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Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Bienvenidos, 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 I’m talking about…
Motivation When Life Happens
Some people just can’t get motivated when it comes to language learning, or anything else, for that matter. Partially, I think this is to do with how much you actually want something. If you really want to learn a language, you will find the motivation within yourself, no matter what, but there will always be times when you come up against a barrier, one that’s not under your control. Everyone loses motivation sometimes for external reasons, rather than anything to do with the actual language learning.
So, when your motivation does fail you in this way, you need to have a back-up plan.
Learning a language needs to have become so automatic, that you do it anyway, not matter what else is going on, a bit like going to work. That is automatic, right? You can’t stop doing that just because you have something else on your mind. How do you achieve that? By making it a habit, rather than something you do at random times when you think about it, and, yes, that involves doing something every day, at the same time, probably in the same place, but not necessarily. If you set this up when you’re in the honeymoon phase of learning a language, when all is shiny and new and you feel like progress is easy, then that won’t be so much of a problem. Ingrained habits are hard to let go. If you can get into habits with your language learning you are more likely to be able to keep going, no matter what.
So, what kind of things can you make into habits? Well, you could study at a particular time of day, and plenty of people do, but the actual study aspect, might be the most difficult thing to do if other things are pressing on your mind. I think other aspects of language learning might be better as habits that will keep you going through tough times. Things that involve input, for example. Having these little pockets of things that you always do will keep the language active, even if you’re not motivated, or don’t have the bandwidth, to do actual study.
You could get into the habit of always listening to a radio station in your target language over breakfast, or, perhaps, before going to bed, or on the commute to work.
Or, you could substitute this with reading, especially if you’re someone who loves to read to put yourself in the mood for sleep.
Doing something before bed has the added benefit of being fresh in your mind when you go to sleep, which I’ve read (in a book about sleep, not languages) could mean the vocabulary is more likely to get transferred to long-term memory. That can only be a good thing.
There are plenty of times of day where you might be able to create a habit, such as watching content in the language, or writing in the language. The more habits you can make, the easier it’s going to be to keep going.
Another way to keep motivated, or, perhaps just to be learning without realising, is to have the language around you at all times. You can change the language on your phone, for example, although I’m not that keen on this, unless you’re advanced in a language, because you could get yourself in a pickle if you don’t understand something. Better, I think, is to change the language on individual apps, kind of like where I’m learning Spanish and French from Italian. But also, I have Google set to Italian on my laptop (not the whole of Google, because, again, potential pickles, just the Google search screen). This means that the main results that come up are at the very least titled in Italian, even if I search in English. Some people also create a separate YouTube account that is set up in their target language and will only serve them videos in that language. Of course, if it’s a separate account, you can always ignore it if you’re not feeling the whole language learning thing. I prefer just to have language content appear in my normal YouTube feed. But I’m sure you can think of other ways to have the language around you.
If you can keep the language your learning on your mind, even without actually studying, you’re always going to be learning.
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, adiós, hwyl and bye for now.