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Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome.
Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today, the subject is …
WHERE’S THE CALENDAR
Or
SHOULD I SCHEDULE MY LANGUAGE LEARNING?
Do you schedule your language learning? I don’t formally make a schedule, but I do regularly do the same things at roughly the same time of the day. I’m lucky, because I don’t have to go out to work, so I can organise my own days. Many people won’t have that luxury, but might also think that creating an actual schedule is a waste of valuable learning time. Well, before you throw the idea out, here are some known benefits to scheduling learning that might change your mind.
Scheduling will allow you to create for yourself a balanced programme of learning. What do I mean by this? Well, if you just randomly grab something to learn as and when you have a few minutes, you might not end up covering everything you need to. You might end up spending all your time listening to the radio, because that’s the easiest thing to do at a moment’s notice, rather than actively learning, using an app, for example. Scheduling will help you to ensure you cover everything you need to and spread those things out during the week in a way that suits you.
Creating a schedule will also force you to find those spare pockets of time when you could fit in a little learning, time that you might otherwise have wasted, because you didn’t think it was worth it. Even ten minutes doing some learning can be a benefit. Let’s take the example of listening to the radio again. This can easily be done for just a few minutes, even if you’re waiting for a bus. All downtime is potentially learning time. The more dedicated you are to your learning, the more time you’ll be able to find, and the quicker you’ll learn.
Scheduling will, by its very nature, create a routine for you, in many cases, because that time that you’re scheduling out will often be at the same time of day, in the same place, especially during the working week. We are creatures of habit, so routine is a good thing. For example, I read for somewhere between a half hour and an hour every afternoon. It’s a relaxing thing to do and I always have a good cup of coffee to accompany me.
Scheduling can also give you peace of mind, because you know that you have a plan for your learning, rather than going at it randomly. Some people get stressed out about their language learning and not getting very far with it. Scheduling will help with this. You won’t get stressed out about not having done any learning for three days, because you’ve scheduled everything in. Even if you can’t do any studying for two days, you’ll know that on that third day you’ve got a whole hour available.
Related to that last point, keeping a schedule can help you to feel like you’ve achieved more, because you can actually arrange it in a way that you can tick things off a list. You could actually create a long list of all the things you want to achieve in the coming months to add to your schedule at the relevant point. This may be just the thing to keep you motivated. Of course, it might be difficult to go too far ahead with any list if you’re not an experienced language learner, because you don’t necessarily know what’s going to come up, but a couple of weeks ahead should be easy enough to achieve.
If you schedule your time, you’re less likely to get distracted, because you can prepare for your learning by switching all those distractions off, or making sure you’re in a room where there are no distractions. Learning, for most people, is done best when there are no distractions, so planning this factor can be an important benefit.
Scheduling might also help with regards to family pressures. If you have a schedule for your learning that everyone knows about and, hopefully, is happy with, then you won’t end up having disagreements about what you should be doing at a certain time, which is never good for your learning, or your concentration on the task.
So, scheduling can be a good addition to your language learning arsenal — either formal, with a calendar, if you’re stretched for time, or informal, like mine, where things have simply become a habit.
That’s all for today’s episode. Don’t forget to join me again next time, for more language learning tips, tricks and tales and in the meantime, check out the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel for additional, non-podcast content.
Ciao, salut, hwyl and bye for now.