Having enough time to do everything we want during the day is a problem that this society has faced for the last decades. You probably want to learn a foreign language but feel like your school, career, job, daily duties and a big etc, are steaking your precious hours. I think that too, most of the time. But the reality is that you CAN make some time to study the foreign language you love, even every single day. This is something we must repeat to ourselves always, because we tend to forget it, speciallt after we have watched the whole season of our favourite show, gone out for the entire day or scrolled on Instagram during one hour straight.
If you are like me and hundreds of people who steal our own time and then feel like we are never going to be fluent in the foreign language we love, continue reading this post.
I will give you some important tips you should follow to be able to learn a foreign language when you feel like you don’t have time.
Let’s begin!
If you are on Instagram almost all day (like me), you need to start following native speakers of the language you want to be fluent in. If you do this, chances are you will always see new pictures and stories of these people, and somehow you’ll be practicing your listening or reading skills at the language. I actually do this with Korean and everytime I see a picture with a description in Korean, I immediately start reading it outloud to practice my pronunciation. I also try to understand what the description says.
I encourage you to do the same! You can search for native speakers or learners of the language through hashtags (eg: #Korean, #Japanese, #German, etc)
If you
At first, you won’t understand a lot, but with time you’ll find easier to catch some phrases and words, and soon you’ll be able to understand the general idea of the video or even the whole thing. Sometimes watching the same video twice can also help a lot.
Do you have Soundcloud on your cell phone or computer? You need to have it there if you want to take advantage of leisure time. Look for podcasts made on your target language OR podcast made to teach different grammatical structures and vocabulary in your target language.
Nowadays it is not difficult to find this kind of podcasts, and they are super useful because you only need to hear at them. As an example, a time ago I started listening to Talk To Me In Korean podcast. Every day during my morning beauty routine, I would listen to an episode of this podcast and repeat the keywords and concepts as they were mentioned. This helped me a lot to learn new words and practice my skills in the language. I super recommend you do the same with the language you are currently learning.
Having a workbook in your target language near you in your bedroom, office or living room, can be of much help to you. Sometimes we look around us trying to find something to do with our free time, and the first thing we see is our cell phones, computers and tv. That is why we tend to go for these items instead of a book or a sudoku, for example. If you put a grammar workbook in your night table or in your desk, you may think twice about watching tv.
Your mind will immediately tell you: ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to practice a little bit of grammar/vocabulary?’ You may still feel a little bit more inclined to go for the technological device, BUT if you feel kind of motivated to study for a couple of minutes, just take the workbook and look through the pages. Suddenly you’ll feel encouraged to work on the activities.
In case you did not know, I created a practical workbook to learn any language. It doesn’t matter if you are studying Chinese or Italian, this workbook will help you along the way while you learn the alphabet, pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary of your target language. If you want to read more about it, go to THIS link.
There are plenty of challenges out there that you can take to practice your target language, but I want to talk to you about the one I created. It is called the 1 Day Immersion Challenge and is truly super easy to implement. You only need to download the free checklist here and start using it during your day. This checklist was made to seem easy to use during your daily routine, so it doesn’t matter if you are at school or working.
You can read more about the 1 DayImmersion Challenge in this post.
Planning is amazing, isn’t it? I know many of you like planners, journals and notebooks, so I guess stationary is a word you also love to hear. But, have you ever plan and track your language journey? This means to use your planner or bullet journal to join you in your language learning path. You can plan your goals and study schedule (with different days for grammar, vocabulary, reading, listening, etc), and you can also track the days you have actually studied or the level you are at the moment.
I know it is hard to find a planner specially made for polyglot, that is why my Blissful Organization Planner has a polyglot version. Apart from all the organization pages, daily pages, habit trackers and calendars that a normal planner has, this one also includes a polyglot section where you can plan your studying sessions, goals and more!
You can read more about it here (remember to use the code CYBERBLISS7 during Cyberweek) or here on my Etsy shop (the discount is already made)
Related post: How To Use Your Bullet Journal To Learn A Foreign Language
I bet you love watching Netflix, right? I love it too. Every time I can, a set some of my time to watch a new episode of my favorite shows or watch a movie. If this is also your afternoon plan when you want to relax and chill, you totally need to include movies and shows in your target language. This will help you improve your listening skills and also your reading skills (if you watch with subtitles). To make this even more meaningful, I recommend you watch the episode or movie with a notebook at your side. This way you can write down every new word or expression you learn.
Some time ago I wrote a post where I recommended you some Netflix shows to watch if you are learning Korean, Japanese, German, and other amazing languages. You can read that post HERE.
Are you struggling to learn foreign languages? Don’t forget to check out my language study course!
I hope this post was super useful for you! I love writing tips for languages learners like me. I know we dream about becoming polyglots but sometimes we don’t give ourselves time to practice the foreign languages we want to be fluent in.
What was your favourite tip out of the seven I gave you? I’d love to know!
Have a beautiful day,
Namaste.
