re ready to put in the work to accomplish your language learning goals.
4) Make a new plan. What do you have to do to achieve your language goals? Write your answer down or make a mental note. This is where reading about the steps required in language learning (referenced below) come in handy. And (as I often do) if you find yourself overwhelmed when you read about all that is required, remember language learning is a gradual process. Cvijetic recommends putting the answers to the previous points into a timeline. However, I think that the steps involved in language learning, especially when pursued independently, may not lend themselves to time constraints. For this reason, it might be best to focus more on understanding the initial and subsequent principles of language learning and then go on to…
5) Act. “To make sure that history doesn’t repeat itself, choose just one thing you will do today — no matter how minor the activity is”. The writer goes on to provide the example of learning five new words in Spanish, an example particularly fitting for this article. What can you do today to get started? Maybe it’s five words in your target language too. Maybe it’s 10 and then before you know it, as the days go by, you’ve hit the 50 words recommended by Aparta!
Ok, no more procrastinating. Time to start!
But… where?
Krystian Aparta says to decide on a simple, attainable goal to start with so that you don’t feel overwhelmed.
I think this is key because the vagueness of a statement like “learn Spanish” can result in frustration. With the ever-present stresses of university and life in general, it helps to have a specific language goal.
For example, pick up 50 words of a language, start using them on people, and then slowly start picking up grammar.
Here it is important to note, as Tim Ferriss does, that you absolutely do not need to know all the words of a language to speak it (and in fact, you don’t know all the words of your mother tongue either).
(To my native English speakers out there – heard of ‘curmudgeon’ before? Me neither.)
Ferriss suggests using flashcards to learn common words in the target language.
Another idea is to search the 50 most common words in your native language, find translation equivalents in the target language and then proceed with the learning technique best for you.
Then proceed to the slow acquisition of grammar followed by the relevant language learning steps, which you’ll find at the links below.
Thank you for reading! More comprehensive lists on language learning can be found on these sites:
How to learn a new language: 7 secrets from TED Translators.
12 Rules for Learning Foreign Languages in Record Time — The Only Post You’ll Ever Need.
Ony Anyanwu
Kinguistics 