The Complete Guide to Learning Languages (and actually making progress in your language studies)
Are you looking to learn a language this year? Whether you’re deciding to start your language learning journey for the first time, or you’re wanting to reset and get yourself back on track, there’s never a better time to get started than right NOW.
I’m someone who typically starts learning a new language pretty often. And each time I do, I have to break out the good old language learning “toolbox” to plan out my studies
The ‘trick’ to it all, is centering my language studies around what works best for me, and my ‘Guiding Purpose’ — the reason I’m learning this language in the first place.
In this post, I’m going to walk you through the exact steps I teach other language learners when they want to start their language studies on the right foot:
- STEP 1: Clarify your language studies and your Guiding Principle
- STEP 2: Create your Study plan and system
- STEP 3: Launch your plan with success and accountability
- STEP 4: Reflect on your entire system and adjust what isn’t working
Step 1: Clarify your language studies and your Guiding Principle
When you decide to learn languages, one of the first things you need to do is get clarity about what works best for you.
A huge mistake I seem many language learners make is jumping right into studying a language without figuring out their “why” and their strengths as a language learner.
Why is this a mistake?
When you set out to study without that clarity, you’re going to set out to waste your time. I don’t know about you, but time is too precious a resource to lose.
And what often happens, as a result, is this:
You run on motivation to get you through your studies.
Your motivation starts off high, and it’s super exciting to learn all of the things.
But then the motivation is gone, and you feel like you’ve made very little progress.
You’re lost, not sure of where to go next with your studies, and you start to procrastinate over and over again.
Sound familiar?
This is the story that I’ve heard from other language learners time and time again. And it’s the same experience I had for myself before I was able to make a shift in how I study.
How can you avoid this mistake?
If you want to avoid this language learning burnout, the best thing you can do for yourself is focus on some “pre-reflection”.
Spend some time thinking about the ways that you learn best. Figure out what inspires you to learn in the first place.
The goal here is to find a reason to care about learning this language when the motivation runs out. What’s going to keep you moving forward? And what’s going to keep you stuck and feeling frustrated? What is going to prevent you from avoiding the work, and what is going to make frustration more likely?
Step 2: Create Your Study Plan
After you spend some time getting clarity on yourself as a language learner, it’s time to create your study plan!
Whether you are someone who LOVES planning and organization, or someone who dreads the idea of creating a plan, having a plan and clear action steps is so important.
It’s a HUGE mistake to skip this step… trust me.
Why is this a mistake?
Here’s what happens when you don’t have a plan for your language studies:
You’ll randomly choose resources to use each study session
You’ll study when motivation hits you, and struggle to study when you’re not.
You’ll focus on tons of activities that lean into your strengths like listening or reading (and neglect your areas of growth).
You’ll struggle to see your progress and wonder if you’re actually improving.
… and so on.
Without a plan, you’ll be wasting your time doing things that aren’t helping you to achieve your language goals.
And let’s be honest, language learning is a life-long journey. It’s not something that happens quickly and takes effort to improve and maintain.
It’s not a race, BUT… how upset with yourself would you be if you realized the journey would be easier for you if you wore the right shoes, or packed an extra bottle of water?
That’s what the plan is all about!
How can you avoid this mistake?
The answer to avoiding this mistake is “simply-complicated”.
It’s simple because all you need to do is create your study plan.
But it’s complicated because you need to have CLARITY (that first step) on what works best for you.
If you work best time-blocking and knowing exactly what you need to do and when you will do it, create a plan that focuses on that.
If you work best with weekly expectations instead of daily expectations for your language studies, do that.
There’s no wrong way to create a plan, except creating a plan that doesn’t actually work for you.
So, create a study plan that leans into your strengths and that clearly addresses the goal you have for yourself in your language studies.
Step 3: Launch your Study Plan
Once you’ve created your plan, it’s time to put it in motion!
If you’re anything like me, planning can often be an exciting part of the process. This is the time that we often spend researching new resources, choosing useful apps, gathering colorful pens and markers, and setting up our notebooks.
All of the good intentions are there, but, then when it’s time to get started… we procrastinate.
Or we complete activities that are language learning related but aren’t aligned to our plans or our goals.
The mistake here is not taking clear and direct action in your language studies.
Why is this a mistake?
When you don’t actually launch your language study plans, you’ll never progress in your language studies.
It’s just that simple.
When you focus on a task that isn’t in your plans or doesn’t align with your goals, you’ll feel like you’re not getting anywhere or learning anything at all.
And this often leads to us feeling guilty or frustrated with ourselves and our studies.
How can you avoid this mistake?
The BEST way to avoid this mistake, and stop avoiding your language studies, create a system around when and how you will study.
Again, this all goes back to getting clarity on how you learn best.
Focus your time and energy on creating a habit around language learning, and following your plan.
Create or choose a way to keep yourself accountable to your plans.
And finally, if getting started is especially difficult for you, set a minimum amount of time you want to spend studying. Make this number something you can do really easily, without a struggle, like “I will study for 5-10 minutes each session”.
Oftentimes, once you get started, you might feel the urge to keep going for longer than that minimum time.
And if you don’t, you’ve still completed your task to your expectations, and you can rest easy.
(If you find yourself avoiding the task you’ve set out to do, that’s a whole different issue that needs to be addressed before you can start making any progress. I talk about similar struggles here in this post.)
Step 4: Reflect on your Language Studies
The fourth and final step is REFLECTION.
Reflection is the opportunity to check in with yourself, make sure you’re still on the right track, reset your intentions, and actually SEE your progress.
Each step in this process has a specific purpose, and skipping the reflection step is probably one of the biggest mistakes you can make. So, if you don’t regularly reflect on your language studies, keep reading.
Why is this a mistake?
Once we get into the groove of studying our target language, we can easily forget WHY we’re doing what we’re doing and continue to just go through the motions.
We might feel really good about staying accountable and checking off those boxes, but we easily lose sight of the language learning process.
This often leads to frustration when we can’t see how far we’ve come. Or we’re frustrated with a particular strategy that seems to not work and we just don’t know why
And this often leads to us comparing ourselves to other language learners to see how we “measure up.”
DON’T DO THIS!
How can you avoid this mistake?
Decide when and how often you want to reflect on your language studies.
This can be quick, daily check-ins, or monthly reviews where you look at all of the tasks you’ve completed and think about exactly how it’s moving you closer to your goals.
The goal here is to take some time to evaluate your study plan and see what’s working and what needs to be changed.
Our lives change regularly and so our study plans should adapt and change with them.
If you have a resource that you avoid using, think about why and what you can do instead.
If you completed your plan but didn’t reach your goal, think about why and decide what do to in your next plan.
This is also a great time for “progress reports” and to see how much you’re able to DO in your target language, than before.
Final Thoughts
If you’re looking to learn a language this year – don’t skip a single step in this process:
- Clarify your goals and purpose
- Create a Study Plan
- Launch Study Routine
- Reflect on Your Progress and Plans