How to organize your study time when learning a language?

Romy Mena | 19 de marzo de 2024

In my previous article, https://www.romymena.com/post/como-aprender-un-idioma-en-tan-solo-unos-meses-gratis I mentioned my best tips and hacks to learn a language for free and in a short time. If you haven't read it, I recommend you to take a look at it first because I mentioned many key tools for learning a language.

 

We already talked about tools to reinforce learning, but if you struggle organizing your study time or you just don't know how to start to have an effective method. In this reading, I am going to share my study method so you can apply it too.

 

Set your goals

 

To set your goals, you should ask yourself questions like:

 

In how long do you want to learn the language?

How much time do you want to invest per day?

Do I learn better by watching videos or reading books?

Do I like the language I chose to learn?

 

You must ask yourself these type of questions to have a good objective. If you do not define a period of time in which you would like to learn the language, you do not know how much time to invest per day, you do not know what content to consume and you are having doubts about your choice, then the main objective, which is to learn a language, will not be achieved.

If you already know what your main objectives are, then we can start.

Organize your time

In this chart, you can get an idea of how to organize your study time. Of course it's just an example of how I do it. You are free to choose the order in which you do things or choose one more activity or one less activity.

		Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
10:00 am – 10:15 am	Duolingo	Duolingo	Duolingo	Duolingo	Duolingo	Duolingo	Duolingo
10:15 am – 10:30 am	Watch your favorite teacher's videos on YouTube	Watch a YouTube channel of the chosen language	Take a level test	Find free exercises to complete	Watch a politics interview	Study geography	Learn the national anthem
10:30 am – 10:45 am	Completar una o dos canciones en Lyrics Training	Read the dictionary and learn new words	Listen to a podcast	Watch a music interview	Learn a food recipe	Listen to an audiobook	Watch an influencer's story of your chosen language
10:45 am – 11:00 am	Leer un texto en tu idioma elegido	Discover new songs on Spotify	Talk to Chat GPT	Practice with a friend that speaks the language	Review the alphabet	Review the pronunciations that are hard for you	Change your phone's language

Now you have a clearer idea of how you can organize your time and activities to have a super immersive experience.

 

This way, you will get your brain used to thinking in that language, and if you think in that language, you won't have to translate things. A big mistake of people who are learning a new language is wanting to translate everything they hear. That's why it's good to let go completely and consume every content in the language you want to learn.

 

Remember that learning a language requires perseverance, patience, discipline and perseverance.

 

You must study daily to have a good level. Analyze, how did you learn your native language? Well, you learned it by listening and then speaking.

 

The first stage of learning a language is called "the stage of silence". Because you literally don't speak it, you're just listening to everything so that you can repeat later what you hear.

 

Don't lose motivation!

I once heard a phrase that said: “Never stop doing something because of the time it will take you to do it, time will pass anyway.” I love this phrase, I use it as my mantra because when I feel like I'm getting away from a goal and that I'm going to start wasting time doing nothing, I remember this phrase and I have motivation again.

 

There will be days where you feel like you are not moving forward or that you are not learning as quickly as you would like. We all have a different way of learning, but it depends on how much time you dedicate to it each day and if you do it daily.

 

The time I recommend learning per day is:

 

30 minutes per day (minimum)

2 hours per day (maximum)

 

Just as it's not okay to spend too little time on something, it's not okay to spend too much time on it either. Our brain begins to lose focus and saturated after so much information and we cannot process it correctly. It is always better to have a balance and be right in the middle.

Learning a language requires commitment, but with proper guidance and a consistent study routine, you can achieve the goals you set at the beginning. Each person has their own learning pace, do not be discouraged if you feel that you are not progressing as quickly as you expected. The important thing is not to give up on your learning path.

 

You'll be fluent in a new language very soon, you'll see!